To some, it’s a clear-cut issue: torture should be banned — period. To others, it’s far more complicated: what if U.S. officials had someone in their hands who knew about an attack that could kill thousands or millions?
But the White House made it clear today that its stand on torture is to oppose ruling it out-of-bounds because the U.S. could one day face a worst-case scenario:
In an important clarification of President George W. Bush’s earlier statement, a top White House official refused to unequivocally rule out the use of torture, arguing the US administration was duty-bound to protect Americans from terrorist attack.
The comment, by US national security adviser Stephen Hadley, came amid heated national debate about whether the CIA and other US intelligence agencies should be authorized to use what is being referred to as “enhanced interrogation techniques” to extract from terror suspects information that may help prevent future assaults.
The Senate has voted to ban it and the White House has threatened to veto it.
Then President Bush recently insisted that Americans don’t torture. This led to White House spokesman Scott McClellan — in one of his many ulcer-creating moments — repeating Bush’s insistence like a mantra when pressed by persistent reporters…but he wouldn’t rule it out (he would not give a firm no).
So there SEEMED to be some wiggle room for the White House — but no more:
However, appearing on CNN’s “Late Edition” program, Hadley elaborated on the policy, making it clear the White House could envisage circumstances, in which the broad pledge not to torture might not apply.
“The president has said that we are going to do whatever we do in accordance with the law,” the national security adviser said. “But… you see the dilemma. What happens if on September 7th of 2001, we had gotten one of the hijackers and based on information associated with that arrest, believed that within four days, there’s going to be a devastating attack on the United States?”
He insisted that it was “a difficult dilemma to know what to do in that circumstance to both discharge our responsibility to protect the American people from terrorist attack and follow the president’s guidance of staying within the confines of law.”
The CIA is reported to be operating a network of covert prisons in eight countries around the world, including Afghanistan, Thailand and several former Soviet bloc nations in Eastern Europe, where terror suspects are questioned.
Republican Senator Kit Bond, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Newsweek magazine that “enhanced interrogation techniques” had worked with at least one captured high-level Al-Qaeda operative, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, to thwart an unspecified plot.
Let’s note something here. You can agree with the White House or disagree but isn’t it fatuous when you read a phrase like “enhanced interrogation techniques.” That must be a phrase created by the person who came up with “pre-owned cars.” The debate is over TORTURE.
But we’ll continue with our analytical opinion and informational exposition (our post) by noting Senator John McCain’s insistence that there is no wiggle room here:
Terrorists are “the quintessence of evil,” he said. “But it’s not about them; it’s about us. This battle we’re in is about the things we stand for and believe in and practice. And that is an observance of human rights, no matter how terrible our adversaries may be.”
Our adversaries are extra-military oppositional violence-enhanced operatives (terrorists).
How will it end? Hadley has not ruled out some form of compromise with the special interest funded bean-soup-devouring deliberative body to enact policy (Senate).