When it comes to discussing specific types of “alternative interrogation techniques,” the White House has a very firm policy about sticking to generalities. Just last week, for example, the president sat down with Bill O’Reilly, and the Fox News personality brought up waterboarding, prompting Bush to say, “We don’t talk about techniques.” O’Reilly followed up, asking if waterboarding is torture, regardless of whether we’ve utilized the method of interrogation or not. Bush dodged again, saying only that “we won’t torture,” and asking the nation to take his word for it.
This week, however, Dick Cheney was a little less careful.
Vice President Dick Cheney has confirmed that U.S. interrogators subjected captured senior al-Qaida suspects to a controversial interrogation technique called “water-boarding,” which creates a sensation of drowning.
Cheney indicated that the Bush administration doesn’t regard water-boarding as torture and allows the CIA to use it. “It’s a no-brainer for me,” Cheney said at one point in an interview.
Cheney’s comments, in a White House interview on Tuesday with a conservative radio talk show host, appeared to reflect the Bush administration’s view that the president has the constitutional power to do whatever he deems necessary to fight terrorism.
Now, Cheney’s office denied that the VP confirmed that U.S. interrogators used water-boarding or endorsed the technique, saying, “What the vice president was referring to was an interrogation program without torture.” For that matter, Cheney supporters will no doubt note that the VP did not specifically use the word “waterboarding.” But the context of Cheney’s remarks was quite clear.
Consider the transcript of Cheney’s chat with Scott Hennen from WDAY in Fargo, N.D.
Q: I’ve had people call and say, please, let the Vice President know that if it takes dunking a terrorist in water, we’re all for it, if it saves American lives. Again, this debate seems a little silly given the threat we face, would you agree?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I do agree. And I think the terrorist threat, for example, with respect to our ability to interrogate high value detainees like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, that’s been a very important tool that we’ve had to be able to secure the nation. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed provided us with enormously valuable information about how many there are, about how they plan, what their training processes are and so forth, we’ve learned a lot. We need to be able to continue that. […]
Q Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: It’s a no-brainer for me, but for a while there, I was criticized as being the Vice President “for torture.” We don’t torture.
When Hennen and Cheney are talking “dunking a terrorist in water,” they obviously don’t mean putting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in the dunk tank at the state fair. There’s been ample debate about waterboarding, what it means, how’s it done, and the extent to which it’s banned by U.S. law and by international treaties that prohibit torture.
As for the politics of this, I think Lindsay Beyerstein captured the broader dynamic nicely.
Notice the venue and timing of Cheney’s revelation. After hedging for months about whether the administration condones waterboarding, the VP drops the bomb on a conservative radio show just before the mid-term elections.
It’s a perfect little bit of political theater: Remind the base how tough you are and hope that your opponents aren’t paying attention. That’s what torture is all about anyway. It’s not a real intelligence gathering tool, it’s a branding element.
Now we know.