The recent discussion of the U.S. tolerance for waterboarding has been dominated by a certain Alice-in-Wonderland quality lately, but when a top U.S. State Department official can’t even comment on Americans being waterboarded by foreign governments, the debate has officially gone down the rabbit hole. (via Talk Left)
The top legal adviser within the US state department, who counsels the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, on international law, has declined to rule out the use of the interrogation technique known as waterboarding even if it were applied by foreign intelligence services on US citizens.
John Bellinger refused to denounce the technique, which has been condemned by human rights groups as a form of torture, during a debate on the Bush administration’s stance on international law held by Guardian America, the Guardian’s US website. […]
The inability of a senior US official to rule out such an interrogation method even in the case of it being used against Americans underlines the legal knots in which the administration has tied itself.
Put aside whether Michael Mukasey should have answered the waterboarding question; questions as to whether waterboarding is simulating drowning or controlled drowning; and creative ticking-time-bomb scenarios involving fictional characters. Forget all of that for a moment and consider exactly how far we’ve come.
For a century, the official position of the United States has been that waterboarding is torture. Those who utilized the interrogation “technique” are considered war criminals. Indeed, the U.S. government has prosecuted those who’ve used waterboarding since the Spanish-American War.
And now, in 2007, one of the Secretary of State’s top lawyers won’t even say whether the United States considers it problematic for foreign governments to torture Americans.
TP transcribed the relevant portion of the transcript from the Guardian’s discussion.
PHILIPPE SANDS: Let me put it in yet another way. Could you imagine any circumstances in which the use of water boarding on an American national by a foreign intelligence service could be justified?
JOHN BELLINGER: One would have to apply the facts to the law, the law to the facts, to determine whether any technique, whatever it happened to be, would cause severe physical pain or suffering.
SANDS: So you’re willing to exclude any American going to the international criminal court under any circumstances, but you’re not able to exclude the possibility of water boarding being used on a United States national by foreign intelligence service? I mean, that just strikes me as very curious.
BELLINGER: Well, I’m not willing to include it or exclude it.
Bellinger was gracious enough to concede that this obviously ambiguous position on a torture technique “makes it very difficult to explain to the world and to provide the important assurance” that U.S. policies stay within the limits of international law.
In other words, our moral authority is gone, and Bush administration officials are apparently unconcerned about ever getting it back.
For that matter, let’s not forget that when it comes to the Bush gang, Bellinger is supposed to be one of the sane guys. Indeed, Cheney’s office held Bellinger in “open contempt,” for his reluctance to side with Addington & Co.
The mind reels.