After the obligatory, “The United States does not torture,” we saw this exchange.<\/p>\n
Q: But when you have a former CIA officer, John Kiriakou, now saying that waterboarding was used — since you’re saying the interrogations were legal; he’s saying on the record now, waterboarding was used in at least one case. You’re saying waterboarding is legal?<\/p>\n
PERINO: Ed, I’m saying I’m not commenting on any specific technique. I’m not commenting on that gentleman’s characteristics of any possible technique. I’ve given you a very general statement about interrogations being legal, limited and —<\/p>\n
Q: You just said it was legal.<\/p>\n
PERINO: I’m sorry?<\/p>\n
Q: You said it was within the legal framework.<\/p>\n
PERINO: Yes.<\/p>\n
Q: Everything that was done.<\/p>\n
PERINO: Yes.<\/p>\n
Q: So waterboarding is legal.<\/p>\n
PERINO: I’m not commenting on any specific techniques.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Got that? We know U.S. officials used waterboarding, Perino wants us to know U.S. officials’ techniques were legal, but she doesn’t want us to connect point A to point B. She can’t say waterboarding is legal (it’s not), she can’t say it’s illegal (it is), so she can’t say anything coherent at all.
\n
\nAnd best of all, the reason<\/i> Perino won’t comment on waterboarding is because — get this — terrorists might be listening to the White House press briefing. Fortunately, the press corps didn’t find this persuasive, either.<\/p>\nQ: Dana, can I come back to the waterboarding question? I understand the rationale for not wanting to discuss specific techniques — it’s to not tip off America’s enemies, to help them train as to how to evade what questioning they get. After a retired team member is on nationwide television explaining exactly what was done, is there an al Qaeda operative anywhere who doesn’t know that this might be in the arsenal?<\/p>\n
PERINO: Obviously, al Qaeda listens closely to everything that we do and say, and that’s something that we should be — that we should keep in mind…. [M]atters of sensitivity should remain classified and not spoken about publicly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
But therein lies the point: it’s already been spoken about publicly. At great length<\/i>. This isn’t a secret; it’s a torture technique developed during the Spanish Inquisition, and prosecuted by previous administrations as a war crime. It’s in the news, it’s in congressional hearings, it’s even in presidential debates.<\/p>\n
So what on earth is Dana Perino talking about?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Between CIA revelations, months of reports, detainee testimony, and John Kiriakou’s very public comments, there is no longer a question as to whether Bush administration officials used waterboarding to torture suspects. But the White House can’t concede reality because a) the Bush gang has to maintain the fiction that it opposes torture; and b) torture […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}