The Dish

It’s right there in the president’s speech yesterday: once again, baldly stated, as if saying it more categorically makes it true:

I want to be absolutely clear with our people, and the world: The United States does not torture. It’s against our laws, and it’s against our values. I have not authorized it – and I will not authorize it.

There is no other way to say it. On one of the gravest moral matters before the country, this president is knowingly stating an untruth. The lie is sustained by this evasion:

I cannot describe the specific methods used – I think you understand why – if I did, it would help the terrorists learn how to resist questioning, and to keep information from us that we need to prevent new attacks on our country. But I can say the procedures were tough, and they were safe, and lawful, and necessary.

But we know – and the enemy knows – what the techniques are. They’ve been listed and documented and debated. We also know what was done to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the case cited specifically by the president in his speech yesterday – because Bush officials told us. The New York Times reported the following:

"Senior officials have said Mr. Mohammed was ‘waterboarded,’ a technique in which his head was pushed under water and he was made to believe that he might drown."

In another case of a detainee, Mohammed al-Qhatani, we actually have a log of what was done to him. He was deprived of sleep for 55 days, subjected to the KGB-perfected "cold cell" hypothermia treatment, and terrorized by unmuzzled dogs. Medics had to administer three bags of medical saline to Qhatani, while he was strapped to a chair, and aggressively treat him for hypothermia in hospital, before returning him to a torture cell. These facts are not disputed. Far, far worse has been done to detainees in less closely monitored "interrogations" in Afghanistan, Iraq and in the secret sites (now admitted) in Eastern Europe. (Yes, Dana, you deserve your Pulitzer.) Dozens of corpses are the result of the president’s "safe and lawful" interrogation methods.

If the president wants to argue that all this is necessary, that we need to breach the Geneva Conventions in order to protect the public, then he should say so. He should make the argument, and persuade Americans that torture should now be official policy, and seek explicit legislation amounting to a breach of the Geneva Conventions. That would be an honest position. He would gain the support of much of the Republican base, a large swathe of the conservative intelligentsia, and the contempt of the civilized world. We could then debate this honestly, including the torture techniques he has authorized and supports. Instead he lies.

Am I splitting semantic hairs here with the word "torture"? The definition of the word, in the U.N. declaration to which the U.S. is a signatory is as follows:

"[A]ny act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession … when such pain or suffering is inflicted at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."

In the cases the president cites, he authorized torture as plainly stated in U.S. law and common English. Moreover, he says he has set up an elite group trained specifically for torture, the kind of elite torture-squads once dear to South American dictators. They have, he reassures us, 250 extra hours of torture-training over regular CIA interrogators. The president is asking the Congress to establish this in law. Yes, this is America. It just no longer seems like it.

Then there is the president’s second untruth about who actually has been detained at Gitmo and elsewhere:

It’s important for Americans and others across the world to understand the kind of people held at Guantanamo. These aren’t common criminals, or bystanders accidentally swept up on the battlefield – we have in place a rigorous process to ensure those held at Guantanamo Bay belong at Guantanamo.

Again, as has been exhaustively documented, this is false. Dozens of Gitmo detainees have been released with no charges brought against them, just as the U.S. concedes that up to 90 percent of those jailed at Abu Ghraib were innocent. Read this op-ed about just one man detained for four years at Gitmo, even though the administration conceded he was innocent. Earlier this year, to cite another investigation, the National Journal examined court documents relating to 132 "enemy combatants" at Gitmo, or about a quarter of the detainees there. Money quote:

National Journal undertook a detailed review of the unclassified files to develop profiles of the 132 men. NJ separately reviewed transcripts for 314 prisoners who pleaded their cases before Combatant Status Review Tribunals at Guantanamo. Taken together, the information provides a picture of who, exactly, has been taken prisoner in the war on terror and is being held in an anomalous U.S. military prison on an island belonging to one of America’s bitterest enemies …

The first thing that jumps out of the statistics is that a majority of the detainees in both groups are not Afghans – nor were they picked up in Afghanistan as U.S. troops fought the Taliban and Al Qaeda, nor were they picked up by American troops at all. Most are from Arab countries, and most were arrested in Pakistan by Pakistani authorities.

Seventy-five of the 132 men, or more than half the group, are … not accused of taking part in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners … Just 57 of the 132 men, or 43 percent, are accused of being on a battlefield in post-9/11 Afghanistan. The government’s documents tie only eight of the 132 men directly to plans for terrorist attacks outside of Afghanistan.

Here’s another little detail worth remembering, also uncovered by National Journal:

Much of the evidence against the detainees is weak. One prisoner at Guantanamo, for example, has made accusations against more than 60 of his fellow inmates; that’s more than 10 percent of Guantanamo’s entire prison population. The veracity of this prisoner’s accusations is in doubt after a Syrian prisoner, Mohammed al-Tumani, 19, who was arrested in Pakistan, flatly denied to his Combatant Status Review Tribunal that he’d attended the jihadist training camp that the tribunal record said he did.

Tumani’s denial was bolstered by his American "personal representative," one of the U.S. military officers – not lawyers – who are tasked with helping prisoners navigate the tribunals. Tumani’s enterprising representative looked at the classified evidence against the Syrian youth and found that just one man – the aforementioned accuser – had placed Tumani at the terrorist training camp. And he had placed Tumani there three months before the teenager had even entered Afghanistan. The curious U.S. officer pulled the classified file of the accuser, saw that he had accused 60 men, and, suddenly skeptical, pulled the files of every detainee the accuser had placed at the one training camp. None of the men had been in Afghanistan at the time the accuser said he saw them at the camp.

That’s the "rigorous process" the president spoke of yesterday. It doesn’t exist – and never has.

Cape Cod Bay, tonight.

Tomorrow, I’m going to detail the major lies in the president’s speech today. Tonight, it’s worth reflecting on the real point of the address. The president knows he and his party are in deep trouble this November. So he needs a real Hail Mary pass to avoid a crushing defeat. Power Line understands what was going on as well as Josh Marshall:

The real news that came out of the speech was that the 14 high-ranking terrorists now in CIA custody will be transferred to Guantanamo for criminal prosecution, and that the administration is asking Congress to pass comprehensive legislation authorizing military tribunals and protecting American servicemen and CIA employees from prosecution or lawsuits arising out of their interrogations of captured terrorists.

This is, in large part, a response to the unfortunate Hamdan decision. From a political standpoint, though, the Left won’t be happy about the return of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, Zubaydah, et al. to the front pages; nor will Democrats in Congress relish having to vote on a vital issue of national security between now and November.

Here’s the money quote of the speech:

We’re now approaching the five-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks – and the families of those murdered that day have waited patiently for justice. Some of the families are with us today – they should have to wait no longer. So I’m announcing today that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and 11 other terrorists in CIA custody have been transferred to the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. They are being held in the custody of the Department of Defense. As soon as Congress acts to authorize the military commissions I have proposed, the men our intelligence officials believe orchestrated the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans on September the 11th, 2001, can face justice.

This is the Rove gambit: make this election a choice between legalizing torture or enabling the murderers of 9/11 to escape justice. The timing is deliberate; the exploitation of 9/11 gob-smacking; the cynicism fathomless. There is only one response: call them on it and vote for their opponents in November. And pray that in the meantime, John McCain won’t lose his nerve or his integrity.

A reader writes:

"Rich is absolutely right. Pull their fingernails out if it helps, then shoot them."

Now that’s the spirit of today’s conservatism. And we can be sure a lot of liberals oppose that as well. Somehow I think we just heard the early themes of the Republicans’ fall campaign. KSM will be center-stage. Josh Marshall thinks the same.

This simple one-sentence post makes one heartsick:

Whatever those secret CIA interrogation methods are that apparently helped save U.S. lives, we can be sure that a lot of liberals oppose them…

It’s from National Review’s editor, Rich Lowry. Notice he has no idea what these "interrogation methods" are; but wants to use them to smear "liberals" nonetheless. Notice that it appears perfectly clear that waterboarding and hypothermia are indeed among such authorized methods, and yet Lowry thinks it somehow scores a point to say that "liberals" oppose such things. Well, yes, plenty of liberals do oppose such things. So do plenty of conservatives. Does Lowry? Does he favor the United States using techniques, like the "cold cell", finessed by Stalin and documented by Solzhenitsyn in the "Gulag Archipelago"? Does he favor water-boarding? This is not a liberal-conservative issue. Plenty of conservatives oppose torture and the unbounded power of an untrammeled executive to detain and torture whomever he designates an "enemy combatant" at will. This is an issue about the core meaning of the West – and this president’s relentless attack upon that inheritance.

New Canaan, CT, 2 pm.

Marty Lederman examines the military detention bill the White House has offered to the Congress. And, yes, it actually includes a formal legalization of cruel, inhuman and degrading interrogation techniques – some of which were innovated by Stalin’s KGB – to be used by the CIA. That includes "waterboarding." Here is the formal CIA definition, as laid out in my forthcoming book:

"The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt."

When will the press ask the president straight up whether he approves of this practice; whether he believes it’s torture; and whether he has personally authorized it? The headlines are that the U.S. is finally complying with Geneva. The truth is that the administration is asking the Congress to legislate our renunciation of them. Marty predicted such a maneuver a while back. Sources tell me that McCain sees the ruse, but Graham may take the Cambone bait.

So Bush admits he ran a secret gulag of extra-judicial black sites where the CIA tortured detainees. And now he’s sending some of the victims to Gitmo. Why? It’s 9/11 week in the Congressional campaign and Khalid Sheik Muhammad is one terror detainee who should indeed be detained and interrogated as a prisoner of war. But Spencer Ackerman has some further thoughts:

Look deeper and not only is the White House not giving an inch in the debate, the KSM Shift of 2006 actually takes a mile. That’s because, to be blunt, we have tortured the dickens (to use a Rumsfeldian locution) out of KSM. All Guant√°namo detainees, according to the Supreme Court, have the right to at least some access to the U.S. legal system. KSM, therefore, will pose an interesting test: Should his probable trial reflect the legal doctrine of the "fruit of the poisoned tree" – that is, will evidence obtained through torture be admissible in the military tribunals or not? McCain’s Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 says "of course not!" but Bush indicated in his infamous "signing statement" that he thinks he has the right to torture whoever he pleases.

Now Congress will face a very unpleasant question: Unless it rejiggers the military tribunals to bless torture/coercion, KSM and other Al Qaeda figures might in fact be set free by the courts. Is Bush so cynical as to force Congress into the odious position of either setting the stage for murderers to walk out of Gitmo or blessing torture? Of course he is!

I’ve learned through bitter experience that almost every time the Bush administration announces what appears to be a relaxation of its illegal and unconstitutional torture and detention policies, it’s usually part of a gambit to retain and expand them. More on this later. I need some time to analyze and scrutinize the announcements.

Two small but telling examples of Ramesh Ponnuru’s intellectual slipperiness. Here’s his convoluted attempt to explain why he won’t be explicit on how banning all abortions for all reasons will actually be enforced. There is one huge reason: if he did, the debate would instantly enter territory he wants to avoid: the practical impact on women, doctors, families, and individual freedom. Jon Rauch is a fair reviewer, and his point is a fair one. Ponnuru’s fundamental objective, of course, is advancing Republican power. Being explicit about the implications of the GOP’s support for a total ban on all abortion would not be politically prudent. On a minor note, Ponnuru says my criticism of Mark Steyn’s review of my book was hypocritical. Didn’t I criticize Ponnuru’s book without reading it? Au contraire. See the original post for yourself. I criticized the title and the Coulter cover-blurb – not the contents, which I said I hadn’t read and might even, in part, agree with.