THE REFRAIN of President Bush is that the United States does not torture. Sadly, he is lying. According to Human Rights First, a non-partisan human rights advocacy group, at least eight people in American custody have actually been killed during interrogations. Hundreds more have been tortured in Iraq, Afghanistan and "black sites" around the world under the direct supervision of the American military and intelligence agencies and the legal umbrella of the Justice Department.
The torture issue has been put in stark relief the past couple of weeks thanks to a debate about whether a technique known as waterboarding constitutes torture. The Bush administration's nominee for attorney general, Michael Mukasey, asserted during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on his nomination that he could not define waterboarding as torture because he had not been briefed on what it is. This claim was either an absurd instance of incompetent preparation or a blatant dodge from the man likely to become our nation's chief law enforcement officer.
In later written responses to the Committee, Mukasey steadfastly refused to describe waterboarding as torture, largely -- so he said -- because he did not want to put current or past American officials in legal jeopardy. He instead gave a long-winded explanation of how he would approach the question of whether waterboarding was torture if confirmed.
Mukasey is being disingenuous and muddying the plain meaning of words. Waterboarding is an archetypal form of torture that has in the past been prosecuted by the United States as a war crime. Today it is used to train American soldiers how to resist illegal enemy interrogation tactics.
This is how a former master instructor at the Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School described the technique. "Waterboarding is a controlled drowning... It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water... waterboarding is slow motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of black out and expiration -- usually the [victim] goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch and if it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia. When done right it is controlled death. Its lack of physical scarring allows the victim to recover and be threaten[ed] with its use again and again."
Mukasey's notion that this method would not be covered by the legal definition of torture, and torture even the Bush administration admits is still illegal in our country, is breathtaking. Of course, so too are the actions of the Bush administration that have brought us to this Orwellian impasse.
The statutory definition covers techniques that are, in Mukasey's words "intended to cause (a) severe physical pain or suffering, or (b) prolonged mental harm resulting from certain specific threats or acts." Admittedly, there is some vagueness here, but it is clear that the technique described above fits this definition. Other legal rules that by any reasonable standard prohibit waterboarding come from Supreme Court interpretations of the Fifth Amendment (prohibiting techniques that "shock the conscience") and international treaty law.
The administration is arguing at cross-purposes when it denies that the physical suffering of waterboarding is "severe," yet maintains that waterboarding is a crucial tool to rapidly break the most stubborn detainees.
What is most tragic is so many Americans seem untroubled by torture so long as the flag on the torturer's uniform is red, white and blue. These techniques, so goes the widely held belief, are being used on terrorists, who deserve what they get. Many Americans appear to have embraced the lex talionis -- the ancient concept of proportionate retribution for crime.
Let's put aside the fact that few of the people enduring torture at America's hands have actually been convicted of, or even charged with, a crime. Even if the people we've tortured were terrorists, is our toughness now to be measured by our capacity to exact vengeance on evildoers?
Vice President Cheney is a prime example of American insouciance regarding torture. He has euphemistically referred to waterboarding as "a dunk in the water" -- notable flippancy from a man whose heart would probably go into ventricular fibrillation if he were waterboarded for 10 seconds.
As Bush has asserted executive powers more in keeping with Roman emperors than American presidents, he has also embraced the moral code of the Caesars. Al Qaeda has apparently so terrified us that we can be sanguine while the executive branch abuses the English language and overturns norms that have existed since the founding of the American Republic.
It must be said again: We torture, we torture, we torture. Either get used to it or get angry.
Andrew Winerman's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at awinerman@cavalierdaily.com.
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