Editorialist Philip Gailey joins Robyn Blumner in misleading about waterboarding

Philip Gailey, the editor of editorials for the St. Petersburg Times, weighed in on waterboarding after John Kiriakou interviewed with the Washington Post and ABC News.

Here's a portion of the WaPo story:

The waterboarding lasted about 35 seconds before Abu Zubaida broke down, according to Kiriakou, who said he was given a detailed description of the incident by fellow team members. The next day, Abu Zubaida told his captors he would tell them whatever they wanted, Kiriakou said.
(the Washington Post)

And here's how Gailey recounts it:

John Kiriakou, a former CIA interrogator based in Pakistan, got Washington's attention last week when he went public with the story of his participation in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, the first high-ranking al-Qaida leader captured after 9/11. After weeks of defiance and resistance, Kiriakou said the prisoner broke after 35 minutes of waterboarding and began talking.
(The St. Petersburg Times)

Not that I needed help seeing the discrepancy (Gailey bumping the time from 35 seconds to 35 minutes), but it's worth noting that "Matt" pointed out the mistake in the online comments section on Sunday morning and the Times still hasn't corrected it as of now. In the know, baby.

by Matt 12/16/07 08:33 AM
Waterboar(d)ing Abu Zubaydah for 35 seconds, not minutes, disrupted every plot and got every man he knew about. It has been used 3 times and has saved lives each time. It works. It saves lives. We should use it when necessary.

Gailey's misinforms beyond the 34.5 minute increase in the duration of the waterboarding, however.

In this Christmas season of peace, love and goodwill, we find ourselves debating, in Washington and on the presidential campaign trail, whether torture is ever justified. And whether waterboarding, an ancient interrogation method favored by the Nazis and prosecuted as a crime by the United States for a century, constitutes torture. Of course waterboarding is torture, even if our attorney general can't bring himself to say so, and it is illegal under U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions. However, that didn't stop the Bush administration from using it in its interrogations of "high value" al-Qaida leaders captured after the 9/11 attacks.

"Of course waterboarding is torture." Really, Mr. Gailey? Based on what?

Odds are Gailey derived his opinion from former lawyer and ACLU figure Robyn Blumner, who sits across the table from Gailey in the editorial meetings at the St. Petersburg Times.

Blumner wrote her own editorial on waterboarding about a year ago, basing it on her uncritical acceptance of an Evan Wallach essay that later appeared in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law (more on that in the weeks ahead).

Interestingly, we weren't nearly as blithe about waterboarding when it happened to our own guys during World War II. Then, we considered it a war crime and a form of torture.

In "Drop by Drop: Forgetting the History of Water Torture in U.S. Courts," Judge Evan Wallach of the U.S. Court of International Trade has documented the trials in which the United States used evidence of water-boarding as a basis for prosecutions. The article, still in draft form, will be published soon by the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law.

(The St. Petersburg Times)

That essay gets around to arguing that waterboarding is illegal according to U.S. law, and that is almost certainly the origin of Gailey's claim.

Gailey probably didn't read Wallach's essay himself, or else he might not have gone on to opine about how the post-9/11 United States changed "in some ways for the worse."

And then he offers his prescription:

Republicans say the bill goes too far, banning some practices that are now legal. President Bush has threatened to veto the measure if it clears the Senate. May I make a suggestion: Why can't everyone agree that we should never use an interrogation technique that we would not want our own captured soldiers and intelligence agents subjected to by an enemy?

You know, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Because our soldiers are not involved in the deliberate attempt to snuff out innocent civilians in the highest numbers possible, Mr. Gailey. That's why.

I got around to watching most of the ABC News Kiriakou interview as part of my effort to double-check Gailey. Kiriakou emphasizes a point with which I agree to a point: The debate on waterboarding is important. I don't think it's wise to debate the specifics of harsh interrogation techniques, however, since that erodes the effectiveness of the techniques. The public debate should be general but accurate to the degree possible without spilling what should stay secret. The debate within the government should be secret and bipartisan.

*****