The press treatment of waterboarding has interested me for some time, so naturally the fact check to determine whether waterboarding helped pin down bin Laden's location piqued my curiosity.
The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler picked up with a minor war of words between former Bush administration attorney general Michael Mucasey and Sen. John McCain. I'll start with Kessler's conclusion and work back from there:
We do not have enough information to make a definitive judgment. But it appears that Mukasey is straining to make a connection between the killing of bin Laden and the harsh interrogation techniques that appears, at best, tangential. Otherwise, he would not have had to resort to verbal sleight of hand to make his case. McCain, by contrast, appears to clearly connect the dots from the courier to bin Laden, citing information derived from conventional techniques.
At the same time, while the enhanced techniques may not have provided the Rosetta stone to bin Laden’s whereabouts, Mukasey may be right when he asserts that valuable leads in the broader war against al-Qaeda were derived through these techniques.
We probably will never know whether the same information -– or more accurate information -- could have been obtained through conventional interrogation. The use of these techniques also harmed the U.S. image overseas — another question U.S, policymakers will have to balance in the future.
Kessler did a better job than I thought at first. The first paragraph of his concluding section made it appear that he had largely bought McCain's view and discounted Mukasey's.
Marc Thiessen's book "Courting Disaster" makes clear the role of enhanced interrogation. It is not used to elicit information from a detainee but rather used to make detainees cooperate with "conventional techniques." Thus every piece of information will occur as a result of using "conventional techniques." But not every piece of information gathered using conventional techniques would necessarily obtain all the information accrued after using enhanced techniques. In particular, the detainee might delay in revealing information minus the use of enhanced interrogation. But it's hard to say if such delays might have obscured the trail to bin Laden.
Kessler might have been clearer about the role of enhanced interrogation, but his conclusion is substantially correct.
I finished listening to an audiobook version of Marc A. Thiessen's book "Courting Disaster" this week. That book was partly responsible for my jaw dropping when I saw this story in the New York Times:
WASHINGTON — A former Bush Justice Department official who approved brutal interrogation methods by the C.I.A. has told Congress that he never authorized several other rough tactics reportedly inflicted on terrorism suspects — including prolonged shackling to a ceiling and repeated beatings.
Isn't it widely know by now that the Bush administration set strict limits on harsh interrogation methods? And since when is "brutal" an acceptable judgment in objective reporting?
This news was old even when Attorney General Eric Holder contemplated charging CIA interrogators who went beyond the use of techniques authorized by the Bush administration.
Over the last several years I've been fascinated by the equivocation that goes on surrounding the use of the term "waterboarding." Amanpour defends her comparision of a submersion technique with the CIA enhanced interrogation technique thus: "Excuse me (sir?), that is called 'waterboarding.'"
If I freeze water into a rectangular solid resembling a 2x4 and whack somebody in the head with it and call that "waterboarding," the name does not make it the same as the CIA technique of stimulating the gag reflex to reproduce the sensation of drowning.
Amanpour went to teach Bill O'Reilly a thing or two about shouting down a guest when she insisted waterboarding was "Dipping people's heads in a bucket of water to simulate drowning, period, end of story."
Equivocation isn't cool.
Addendum:
Not long after I first posted on the Thiessen-Amanpour clash, I remembered the disconnect between the Amanpour report cited by Thiessen and the images shown during the video of the debate. Thiessen described Amanpour calling submersion in a box full of water, as depicted in a Vann Nath painting, a technique used by the United States. Just below, I provide an image of the type of box in question. In the background one can see the painting that was Amanpour's topic (Update/Correction: I heard Thiessen on the radio (Hugh Hewitt Show) this week and his description of the painting was actually closer to one depicting a victim hanging upside-down in a barrel of water. Find that one as part of the collection here.) Also see Update #2, at bottom.
While the exchange about Amanpour's reporting was going on, the following image was shown onscreen:
The latter is, or at least has become, the iconic Vann Nath image. It is close to the type of waterboarding done by the CIA, though the painting offers no good evidence of an attempt to prevent water from entering the lungs (aspiration). Update:A better (bigger) image of the same painting does suggest that the platform is on an incline, albeit an incline magically achieved without any apparent support underneath the wooden platform.
Which brings us to another subject.
The "Why Didn't I Notice That Before?" Department
The second Vann Nath painting apparently shares the room with a Cambodian "water board."
A close examination comparing the painting to the museum piece shows that the devices are remarkably similar. Perhaps the painting is a representation of the device shown. But there is one significant difference. As noted above, the painting shows no apparent evidence of an incline. The head of the victim, in other words, apparently is not lowered as a protection against aspiration. But the image above shows a marked incline. And the right portion of the photograph shows why. It seems that a single 4x4 keeps one end of the exhibit elevated (look inside the faint yellow circle I added to the photo). Also note that aside from the helpful 4x4 the device seems designed to sit level. It has feet at the head and a wider set of short feet at the foot end.
How do we explain the discrepancy between the painting and the museum exhibit? Possibly the Khmer Rouge used water torture with and without an incline using the same or a similar device. Possibly the museum placed the 4x4 to enable visitors to better view the exhibit. Least likely, we should hope, is that the photographer had the piece repositioned to help emphasize the similarity of the Khmer Rouge to the CIA.
Mini-update:
I located another photograph that helps confirm that the museum piece is normally displayed on an incline (making the conspiracy option even less likely), and the image also suggests that more than one 4x4 supports the end near the paintings.
Update #2:
Amid some doubt as to whether either Thiessen or I correctly identified the painting Amanpour spoke of, I decided to post portion the earlier CNN transcript that Thiessen quoted back to Amanpour, but with a bit more of the surrounding context included:
Take water torture, for instance. Van Nath remembers it as if it were yesterday. I gasped as I entered a room filled with his vivid depictions.
One of his paintings shows a prisoner blindfolded and hoisted onto a makeshift scaffold by two guards. He is then lowered head first into a massive barrel of water. Another shows a prisoner with cloth over his face, writhing as an interrogator pours water over his head.
Van Nath still remembers the accompanying screams: "It sounded like when we are really in pain, choking in water," he told me. "The sound was screaming, from the throat. I suppose they could not bear the torture.
"Whenever we heard the noises we were really shocked and scared. We thought one day they will do the same thing to us."
As he talked and showed me around, my mind raced to the debate in the United States over this same tactic used on its prisoners nearly 40 years later. I stared blankly at another of Van Nath's paintings. This time a prisoner is submerged in a life-size box full of water, handcuffed to the side so he cannot escape or raise his head to breathe. His interrogators, arrayed around him, are demanding information.
I asked Van Nath whether he had heard this was once used on America's terrorist suspects. He nodded his head. "It's not right," he said.
But I pressed him: Is it torture? "Yes," he said quietly, "it is severe torture. We could try it and see how we would react if we are choking under water for just two minutes. It is very serious."
Is it serious to falsely portray what the United States did to detainees? Yes, it is very serious.
1/21/2009: Edited the post to significantly reduce the number of times "significantly" occurs.
