Tortured Logic: Rep. Peter King Will Shut Down Congress Over Torture Investigations
On April 23, 2009, Politico reported the completely unsurprising fact that Rep. Peter King -- who recently made the nonsensical suggestion that the DHS should be "talking about look out for mosques" -- doesn't want any investigation into Bush era officials responsible for torture. In fact, Rep. King threatened to shut down Congress if any charges are filed, saying, "[w]e would need to have a scorched earth policy and use procedural means to bring the place to a halt - go to war." But Rep. King's defense of torture ignores reality: torture doesn't work and it puts more American lives at risk.
Waterboarding Is Torture
Rep. King: "If we have another 2,000 people killed, I want Nancy Pelosi and [liberal philanthropist] George Soros, John Conyers and Pat Leahy to go to the funeral and say, 'Your son was vaporized because we didn't want to dump some guy's head under water for 30 seconds.'" [Politico, 4/23/09; emphasis added]
SERE Instructor: "Waterboarding Is A Torture Technique - Without A Doubt": Malcolm Nance, former master instructor and chief training officer at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Training School (SERE), wrote: "I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school's interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques employed by the Army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What is less frequently reported is that our training was designed to show how an evil totalitarian enemy would use torture at the slightest whim. Having been subjected to this technique, I can say: It is risky but not entirely dangerous when applied in training for a very short period. However, when performed on an unsuspecting prisoner, waterboarding is a torture technique - without a doubt. There is no way to sugarcoat it. In the media, waterboarding is called "simulated drowning," but that's a misnomer. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning." [New York Daily News; 10/31/07; emphasis added]
It Doesn't Work...
Torture "Failed To Generate Significant And Actionable Intelligence." In a December 2008 Vanity Fair article, David Rose wrote: "I spoke to numerous counterterrorist officials from agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. Their conclusion is unanimous: not only have coercive methods failed to generate significant and actionable intelligence, they have also caused the squandering of resources on a massive scale through false leads, chimerical plots, and unnecessary safety alerts." [Vanity Fair, 12/16/08, emphasis added]
...And It Puts More American Lives At Risk
Torture Responsible For "Directly And Swiftly Recruiting Fighters For Al-Qaeda." According to Matthew Alexander, Iraq War veteran and author of How To Break A Terrorist: "Torture and abuse cost American lives. I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq...The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans." [Washington Post, 11/30/08]
