[Marxism] Cheney: waterboarding is a "no-brainer"

[Louis Proyect]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1933315,00.html
Cheney endorses simulated drowning
Mark Tran
Friday October 27, 2006

Guardian Unlimited
The use of a form of torture known as waterboarding to gain information is 
a "no-brainer", the US vice-president, Dick Cheney, told a radio 
interviewer, it was reported today.

Mr Cheney implied that the technique - a form of simulated drowning - was 
used on the alleged September 11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is 
being held at Guantánamo Bay.

In an interview with Scott Hennen, a conservative radio show host in Fargo, 
North Dakota, on Tuesday, Mr Cheney agreed with the assertion that "a dunk 
in water" could yield valuable intelligence from terror suspects.

"Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?" Mr 
Hennen asked.

"Well, it's a no-brainer for me," Mr Cheney replied. "But for a while 
there, I was criticised as being the vice president for torture. We don't 
torture. That's not what we're involved in."

In some versions of waterboarding, prisoners are strapped to a board and 
their faces covered with cloth or cellophane while water is poured over 
their mouths to stimulate drowning. In others, they are forced head first 
into water.

Mr Cheney's comments set him at odds with the Military Commissions Act, 
which bars, under all circumstances, treatment of prisoners that inflicts 
serious physical or mental pain or suffering.

Two of the chief sponsors of the legislation, senators John McCain and John 
Warner - both senior Republicans - say it outlaws waterboarding.

Last month, the US army also revised its field manual to specifically ban 
waterboarding and other techniques as "cruel, inhuman and degrading 
treatment" that is banned by the Geneva accords.

Military officials said such techniques did not yield reliable intelligence 
from prisoners.

Mr Cheney told his interviewer that the ability to interrogate high value 
detainees had "been a very important tool that we've had to be able to 
secure the nation ... we need to be able to continue that".

A spokeswoman for the vice president yesterday said Mr Cheney was not 
confirming the use of any specific interrogation techniques.

"He was talking about the interrogation programme without torture," Lee 
Anne McBride told the Washington Post. "The vice president does not discuss 
any techniques or methods that may or may not have been used in questioning."

The US group Human Rights Watch said Mr Cheney's comments on waterboarding 
contradicted the views of Congress and the defence department and warned 
they could come back to haunt the US.

"If Iran or Syria detained an American, Cheney is saying that it would be 
perfectly fine for them to hold that American's head under water until he 
nearly drowns, if that's what they think they need to do to save Iranian or 
Syrian lives," Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for the 
organisation, said.

The US has long considered waterboarding - which dates back at least to the 
Spanish Inquisition - to be torture and a war crime.

As early as 1901, a US court martial sentenced Major Edwin Glenn to 10 
years hard labour for subjecting a suspected insurgent in the Philippines 
to the "water cure".

After the second world war, US military commissions successfully prosecuted 
as war criminals several Japanese soldiers who subjected US prisoners to 
waterboarding.

In 1968, a US army officer was court martialled for helping to waterboard a 
prisoner in Vietnam.

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