Apr 14 2008

Say it ain’t so! Bush administration approved interrogation techniques?

Posted by Neocon in Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Terrorism

John Hawkins over at Right Wing News examines more breathless liberal surprise at the fact that George Bush’s “most senior advisers” approved the use of enhanced interrogation techniques.

U.S. President George W. Bush’s most senior advisers approved “enhanced interrogation techniques” of top al Qaeda suspects by the Central Intelligence Agency, ABC News reported on Wednesday, citing sources it did not name.

ABC reported that the so-called “principals” discussed interrogation details in dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House.

Then national security adviser Condoleezza Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by a select group of senior officials or their deputies, ABC said.

“Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects — whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding,” ABC reported.

In addition to Rice, the principals at the time included Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft, the report said.

Who did they think approved it, Bugs Bunny? Ignoring the debate over what constitutes appropriate interrogation, wouldn’t it be a helluva lot worse if it were just some low-level CIA person who decided that we needed to waterboard someone? Those who oppose doing anything to encourage terrorists to share information with us are in a sort of damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t situation with this release. They want to complain about George Bush being an evil scheming big brother overlord type, but they also really want to be able to paint him as incompetent and out of touch. The two don’t mesh with this particular MSM confirmation of the obvious.

Waterboarding was used three times against high-level targets, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid “should have laid off the shakes” Mohammed, and that certainly doesn’t play into the massive torture secret prision police state play that the left likes to trot out. This also won’t help those Obama VP whispers about Colin Powell. The lefties would have a conniption fit if they found out Obama’s VP was authorizing such horrors as “slapping” and “pushing.”

Update: Slightly relevant post over at Jawa Report, which is worth the read so I wanted to toss a link where readers would notice it.