The End of the Waterboarding Controversy?
Charles Johnson
Fri Feb 1, 2008 at 9:37 am PST • Views: 280
Andrew McCarthy makes a great point about the absurdly inflated waterboarding controversy.
Let’s take a step back. Credible reporting — which is not addressed in the attorney general’s letter — indicates that waterboarding has been used on no more than three of the thousands of detainees the United States has held, long and short term, since military operations against radical Islam began over six years ago. Assuming (as I do), that it was used on those three (all top-tier al-Qaeda operatives), the same credible reporting also tells us the tactic has not been used in over four years.
So we did it an infinitesimal number of times, we haven’t done it in years, we don’t currently do it, the regulations in place don’t permit it, and it seems inconceivable that future regulations will alter that.
Is this issue really worth scandalizing ourselves over?
Is it really worth intimidating our intelligence officers with the fear of prosecution and consuming days upon days of the legislative calendar (including confirmation hearings) over waterboarding?
How can it be that people who claim to worry so much about America’s reputation in the world think they somehow advance that reputation by obsessing over something that virtually never happens, and in the process libeling our government as a programmatic torturer?
Frank says: