Congress, Constitutional Law, Criminal law, International, Media, Military, Politics, Uncategorized

Cheney Offers Tortured View of History In Defending Waterboarding

250px-46_Dick_Cheney_3x4I have long argued in my column as well as numerous blog postings that our country is legally bound to prosecute people responsible for ordering torture during the Bush Administration. There is no question that water boarding is torture as recognized by President Obama, Attorney General Holder, the United Nations and virtually every expert in this field. However, while you may want to try to rewrite legal precedent (as did John Yoo and Jay Bybee in their infamous Torture Memos), you should not try to rewrite history. That is what former Vice President Dick Cheney appears to be doing this month. He told Chuck Todd on Sunday that we never prosecuted anyone for water boarding — an assertion that I and others have repeatedly raised over the years. The statement is simply false and adds historical revisionism to legal revisionism in our sordid foray into torture.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” this last Sunday, Todd asked: “When you say waterboarding is not torture then why did we prosecute Japanese soldiers?”

Cheney responded:

“Not for waterboarding. They did an awful lot of other stuff. To draw some kind of moral equivalent between waterboarding judged by our Justice Department not to be torture and what the Japanese did with the Bataan Death March, with slaughter of thousands of Americans, with the rape of Nanking and all of the other crimes they committed, that’s an outrage. It’s a really cheap shot, Chuck, to even try to draw a parallel between the Japanese who were prosecuted for war crimes after World War II and what we did with waterboarding three individuals — all of whom are guilty and participated in the 9/11 attacks.”

In fact, we did prosecute. Indeed, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East convicted and ultimately executed Japanese war criminals Akira Muto and Iwane Matsui for atrocities at Nanking. This included water boarding prisoner, though it was called “the water treatment” where “the victim was bound or otherwise secured in a prone position; and water was forced through his mouth and nostrils into his lungs and stomach until he lost consciousness.”

Moreover, in 1947, we prosecuted Yukio Asano for the following these specific acts:

Specification 1: That in or about July or August, 1943, the accused Yukio Asano, did willfully and unlawfully, brutally mistreat and torture Morris O. Killough, an American Prisoner of War, by beating and kicking him, by fastening him on a stretcher and pouring water up his nostrils.

Specification 2: That on or about 15 May, 1944, at Fukoka Prisoner of War Branch Camp Number 3, Kyushu, Japan, the accused Yukio Asano, did, willfully and unlawfully, brutally mistreat and torture Thomas B. Armitage, William O. Cash and Munroe Dave Woodall, American Prisoners of War, by beating and kicking them, by forcing water into their mouths and noses, and by pressing lighted cigarettes against their bodies.

Specification 5. That between 1 April, 1943 and 31 December, 1943, the accused Yukio Asano, did, willfully and unlawfully, brutally mistreat and torture John Henry Burton, an American Prisoner of War, by beating him, and by fastening him head downward on a stretcher and forcing water into his nose.

Asanao was sentenced to 15 years confinement at hard labor.

As noted by the Washington Post, First Lt. Seitara Hata, Sgt. Major Takeo Kita and Sgt. Hideji Nakamura faced similar charges. As noted by the Post, the testimony included that of Cpt. William Arno Bluehe who said “After beating me for a while they would lash me to a stretcher, then prop me up against a table with my head down. They would then pour about two gallons of water from a pitcher into my nose and mouth until I lost consciousness. When I revived they would repeat the beatings and ‘water cure’ . . . . The tortures and beatings continued for about six hours.”

Then there was Thomas B. Armitage:

“[We] were strapped to stretchers and warm water poured down our nostrils until we were about ready to pass out. [The Japanese] strapped him to a stretcher and elevated his feet and then poured on his face so that it was almost impossible for him to get his breath. [The victim] was then taken into the corridor, strapped to a stretcher, which was tilted so that his head was toward the floor and feet resting on a nearby sink.Water was then poured down his nose and mouth for about twenty minutes. Then I was taken into the hallway of the barracks. Both of the Japanese still insisting I was guilty and urging me to confess.”

Likewise, during the Vietnam War, an American soldier was court-martialed for water boarding a prisoner.

Ironically, while the Senate Report works hard to exonerate the Senators themselves from their past knowledge as well as Bush and Cheney, Cheney to his credit has admitted that both he and Bush were fully informed of the use of program.

220px-AbuGhraibAbuse-standing-on-boxThe cost of our torture program — and the failure to prosecute a single official for it (or the destruction of evidence and false statements revealed in its aftermath) will continue to cost this country dearly. Countries like Iran, North Korea, and China have already cited our use of water boarding to defend against their own abuses. When our soldiers or citizens are water boarded in the future, countries will play back Cheney’s words and others to say that such abuse is not torture. When we demand that officials in other countries be prosecuted for torture, they will mock our hypocrisy and own history. As much as history may be an inconvenient contradiction for people like Cheney, it will remain unrevised and unvarnished. We have prosecuted both Americans and foreigners for water boarding and we were right to do so. That is not the history that we should work to forget.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/12/16/cheneys-claim-that-the-u-s-did-not-prosecute-japanese-soldiers-for-waterboarding/

375 thoughts on “Cheney Offers Tortured View of History In Defending Waterboarding”

  3. rafflaw, And you “MUST” call for prosecution of Obama for KILLING innocent women and children w/ his drone attacks. Oh, he also executed a US citizen w/o due process. Exponentially more egregious by any objective standard. This is war, not chess!

  5. A bone of contention here between the better half and me is the current relevance of Dick Cheney…e.g., why is he still prominent in the news these days? Better half says he’s relevant, I don’t think so. I doubt we’ll split over the matter, but since I respect her intelligence, I’m puzzled by her stance. I don’ t know the man, Mr. Cheney, but likely face to face over a dinner, he’s probably pretty civil. But I have this quirk…

    I am always suspicious of lifetime Washington “insiders” who arrive young (Nixon White House) and never leave, save occasionally to work for a defense contractor, then back to the bureaucracy at senior levels. If Cheney was an advocate for the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (how Orwellian can it get?)…then he’s either an idiot or vested. I’m thinking vested. I’m thinking Bush43 took his advice. Never mind that as CIC, he could simply have ordered the agencies involved in security to cooperate and share…and enforced it. (The agency heads, and their subordinate SES staffs are all appointees after all) The last thing, the v-e-r-y last thing we needed to enhance security was another massive, solely managerial bureaucracy. I was a military “Fed” at the time and I was stunned. My friends in places like ICE today joke that soon, under DHS and the current administration, and maybe the next, their job will be to pass out green cards to anyone who makes it past the Border Patrol…like some kind of “everyone gets a trophy exercise.” Some even think they’ll be responsible for providing hot lunches to boot. Does anyone think any of that attitude makes us safer?

    In my opinion, based upon experience with other senior “executives” in government, Dick Cheney has been so far removed from actual field work for so long that he really doesn’t know what it is all about. After nearly 40 years in the cloistered atmosphere of DC how could he know? Briefings do not beget first hand knowledge. I was well trained in how to make briefings that “pleased” superiors, even if they were nonsense. When I rebelled I got hammered. I still rebelled…and it did cost me in lucre and rank.

    For G-d’s sake, please, someone tell me why Cheney is still in the news … did he miss that retirement bus? Its not like we don’t have our current day leaders to misdirect us…in exactly the same fashion, if on different vested topics. So…why?

    Footnote: I would have really liked to hear Col James (Nick) Rowe’s opinion on this “torture” subject (had he not been assassinated by communist insurgents..e.g., terrorists, in the Philippines long ago …still serving his country) …since he spent 5 years in a Viet Cong (not NVA) prison camp and endured torture as much as McCain did….then escaped. He wrote and set up much of what SERE training is today based upon his experience. Yeah, I’d listen to Col Rowe if he could speak to us today.

    1. Aridog – it is my understanding that both former presidents and vice presidents get intelligence briefings, if they want them. To my understanding, the two Bushes and Cheney, as well as Bill Clinton, keep up to date. Barack Obama does not. Henry Kissinger was on Meet the Press until the day he died. Retired generals gave all sorts of bad advice in the run up to the wars in Iraq.

  7. The denials are still coming. Dick Cheney lies about history to suit his purposes and we get the same echo chamber from the right that waterboarding is not torture. As suggested earlier, waterboarding was just one of the Torture techniques approved and used by the Bush administration. We even had one commenter suggest that they had a heavy weight on their shoulders because the decisions were made shortly after 9/11 so we should consider that in our critique of the decision to torture. The same 9/11 attacks that were warned about and they ignored. To continue to claim that since our servicemen and women are trained using the SERE methods, including waterboarding, that it can’t be illegal is also irrelevant and false.
    I guess there is no difference between being held against your will and forcibly pour water to the point of drowning by your captors and a training exercise where the participants know what is coming and know that they will walk away from the training session. That is sheer nonsense. All participants in the torture of prisoners must be prosecuted. All parties that refused to prosecute admitted torturers must be prosecuted. It is the law. I know that gets in the way of your rosy world view, but it is the law.
    If you are screaming that Obama broke the law through executive decisions or executive agency actions, then you must also scream for prosecution of those involved in illegal torture.

    1. rafflaw – there is an interesting Get Out of Jail Card in the Catholic Church regarding sin. If you do not know it is a sin, you cannot commit it. In this case, if you do not know it is torture, you cannot commit it. I do not care how many times John McCain takes journalists to his wife’s place in Sedona, I really could care less what he thinks about torture. He broke under torture and some think he gave actionable intelligence. That I do not know for sure. Some of his fellow prisoners sure did.

  9. By the way, fans of the civility rule, our favorite commenter called those of us who don’t share her opinion “torture apologists” in her 11:00 comment.

    That’s keeping it civil, right?

    1. ” called those of us who don’t share her opinion “torture apologists” in her 11:00 comment…..That’s keeping it civil, right?”

      So now we can’t say torture apologists anymore? OK, what if we just said happy campers? Does that offend anyone?

      Will all the happy campers please form a line to the right so they can be disappeared without due process. And have a nice day.

  10. Jim22:

    Before I log off my computer for the day, I want to point out that it is settled science that water boarding reduces anthropogenic global warming.

  11. Inga – “Why do we lower ourselves to the standards of our enemies?”

    Inga, please post some evidence where we decapitated someone we captured. Such false outrage.

  12. DBQ, I couldn’t agree more. I’m hoping later there will be the 10millionth AGW debate.

    1. Inga – I have a little trouble with that number of 180 hours of sleep deprivation. There is a certain point in sleep deprivation where the mind goes, so sleep deprivation is no longer effective. That would come long before 180 hours.

      But I have trouble with this whole report.

  15. DBQ, maybe you should admonish Professor Turley for writing this blog post because it might bore poor DBQ. After all we could be discussing your cooking and canning and guns and thrift store finds. Perhaps JT could make you a weekend blogger, then we could all be wowed by what YOU deem to be interesting.

    1. Inga – having DBQ as a GB could be a change from hearing about weekly hiking treks and unanswered questions on Italian motorist signs.

  16. Waterboarding U.S. troops in SERE training is not a legitimate comparison. Those troops are being waterboarded by their own team mates and know the torturers are not trying to harm them.

    If a foreign enemy is waterboarding you, the torture victim doesn’t know the intent or capability of the torturers. There is real fear and terror being tortured by an enemy that may want to kill you.

  17. DBQ, Amen. But, I always have hope someone will have something new to say. It often comes from someone new. I am a skeptic and optimist. The glass is half full, but I think it may be a stolen glass from a tavern.

    1. ” But, I always have hope someone will have something new to say.”

      Nick, you do know what they say about those who repeat the same action hoping for a different result, don’t you?

  18. @Paul C. Schulte

    You and others keep stating that no one has demonstrated that anyone was prosecuted solely for waterboarding after World War II. That may be, and if I may speculate, probably is, true.

    So what? It is also probably true that no one was prosecuted _solely_ for beating a prisoner. Do you somehow imagine a world in which each individual charged with prisoner abuse has only one specialized form of abuse? Or in which each prisoner endures only one form of abuse? Say, each team would have a designated slapper, a designated kicker, a designated club or whip wielder, and a designated waterboarder? That way we could engage in detailed analysis to determine exactly who engaged in torture and who engaged in . . . something else.

    Moreover, the if the Senate Report is to be believed, waterboarding was used in conjunction with other coercive measures.

    Is it your belief that each individual technique must be assessed on its own (and dismissed as “not that bad”)?

    So, let’s say that we have a prisoner who has been deprived of sleep for a day by the playing of loud music, but since the prisoner has not “broken”, we decide to strip him naked and place him in a refrigerated meat locker (or a CONEX box outdoors in winter) for a day, but we stop the loud music. I guess the cold is “not that bad,” either — most likely the prisoner is not sleeping, but at least the music has stopped. Say, that didn’t work, then we take him in a room and slap him around awhile — I would assume that a slap or two wouldn’t be that bad, either. Later, since the prisoner still isn’t talking, we put him in a “stress position” for a few hours, but it’s only a few hours. He probably isn’t sleeping like a baby at that point, but that’s simply a byproduct of a little acceptable stress. So, finally, since he still isn’t talking we decide to go the waterboard route. Again, not so bad. But finally he talks. Is there any point in that hypothetical series of events at which one or any combination of “enhanced interrogation techniques” constitutes torture or is otherwise unacceptable?

  20. Another 300 plus comment thread with everyone saying exactly the same things as the one yesterday and the day before. Changing no one’s minds and a complete waste of time. Yawn.

Comments are closed.