War On Terror: Liberals may be overjoyed to hear Attorney General nominee Eric Holder unequivocally declare waterboarding to be torture. But will he refuse to let his president prevent terrorism?More...
When Watergate blew wide open in the spring of 1973, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved Richard Nixon's nominee for attorney general, then-Secretary of Defense Elliot Richardson, but only after assurances from Richardson that he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Watergate.
Five months later, when Nixon ordered the new attorney general to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox, Richardson refused and instead resigned, as did his deputy AG, in what came to be called the Saturday Night Massacre.
In the same vein, Holder last week assured that same Senate panel of what he will do once confirmed as the nation's chief law enforcement officer. But will his promises presage a real, not just figurative, massacre?
Protesters present in the hearing room were delighted when Holder answered the very first question panel chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., put to him with the statement that "water-boarding is torture."
When Leahy then went on to ask if he believed that "painful stress positions, threatening with dogs, forced nudity and mock executions" were also torture, Holder initially said he was "not as familiar with those techniques," but proceeded to conclude that "I believe they do" constitute torture.
What shall we add to the list? A chilly jail cell? A too-hard mattress? No dessert after the evening meal?
It may sound very principled and upstanding to take this supposed high road while claiming that as head of the Justice Department you will also "use every available tactic to defeat our adversaries," as Holder assures us.
In the real post-9/11 world, however, our new president may very well find himself confronted with the same choice that faced the U.S. government after the Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.
It can be summed up as follows: Will we get as tough as possible with terrorist detainees who have information that will foil plots and save hundreds of lives — even to the extent of taking them to foreign locations and doing unsavory things to them? Or will we act always as if an ACLU lawyer is looking over our shoulder — and thus risk the consummation of a terrorist operation against the homeland?
The CIA inflicted enhanced interrogation techniques on at least three detainees, including the mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The 9/11 Commission report cited his interrogations some 60 times as the basis for key facts revealed regarding al-Qaida.
As the New York Times reported last summer of "the intelligence riches" this master terrorist provided under interrogation, Khalid was at first "especially resistant, chanting from the Koran, doling out innocuous information or offering obvious fabrications."
But then he was water-boarded "100 times over a period of two weeks" and "as time passed, Mr. Mohammed provided more and more detail on Al-Qaida's structure, its past plots and its aspirations."
The CIA and other U.S. government personnel involved in this nasty business, along with the officials of foreign governments who acted as hosts, are heroes, not lawbreakers. As brutally terrifying as repeatedly being subjected to a drowning sensation is, it is not in the same league as what our POWs underwent in locales like imperial Japan and Communist Vietnam, and it should not be classified as torture.
Any 21st century definition of torture should, however, include another horrifying sensation: the pain of living without a father or daughter for the rest of your life because they were blown to smithereens in a preventable terrorist act.
President-elect Obama appears to be sincerely dedicated to protecting America. But is he appointing an attorney general who will pull an Elliot Richardson on him when the president is told that getting a little medieval on a high-ranking terrorist prisoner will save countless lives?
Would Holder go further still and, rather than resigning like Richardson, stay on and accuse the commander-in-chief of breaking the law because, like President Bush, he did everything possible to protect us?
Holder also made it clear to the Judiciary Committee that Guantanamo Bay prison would be shut and due process rights extended to some of the enemy combatants held there. The president-elect may end up being very sorry indeed that he appointed an attorney general more focused on securing terrorist rights than averting terrorist wrongs.
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