Did DiFi just defend waterboarding?

“Under those circumstances, the CIA conducted the interrogations under the purview of Congress, and specifically Nancy Pelosi, Jane Harman, Jay Rockefeller, and other Democrats as well as their Republican counterparts.”

Well, Jay Rockefeller certainly had no qualms about torturing them. From a NYT’s story on March 4 2003 wrt Mohammed, who was just captured:

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has suggested that the United States might consider turning over Mr. Mohammed to a country that does not have legal restrictions against torture.

“I wouldn’t rule it out,” Mr. Rockefeller said on Sunday on “Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer” on CNN. “I wouldn’t take anything off the table where he is concerned, because this is the man who has killed hundreds and hundreds of Americans over the last 10 years.”

An aide to Mr. Rockefeller said today, however, that the senator was not condoning the idea of turning Mr. Mohammed over to a country that uses torture, nor does he think the United States will opt to do that.

Under an international treaty on torture and American criminal law, United States officials are prohibited from using torture against suspects. In the treaty, torture is defined as the infliction of “extreme pain or suffering, whether physical or mental.”

When the United States ratified the antitorture treaty in 1994, Congress also passed a law making torture committed in the United States or by an American anywhere a felony punishable by 20 years in prison. Torture resulting in death can give bring the death penalty.

Legal scholars said if American officials were seeking to avoid those restrictions by winking at rough questioning by officials of other nations to whom they have delivered suspects, they may still be violating the treaty.

“If the United States is turning people over to people who might torture them,” said Harold Hongju Koh, a professor of law at Yale and a State Department official in the Clinton administration, “that is a violation of our obligations under the torture convention, which prevents us from returning people to conditions of torture.”

Yale Kamisar, a professor of criminal law at the University of Michigan, agreed.

“The United States is just as responsible as if it had done the torture itself,” Professor Kamisar said. “I don’t think the government gains anything by winking.”

Elissa Massimino, director of the Washington office of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, said, “If the C.I.A. is saying, ‘We’re not really involved in the interrogation, we’re just standing outside the room and passing questions,’ they are not absolved.”

The treaty makes no exceptions for combating terror.

Under the Dems definition, they knew that waterboarding was torture, and arguably, again by their definition, the EIT’s that they were approving was torture. The NYT’s told them so. Yet, Rockefeller was ready to approve even more torturous torture — rendition to countries that actually did real torture — to get the information we wanted.

Taking nothing is off the table means everything is on the table. Rockefeller was on-board with water-boarding as were the rest of the Dems. They didn’t voice objections or do anything to stop it because they approved of it.

Dusty on May 13, 2009 at 12:41 PM

Darn. Link here.

Dusty on May 13, 2009 at 12:43 PM

[sesquipedalian on May 13, 2009 at 1:16 PM]

so then why are we having this discussion. They decided. It was the correct decision. And, because you agree with the reality defined by Cheney, Addinton, and Alito, the decisions can’t be questioned by a bunch of Dem clowns in Congress and elsewhere that disagree.

Seriously, how can Congress now decide they have the responsiblity or authority to question and even prosecute people for actions that were lawful back when they were doing it. See, you yourself, by appealing to the authority of the unitary executive to lawfully do what those in the executive branch did, shows they did so legally.

Even worse, by appealing to the unitary executive, after the fact, you approve of that concept of law and what they did.

No, what you are doing is defending a bunch of Dems who shirked their solemn responsibility to exercise their dueful authority to administer the government via oversight of Executive Branch activities even though informed of the actions beforehand and during.

I’ll concede you a reality, though. I’ll concede to you that Congress doesn’t take responsibility for their actions or inactions, no matter how much we expect them to, either at the time or years later, and that they will smooth our ruffled feathers years later so they can to shift the blame and hold others responsible for crimes they should be held accountable for. I’ve disagreed with that for decades. You, however, buy into it which is a crime in itself and people like you are responsible for it.

Dusty on May 13, 2009 at 1:41 PM

The one and only culprits here are the Terrorist orange-clad Muslim pilgrims(credit Steve Z ).

[Johan Klaus on May 13, 2009 at 2:14 PM]

I don’t necessarily disagree with you, but there are culprits and then there are culprits. The debate is about our conduct. The lives, careers — and fortunes, regardless of it’s size — of American citizens are being threatened by a bunch of Dem politicians who claim they can do whatever they want because they have the power now. They are attempting to scapegoat people because of actions they call criminal and that they, themselves, approved of at the time these actions were done and disregarding their solemn obligation to prevent.

These are the other culprits and a they are real ones.

Dusty on May 13, 2009 at 2:39 PM