The GOP’s Primal Affection For Waterboarding

John McCain Gives His Party A History Lesson

Thankfully, the current stance of many GOP hopefuls reflects not those of the national or international community but rather the panoply of reasons why they are ill-equipped to navigate in a world that has begun to lead with rights more than it does rifles. Former Republican presidential hopeful and torture survivor John McCain put it best when he criticized Mitt Romney for declining to rule out waterboarding as an interrogation technique in 2008. “I would hope,” McCain stated, “that he would not want to be associated with a technique that was invented by the Spanish Inquisition, used by Pol Pot, and is being used on Burmese Monks as we speak.”

Following the GOP debate, McCain was quick to disseminate his disappointment with his conservative counterparts yet again. Said McCain: “They’re wrong. Anybody who has actually reads about and understands the practice of waterboarding would say that that is torture.”

The Bush Years: Torture The Terrorists To Deter… Nothing?

Up until President Obama banned the tactic in January of 2009, many in the Bush administration opined that waterboarding’s continued presence and practice in interrogation was necessary so long as it was effective—that is, if simulating death and drowning ever actually benefits anyone.

In the throes of two wars overseas, the Bush administration managed to wriggle the United States out of international human rights compliance with its implementation of the Bybee Memo, a document that laid the legal groundwork for torture of prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo. The document stated that “for an act to constitute as torture, it must inflict pain that is difficult to endure … and must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, much as organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death.” Despite the facts, under this definition waterboarding did not apply.

Though in the eyes of nearly everyone else, it did. Disregarding the many criticisms from the international community (specifically those signers of the Geneva Convention), the CIA and Bush administration proceeded to torture human beings in the name of “freedom.” In 2007, the CIA and US Department of Justice authorized the implementation of water boarding on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed under the guise that Mohammed allegedly had a letter from Osama bin Laden regarding his whereabouts. There was no evidence of this. Nevertheless, the American government tortured Mohammed via waterboarding 183 times and thus the Bush administration heralded the “interrogation” as a sweeping success.

As with many claims made by the Bush administration, the success of Mohammed’s interrogation equaled that of the wars fought in Iraq and Afghanistan: it failed. Again, John McCain cried foul regarding the Administration’s spurious claims: “the trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Mohammed—it came from a detainee held in another country who we believe was not tortured. [Mohammed] produced false and misleading information.”

This is often the case when a rather punitive individual or agency chooses to torture another for information or in order to deter an alleged attack. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller has stated that he doesn’t believe evidence obtained by the United States government via waterboarding has ever disrupted an attack. What’s more, acclaimed interrogator Ali Soufon has stated, “when people are in pain, they will say anything to get [it] to stop. Most of the time, they will lie…that means that the information you’re getting is useless.”

In a post-Bush and Spanish Inquisition era, there is no place for waterboarding or the rather despotic dimwits who support it. Waterboarding is ineffective, potentially fatal to the victim and to the international reputation of those who practice it. We live in the 21st century, not the 15th. Let’s start acting like it.