CIA Director Michael Hayden on the use of waterboarding and other torture techniques: “The agency applied its methods of questioning when other techniques did not work and when a captured terrorist had more information that could save innocent lives.”

Even assuming Hayden sincerely thinks this is true, let’s remember this administration has assured us that the enemy combatants in Gitmo were “the worst of the worst,” even though some of them were there by mistake.

We sent an innocent man, Maher Arar to Syria to be tortured for a year.

The CIA held a man in Germany for three months until they realized they had the wrong man.

We’ve picked up “enemy combatants” on the say-so of people who had personal grudges against them.

So I’m extremely skeptical of our government’s ability to know, for a fact, that everyone they capture and torture has vital information—and “could save” is pretty much an admission we’re not necessarily talking about a ticking-bomb scenario here.

Three cheers to Congress for banning the CIA’s use of torture. And if Bush veto’s the bill, as he’s said he would, it will be one more item to add to his list of shameful decisionss.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 11:30 am and is filed under Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.