Top-level torture: the Bush administration admits to condoning acts that most people would deem torture. Now we know that the administration determined how the tortures were to be carried out

New American, The, June 9, 2008 by Becky Akers

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A hidden bomb will detonate in an hour, killing hundreds of people and injuring thousands. You have the bomber in your power. Do you torture him to discover the device's location?

The Principals Committee answered "Yes" to the classic "Ticking Time Bomb Scenario." And what is the Principals Committee? A rogue group that Klingons have infiltrated aboard the starship Enterprise? A league of banana republics? No. It's part of the United States' National Security Council, and its members hail from the highest levels of the Federal government. In 2002, when it pressured the CIA to torture suspected terrorists, it included then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice as its chairman as well as Vice President Dick Cheney and such former officials as Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, CIA Director George Tenet, and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

ABC News reported on April 11, 2008 that the committee met frequently at the White House to discuss the details of torturing men--with presidential approval: "Yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue," George Bush acknowledged to ABC News' Martha Raddatz. "And I approved."

That approval spread like Agent Orange from the president and his advisers to the men on the ground who were guarding and interrogating prisoners. It turned Abu Ghraib's hooded, leashed, and naked "detainees" from an aberration that shamed America into official policy. No longer can the administration claim that only "a few" low-hanging "bad apples" are guilty: the president and his advisers are the biggest of those apples.

"THE THIRD DEGREE APPROVED

American governments, whether national or local, have tortured before. The armed forces flogged soldiers and sailors well into the 19th century. In 1931, the National Committee on Law Observation and Enforcement found that "the third degree--that is, the use of physical brutality, or other forms of cruelty, to obtain involuntary confessions or admissions--is widespread." But modern-day torturers have had to go underground, and they risk punishment if caught; it's been decades since torture received an official and public blessing. With two words--"I approved"--George Bush profoundly changed America.

Allegations that the United States was abusing prisoners first surfaced in 2002, but few folks noticed. Then, in April 2004, pictures from Abu Ghraib horrified the world. And so President Bush hauled out the Ticking Time Bomb Scenario to explain why a country that had proudly denounced torture was now competing with the Chinese and Soviets in barbarity. From the East Room of the White House on September 6, 2006, he claimed that there were "urgent questions" after 9/11: "Who had attacked us? What did they want? And what else were they planning? ... My administration ... had to find the terrorists hiding in America and across the world, before they were able to strike our country again. So in the early days and weeks after 9/11, I directed our government's senior national security officials to do everything in their power, within our laws, to prevent another attack."

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"Everything in their power" turned out to include kidnapping people suspected of terrorism and torturing them for information. The CIA and FBI hunted alleged terrorists overseas, shanghaied them to American military bases, and questioned them--with the president and Principals demanding answers. When answers didn't materialize quickly enough, the administration pressured agents to use what it euphemizes as "alternative interrogation techniques." The rest of us call it torture.

The CIA still smarts from the beating it took for its atrocities during the Vietnam War. This time it agreed to torture only if the White House explicitly authorized every slap and kick. Which is exactly what the Principals did in their meetings. In fact, their discussions were so meticulous--including the CIA's demonstrations of the torments under consideration--that "highly placed sources" described "some of the interrogation sessions" to ABC News as "almost choreographed." Nor did these conferences sicken the Principals as they reluctantly authorized desperate measures. On the contrary, those same sources quote Chairman Rice's burbling to the CIA, "This is your baby. Go do it."

The Principals mused about whether agents should punch or slap prisoners. Could they shackle them and force them to stand for hours or even days on end? What about stripping them naked in cold cells and dousing them with water? Depriving them of sleep? Torture's agony can be amplified by combining techniques: the sum is greater than the parts. So could the CIA beat a naked man while freezing him? How about strapping especially defiant suspects to a board, swaddling their mouth and nose with a towel, and flooding it with water to approximate drowning?

This last horror, known as waterboarding, is particularly effective because it combines stark panic with the physical anguish of drowning. Dr. Allen Keller, director of the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, described its effects in testimony to the U.S. Senate in 2007: "As the prisoner gags and chokes, the terror of imminent death is pervasive, with all of the physiologic and psychological responses expected, including an intense stress response, manifested by ... rapid heart beat and gasping for breath. There is a real risk of death from actually drowning or suffering a heart attack or damage to the lungs from inhalation of water. Long-term effects include panic attacks, depression and PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]." Victims struggle so hysterically that they sometimes snap their own bones. Waterboarding breaks prisoners in record time: most people, even "hardened terrorists," can't withstand it for longer than 30 or 40 seconds. No wonder it's beloved by some of history's most vicious regimes, including the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge.