This is how you win over the conservatives.

Washington Post:

The nation’s intelligence chief says that waterboarding “would be torture” if used against him, or if someone under interrogation was taking water into his lungs.

But Mike McConnell declined for legal reasons to say whether the technique categorically should be considered torture.

“If it ever is determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it,” the director of national intelligence told the New Yorker in this week’s issue, released today.

The President made a special request to watch the now-missing tapes of the torture of the already-severely-mentally-ill-at-the-time Abu Zubaydah.

You remember Abu Zubaydah right?

“Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause… for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.” - George Washington, charge to the Northern Expeditionary Force, Sept. 14, 1775

In my most recent interview of The Other Scott Horton (no relation), the heroic anti-torture human rights attorney, Columbia lecturer and author of the indispensable blog “No Comment” at Harper’s magazine, we discussed the prisoner of war policies of General George Washington, Commander of the Continental Army, and an incident after the Battle of Trenton, New Jersey on December 26, 1776.

It seems that after the battle, the Continentals were preparing to run some of the British Empire’s German mercenaries through what they called the “gauntlet.” General Washington discovered this and intervened. As Horton explained in the Huffington Post, Washington then issued an order to his troops regarding prisoners of war:

“‘Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren who have fallen into their hands,’ he wrote. In all respects the prisoners were to be treated no worse than American soldiers; and in some respects, better. Through this approach, Washington sought to shame his British adversaries, and to demonstrate the moral superiority of the American cause.”

In the worst of times – when foreign troops literally occupied American soil, torturing and murdering American patriots – and few believed that the cause of the revolution could ultimately win against the might of the British Empire, the first Commander in Chief of the U.S.A. set the precedent that this society is to lead even our enemies by “benignant sympathy of [our] example.” To win the war against the occupying army of Redcoats, the American revolutionaries needed right on their side.

And it worked. Many of the German Hessians in fact joined the revolutionaries in their fight against the English and stayed here in America to be free when the war was won.

Must we abandon this legacy? Is it already too late to reclaim it?

Merry Christmas.

The Bush administration continues to disavow torture—and to officialize its practice.

by James Bovard

Via The Other Scott Horton:

New York Times, “Branding Rite Laid to Yale University,” Nov. 8, 1967

NEW HAVEN, Nov. 7–A Yale fraternity accused by the student newspaper of burning its initiates with a brand will have its fate decided Friday by student fraternity leaders.

The fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon, could face the temporary closure of its house and a $1,000 fine resulting from alleged violations of rules previously passed by the Inter-Fraternity Council, which consists of Yale’s five fraternity presidents.

The charges against Delta Kappa Epsilon were made last Friday in a Yale Daily News article that accused campus fraternities of carrying on “sadistic and obscene” initiation procedures.

The charge that has caused the most controversy on the Yale campus is that Delta Kappa Epsilon applied a “hot branding iron” to the small of the back of its 40 new members in ceremonies two weeks ago. A photograph showing a scab in the shape of the Greek letter Delta, approximately a half inch wide, appeared with the article.

A former president of Delta said that the branding is done with a hot coathanger. But the former president, George Bush, a Yale senior, said that the resulting wound is “only a cigarette burn.”

If the people who do it aren’t U.S. government employees.

Writes Andrew Sullivan:

He tells the truth about what Bush and Cheney believe. Asked in Iowa last night whether he believed that waterboarding was torture, he replied:

“It depends on who does it.”

If the Khmer Rouge does it, it’s torture. If the United States does it, it’s not. This man cannot be allowed to be president of the United States. He believes that the United States is above morals and the president of the United States is above the law. He is a tyrant to the depths of his being.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS

“Through interviews with key administration figures, Cheney’s Law documents the bruising bureaucratic battles between a group of conservative Justice Department lawyers and the Office of the Vice President over the legal foundation for the most closely guarded programs in the war on terror,” says FRONTLINE producer/director/writer Michael Kirk. This is Kirk’s tenth documentary about the Bush administration’s policies since 9/11 (Rumsfeld’s War, The Torture Question, The Dark Side, The Lost Year in Iraq, Endgame).

Following the broadcast, Cheney’s Law will be available to view on FRONTLINE’s Web site, www.pbs.org/frontline/cheney.