The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
-- Edmund Burke
Friday, October 07, 2005
McCain's reprehensible amendment--and why it must go
Matthew Heidt aka Froggy, a former Navy SEAL, discusses the McCain "reasonable treatment" amendment that he tacked on to the Senate's GWOT appropriations bill, and why it is a bad idea. Since the House passed this bill without the amendment, let us hope that the Senate-House conference on this bill will result in the amendment being dropped. For if the amendment is left in, it might be you or me who pay for this interference in Executive Branch matters with our very lives. Bold emphases are mine:
“My benevolence is upset and so is my pride, that’s why I took my b*tch for a ride…”, the poetry of one Anfernee Jefferson from the movie High School High starring John Lovitz. Suffice it to say that Mr. Jefferson would not be counted amongst the greats, but that excerpt sums up nicely the attitude of a bipartisan group of bedwetting Senators working to codify techniques and procedures available to military interrogators to use against captured enemy combatants. In a 90-10 vote, Senators passed this amendment in an ill advised and hubristic attempt to tell the President that anything more than pattycake with hardcore terrorists is somehow beneath the United States and should be outlawed.
The amendment was sponsored by Senator McCain, who is perhaps the only person in the Senate with a history of being the object of actual torture in a real POW camp in North Vietnam. While Senator McCain most certainly has every right to extrapolate his experiences and attempt to apply them to his job as a legislator, he is forgetting a crucial difference between his POW experience and that of detainees in the GWOT. McCain was a legal combatant and Vietnam was a signatory of the Geneva Convention making the retributive acts perpetrated upon him objectively illegal and demonstrably in conflict with a signed treaty. AQ terrorists are not legal combatants under any conceivable definition, and AQ is not a party to the Geneva Conventions. The organization’s stated goals and tactics are in direct opposition to the spirit and letter of the Geneva Convention and therefore its members are entitled to treatment commensurate with their own actions.
During Special Report with Brit Hume, Mort Kondrake noted “waterboarding” as a tactic that should be disallowed and would be ostensibly made off limits if the Senate got its way. Waterboarding or Chinese water torture (which is what we called it for some reason) consists of taking a piece of cloth material that can be breathed through and holding it across the subject’s face while pouring water from a canteen, hose, etc. over the target’s mouth and nose. The water doesn’t really go down the target’s throat so much as it changes the characteristics of the cloth such that it is no longer able to allow air to pass through. It is this change in conditions that produces the extreme anxiety in the target. One moment they can breathe through the cloth and they feel somewhat relieved although they are subject to the control of some angry looking SEALs. The next moment, when the water makes the cloth impermeable, that relief is rapidly destroyed and the target feels completely helpless, terrified, and VERY willing to talk. This sh*t works, and it only takes one canteen to get the job done. It is completely safe physiologically, but it produces immediate and positive results.
One of my platoons conducted a Maritime Interdiction Operation (MIO) in which we stealthily boarded a target vessel and quickly moved to and secured the bridge. We were looking for a terrorist hiding somewhere aboard, and my platoon commander asked the captain where he might be found. The captain, feeling his oats apparently, demurred and brusquely refused to divulge this information. In response, my platoon commander socked him in the face, and with the assistance of other guys held him down, pulled his t-shirt over his face and poured maybe a half a canteen of water over his mouth. After making noises reminiscent of a nubile young co-ed laying eyes on Jason Vorhees for the first time, he couldn’t tell us fast enough where this idiot was hiding. By the way, this was a training operation and the captain was a US Naval officer aboard his own vessel. This was many, many moons ago and the statute of limitations (if there is a UCMJ violation here) has run, and besides, this captain didn’t tell anyone about it. In fact, after the op was called, we debriefed him and he praised us for our effectiveness and skill!
The lesson being that if you need to know something RIGHT NOW, there are ways to do it without ripping off fingernails or taking a ball peen hammer to somebody’s nut sac. When detainees are dying or being severely injured in US custody it should be vigorously investigated, but that is a very small minority of cases. US forces should be authorized and encouraged to take captured terrorists WAY out of their comfort zones when necessary. In fact, these kinds of techniques should be formally taught to SOF and Infantry units conducting Direct Action. What that captain came to understand was that by the time we were aboard his vessel, he and his crew did not have a chance to stop us. He persisted in his intransigence thinking incorrectly that we were not willing to do what it took to get the information that he had. Our actions merely confirmed to him that not only were we viciously professional, but we were mercilessly serious about the mission we were sent to accomplish.
The importance of this perception amongst our enemies cannot be understated. It is this perception and not the verbal games played by professional interrogators (of which I am one) that ultimately break the will of a captured enemy combatant which results in timely and accurate intel. In my opinion, the Bill of Rights does not apply outside the United States in general nor should it apply to those deemed illegal combatants specifically no matter what their geographic location is.
The Senate would be advised to not meddle in the President’s prerogatives as the Commander in Chief in the GWOT not only to prevent the usurpation of powers specifically enumerated to the Executive Branch, but also because the President is the only person with the balls to wage it. Producing an “off limits” techniques list for internet publication seems to be an obvious error, but as usual, the Senate is “stuck on stupid”. Those profound words from Anfernee Jefferson demonstrate a body full of itself, high on its own PR appropriate morality trying to score some points with liberal elites against the President by kicking him when he is down. But as his speech today brought into sharp relief, this President gets it and knows how to take the fight to the enemy. I don't appreciate 90 blowhard Senators trying to take ME for a ride and make a b*tch out of our war effort against a bunch of evil murders just so they can pretend to be benevolent with power they don't have.
Tell it, brother!
“My benevolence is upset and so is my pride, that’s why I took my b*tch for a ride…”, the poetry of one Anfernee Jefferson from the movie High School High starring John Lovitz. Suffice it to say that Mr. Jefferson would not be counted amongst the greats, but that excerpt sums up nicely the attitude of a bipartisan group of bedwetting Senators working to codify techniques and procedures available to military interrogators to use against captured enemy combatants. In a 90-10 vote, Senators passed this amendment in an ill advised and hubristic attempt to tell the President that anything more than pattycake with hardcore terrorists is somehow beneath the United States and should be outlawed.
The amendment was sponsored by Senator McCain, who is perhaps the only person in the Senate with a history of being the object of actual torture in a real POW camp in North Vietnam. While Senator McCain most certainly has every right to extrapolate his experiences and attempt to apply them to his job as a legislator, he is forgetting a crucial difference between his POW experience and that of detainees in the GWOT. McCain was a legal combatant and Vietnam was a signatory of the Geneva Convention making the retributive acts perpetrated upon him objectively illegal and demonstrably in conflict with a signed treaty. AQ terrorists are not legal combatants under any conceivable definition, and AQ is not a party to the Geneva Conventions. The organization’s stated goals and tactics are in direct opposition to the spirit and letter of the Geneva Convention and therefore its members are entitled to treatment commensurate with their own actions.
During Special Report with Brit Hume, Mort Kondrake noted “waterboarding” as a tactic that should be disallowed and would be ostensibly made off limits if the Senate got its way. Waterboarding or Chinese water torture (which is what we called it for some reason) consists of taking a piece of cloth material that can be breathed through and holding it across the subject’s face while pouring water from a canteen, hose, etc. over the target’s mouth and nose. The water doesn’t really go down the target’s throat so much as it changes the characteristics of the cloth such that it is no longer able to allow air to pass through. It is this change in conditions that produces the extreme anxiety in the target. One moment they can breathe through the cloth and they feel somewhat relieved although they are subject to the control of some angry looking SEALs. The next moment, when the water makes the cloth impermeable, that relief is rapidly destroyed and the target feels completely helpless, terrified, and VERY willing to talk. This sh*t works, and it only takes one canteen to get the job done. It is completely safe physiologically, but it produces immediate and positive results.
One of my platoons conducted a Maritime Interdiction Operation (MIO) in which we stealthily boarded a target vessel and quickly moved to and secured the bridge. We were looking for a terrorist hiding somewhere aboard, and my platoon commander asked the captain where he might be found. The captain, feeling his oats apparently, demurred and brusquely refused to divulge this information. In response, my platoon commander socked him in the face, and with the assistance of other guys held him down, pulled his t-shirt over his face and poured maybe a half a canteen of water over his mouth. After making noises reminiscent of a nubile young co-ed laying eyes on Jason Vorhees for the first time, he couldn’t tell us fast enough where this idiot was hiding. By the way, this was a training operation and the captain was a US Naval officer aboard his own vessel. This was many, many moons ago and the statute of limitations (if there is a UCMJ violation here) has run, and besides, this captain didn’t tell anyone about it. In fact, after the op was called, we debriefed him and he praised us for our effectiveness and skill!
The lesson being that if you need to know something RIGHT NOW, there are ways to do it without ripping off fingernails or taking a ball peen hammer to somebody’s nut sac. When detainees are dying or being severely injured in US custody it should be vigorously investigated, but that is a very small minority of cases. US forces should be authorized and encouraged to take captured terrorists WAY out of their comfort zones when necessary. In fact, these kinds of techniques should be formally taught to SOF and Infantry units conducting Direct Action. What that captain came to understand was that by the time we were aboard his vessel, he and his crew did not have a chance to stop us. He persisted in his intransigence thinking incorrectly that we were not willing to do what it took to get the information that he had. Our actions merely confirmed to him that not only were we viciously professional, but we were mercilessly serious about the mission we were sent to accomplish.
The importance of this perception amongst our enemies cannot be understated. It is this perception and not the verbal games played by professional interrogators (of which I am one) that ultimately break the will of a captured enemy combatant which results in timely and accurate intel. In my opinion, the Bill of Rights does not apply outside the United States in general nor should it apply to those deemed illegal combatants specifically no matter what their geographic location is.
The Senate would be advised to not meddle in the President’s prerogatives as the Commander in Chief in the GWOT not only to prevent the usurpation of powers specifically enumerated to the Executive Branch, but also because the President is the only person with the balls to wage it. Producing an “off limits” techniques list for internet publication seems to be an obvious error, but as usual, the Senate is “stuck on stupid”. Those profound words from Anfernee Jefferson demonstrate a body full of itself, high on its own PR appropriate morality trying to score some points with liberal elites against the President by kicking him when he is down. But as his speech today brought into sharp relief, this President gets it and knows how to take the fight to the enemy. I don't appreciate 90 blowhard Senators trying to take ME for a ride and make a b*tch out of our war effort against a bunch of evil murders just so they can pretend to be benevolent with power they don't have.
Tell it, brother!
