During a presidential primary debate in 2007, I and the other seven candidates on the stage were asked about waterboarding. The question was: As president, would I agree to waterboard a captured terrorist if three bombs had gone off in this country and we were awaiting the “big one” and we had a captive who we believed knew when and where it would happen? I replied, not only would I waterboard the guy, but I’d be looking for Jack Bauer, the superhero character from the television series “24.” That was my answer after all other candidates said no because John McCain said no.
Well, they are at it again. John McCain has joined Senate Democrats in condemning waterboarding as “un-American.” In fact, they did much more than that.
This past week President Obama and the lame-duck Democrats in the U.S. Senate handed al-Qaida, ISIS and Islamist terrorists everywhere an unprecedented gift in releasing a Democrat-written “Torture Report” on the CIA’s “harsh interrogation methods.” This temper tantrum will undoubtedly cost many American lives in the months ahead.
Think about it. What would have been the public reaction in 1946 if a lame-duck Democratic Congress had indicted the Pentagon for the thousands of civilian deaths from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? That bombing brought a swift end to World War II and saved an estimated 100,000 American lives.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, every public opinion poll on the topic of waterboarding of terrorists to gain information about future terrorist attacks has shown overwhelming public support for the CIA’s use of such “enhanced interrogation techniques.” The American people understandably have little sympathy for the pain thresholds of captured terrorists who are believed to hold valuable information about terrorist plans.
Let’s be honest about this thing called waterboarding. Many people go to great lengths to avoid calling it torture, but we should be honest and admit that it is a form of torture. It is not as cruel as dozens of other forms of torture – say, for example, the threat of beheading. But it is torture. And I say, so what? If waterboarding violates the Geneva Conventions, then that agreement should be amended or repudiated. We should not be reluctant to proclaim we will use waterboarding whenever it has a reasonable prospect of gaining information that will prevent future terrorist mayhem.
Apparently, the senators crying buckets of tears over the CIA waterboarding of terrorists have forgotten that we are at war and these admittedly harsh interrogation techniques were authorized and used in wartime. The use of those extreme techniques was not done willy-nilly and not applied to hundreds or dozens of people: It was done on three terrorists, and valuable information was in fact obtained. In order to justify the public release of the information on CIA practices, the authors of the Senate report had to lie and deny that useful information was obtained.
That lie is scandalous and inexcusable because they all know it is a lie. In John McCain’s book, he admits that as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, when tortured he eventually broke and gave the enemy information on U.S. military operations. He says the information was a mixture of fact and useless garbage, but many military veterans who have read his account say that some of the information was in fact useful to the enemy. And no one should blame him or condemn him for doing so, and I certainly do not. But here’s the problem: How can John McCain or any U.S. senator be so damned certain that no terrorist will yield useful information when water boarded? They can’t.
What is the real problem here? Is this merely another leftist attack on the CIA, or is something else going on? Why are so many people in positions of power and influence willing to give material aid and indeed ammunition to our enemies in time of war?
There was a time not too long ago when that would have been called by its proper name: treason. Are we living in two parallel universes where words and actions can mean anything you want them to mean if they serve a politically correct purpose?
The questions generated by the Sen. Feinstein’s release of the one-sided “Torture Report” are mind-boggling. Does Feinstein, Obama or McCain expect that ISIS will soon announce that it, too, now will refrain from torturing civilian captives before beheading them? Is there some utopian fantasy of reciprocity here?
The answer is, no, they are not really that stupid. Sadly, it is worse than that.
The critics of the CIA use of waterboarding are sincere in one respect: They really do believe that, in President Obama’s words, “torture is not an American value.” In their eyes, those CIA practices were a rogue operation not consistent with American values. The CIA went too far; Congress was misled; waterboarding was never properly authorized. To which we must reply, hogwash!
But we should not be debating semantics. I will say it bluntly: torture is legitimate when used in wartime against enemy combatants – terrorists – who have information that could save American lives, and no American should ever apologize for it. Does anyone doubt that the jihadists in al-Qaida and the Islamic State are laughing at this orgy of American guilt over waterboarding? Should anyone doubt that this circus of humanitarian finger-pointing will only encourage further terrorist plans and plots?
Yes, the war against radical Islamism is a different kind of war, a war without a formal declaration of war by Congress – but it is still war, and we had better start acting like we are in a war, not a Ping-Pong tournament.
Media wishing to interview Tom Tancredo, please contact [email protected].
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