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Rumsfeld Rejected Waterboarding
Pelosi Did Not Object After Being Informed Of Practice
By MICHAEL P. TREMOGLIE, The Bulletin
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
In a role reversal that some will find troublesome, it has been learned that, in December 2002, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rejected a request to use waterboarding to interrogate terrorist prisoners. But, other sources claim, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi D-Calif., did not object to its use after she had been informed of the practice months earlier in September 2002.
Mr. Rumsfeld was, and is, a lightning rod for criticism by Democrats and leftists. He has been accused by some Democrats, and others who oppose the global war on terror, of not only sanctioning the torture of al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners, but proactively ordering it.
Yet, according to testimony before the House Select Committee on Intelligence, Dr. Stephen A Cambone, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, said Mr. Rumsfeld had rejected a request to use waterboarding as an interrogation technique. The request came from Joint Task Force 170 (JTF-170), the military’s team responsible for questioning prisoners at Guantanamo.
The committee, of which Mrs. Pelosi was the ranking member, held the hearing, which they called “Critical Need for Interrogation in the Global War on Terror,” on July 14, 2004. Mr. Cambone was one of a panel of three testifying about the efficacy of interrogations.
He said the interrogations provided very valuable information about terrorists, terrorist groups, terrorist networks and terrorist plans. He also said that interrogations yielded information on terrorists that was not able to be gleaned from any other type of intelligence collection.
“For example, interrogations at Guantanamo have yielded information on individuals connected to al-Qaida’s efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction,” he said, “(also) front companies and accounts supporting al-Qaida and other terrorist operations.”
He went on to detail how certain al-Qaida members at Guantanamo had critical information about planned attacks on the U.S. and that on June 17, 2002, U.S. Southern Command commander, Gen James T. Hill, requested a review of interrogation methods.
The review called for guidelines in questioning detainees. It wanted to establish “rules of engagement” for interrogations.
In response to this, JTF-170 proposed techniques divided into three categories. Based on the opinion of the Staff Judge Advocate, Gen. Hill ruled Category I and II techniques were “legal and humane.” He then requested a review and approval, via the Joint Chiefs of Staff, of Category III techniques. This set of techniques were to be used for prisoners “who resisted [JTF-170’s] current interrogation methods.”
Gen. Hill wanted “counter-resistant” methods that they could “lawfully employ” testified Mr. Cambone. On Nov. 27, 2002, Defense Department officials authorized all of the Category I and II methods. They authorized only one of the Category III methods. This was the use of mild non-injurious physical contact.
Mr. Rumsfeld approved of this authorization on Dec. 2, 2002. Mr. Cambone then testified what techniques Mr. Rumsfeld did not approve — one of which was waterboarding.
“He did not approve for use from Category III,” he said, “the use of a wet towel and dripping water.”
Ironically, three months earlier, in September 2002, Nancy Pelosi, who now wants to prosecute those engaged in waterboarding, had been informed about the use of this tactic and did not object.
According to a December 2007 Washington Post story, “In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk ... Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding ... on that day, no objections were raised.”
Donald Rumsfeld, the man liberals and some Democrats accused of being a torturer, had disapproved of the use of waterboarding, a method that had been, at the very least, tacitly endorsed by Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats who are now expressing outrage about it.
http://www.thebulletin.us/articles/2009/04/29/top_stories/doc49f821cd5d0ae182977392.txt