Douchebag of the Week (Feb. 28-Mar. 6)
Give the people what they want, we say. Five years ago, a poll determined nearly two-thirds of Americans opposed torture. And earlier this month, another poll determined that nearly the same number of Americans want an investigation into the anti-terror tactics of the Bush Administration. So it was fairly sensible when the Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings on Wednesday based on the proposal from its chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, to set up a nonpartisan Truth Commission to further look into what led to photos of prisoners posing with American soldiers, stretching, doing other gymnastics, playing with dogs or even being treated like canines too.
Again, to many people, this seems like a perfectly sensible inquiry. Well, except for lawyer David Rivkin, who served in the Justice Department and White House under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He explained his opposition to Leahy’s proposal this way:
Yes, mistakes were made. Yes, some bad things happened. But compared with the historical baseline of past wars, the conduct of the United States in the past eight years … has been exemplary.
That’s some pretty golden insight coming from a guy who less than two years ago was trying to explain that waterboarding isn’t technically torture:
Incidentally, it is not a debate about whether torture is permissible, at least in my mind, it’s what things amount to torture. And with all due respect to my friend Charlie, there are several forms of waterboarding. Waterboarding is a very capricious term, it connotes a bunch of things. There are clearly some forms of waterboarding [that are] torture and off the table. They may well be some waterboarding regimens that while tough and useful in extracting information are not torture. My problem with the critics is that they don’t want to have, contrary to what Senator Edwards said, we are ought to have a debate as a serious society about what stress techniques of interrogation and what to do with it. Let me point out one thing, we actually waterboard our own people. Are we torturing our own people?
The irony there, of course, is that former assistant attorney general Daniel Levin—who had expressed concerns about waterboarding—underwent the procedure himself.
Can you guess what he concluded?
After the experience, Levin told White House officials that even though he knew he wouldn’t die, he found the experience terrifying and thought that it clearly simulated drowning.
Levin, who refused to comment for this story, concluded waterboarding could be illegal torture unless performed in a highly limited way and with close supervision. And, sources told ABC News, he believed the Bush Administration had failed to offer clear guidelines for its use.
Of course, Levin ended up being forced out of the Justice Department once Alberto Gonzalez became Attorney General and the details of what tactics were being used remained secret.
That’s precisely how Rivkin wants things to stay, despite the fact that evidence has continually shown most Americans want otherwise. And while Rivkin is admittedly not the only one in the minority, it was his audacity to declare the conduct under the highly classified nature of the Bush Administration’s policies as “exemplary” by comparison to other wars that makes him a certified douchebag.
If there was one redeeming element to the whole episode Wednesday, it had to be the Rhode Island Democrat, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s response to Rivkin’s asinine statement:
