McConnell: No, I Did Not Say Waterboarding Was Torture (OR Up IS Down)

[L. Coyote]

McConnell: No, I Did Not Say Waterboarding Was Torture
By Paul Kiel - February 5, 2008 - http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/mcconnell_and_waterboarding.php


Last month, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell caused a stir (http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/005063.php) when he seemed to admit in a New Yorker article that waterboarding would be torture if done to him.

But as I pointed out at the time, McConnell actually made a strange qualification. He has a problem with his nose, he said ("I don't know if it's some deviated septum or mucus membrane, but water just rushes in"). So waterboarding would be torture to him -- because swimming without covering his nose is torture to him.

Coverage of Lawrence Wright's New Yorker piece, however, tended to focus on his statement, "Whether it's torture by anyone's else definition, for me it would be torture."

And in today's Senate intelligence committee hearing, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) pressed him on this point. And McConnell insisted that Wright and the New Yorker had taken the quote "totally out of context." And waterboarding, he wants everyone to know, "is a legal technique used in a specific set of circumstances. You have to know the circumstances to be able to make the judgment."

Well, we've posted McConnell's remarks today alongside the original excerpt from the New Yorker piece so you can decide for yourself ..............

[Solly Mack]

1. Oh, he's deviated alright

from humanity, from the law, from decency, from the truth

[L. Coyote]

2. VIDEO House Judiciary Cmte. Hearing on FISA & Domestic Surveillance

House Judiciary Cmte. Hearing on FISA & Domestic Surveillance

Michael McConnell, Dir. of Nat'l Intelligence, testifies before the House Judiciary Cmte., chaired by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI). Dir. McConnell is expected to respond to questions about the selective release of information on domestic surveillance to the media.
9/18/2007:

Use the search feature at: http://c-span.org/