Obama spy choice won't call waterboarding torture

[Freddie Stubbs]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's choice for top U.S. spy declined on Thursday to call waterboarding "torture," only days after his attorney general nominee condemned the interrogation practice as precisely that.

Retired Adm. Dennis Blair replied cautiously when pressed on the waterboarding question at a hearing on his nomination to be director of national intelligence, of which the CIA is a part.

The caution reflected a public debate over whether to prosecute CIA employees who used the simulated drowning technique. Torture is banned by U.S. and international laws.

<snip>

Obama on Thursday moved to ban abusive interrogations, but suggested before he took office that he did not favor prosecutions. The CIA has acknowledged waterboarding three terrorism suspects and defended it as effective, but says it discontinued the technique in 2003.

more: http://uk.reuters.com/article/usPoliticsNews/idUKTRE50L63F20090122?24234

[SKKY]

1. It doesn't really matter if he thinks it's torture or not, his boss does.

[TheKentuckian]

2. No it does matter. His boss isn't going to be able to review his every action

Obama isn't omnipotent. I trust him to set the tone and to establish policy but this isn't something that a subordinate of this level should be confused about. I guess my follow up would be what changed in our definition of torture since WWII or Vietnam when we prosecuted even our own for the practice and sent Japanese to the gallows over it.

[Freddie Stubbs]

5. It does raise the question as to what else he does not think is torture, and

will he be informing his boss about every type of interrogation technique the agency uses.

[RepublicanElephant]

3. not surprised, seeing that he aided death squads in east timor.

"Today is the confirmation hearing for Admiral Dennis Blair as National Intelligence Director. We speak with investigative journalist Allan Nairn, who says he has new information that reveals that as commander of Pacific forces, Blair offered US aid to the general in charge of a massacre that took place in a Catholic Church in East Timor."
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/22/report_intel_nominee_adm_dennis_blair

[Rosa Luxemburg]

4. with our open government we should see what goes on

waterboarding IS torture period

[meli224]

6. Intelligence Pick Calls Torture Immoral, Ineffective

Retired Adm. Dennis C. Blair, President Obama's nominee to lead the U.S. intelligence community, told Congress yesterday that torture "is not moral, legal or effective" and that "there will not be any waterboarding on my watch."

more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/22/AR2009012203658.html?hpid=topnews

[Freddie Stubbs]

8. The problem is he won't say what he believes to be torture

It's kind of like being in AA but not being sure what alcohol is.

[Tatiana]

7. It seems to me that he clearly believes it *is* torture.

He just doesn't want to speak preemptively, IMO.

[Connie_Corleone]

9. I don't see how Reuters came to that conclusion.

He clearly states that "there will be no waterboarding on my watch. There will be no torture on my watch."

It seems to me he thinks it's torture.