Just Say No, General

I was alerted to the Washington Post editorial on the Hayden Intelligence Committee hearings by this article on The Daily Dish.

It is really hard to believe that General Hayden, a man who has served in the armed forces for his entire career, would not understand the implications of there being any public waffling on the government's compliance to the anti-torture measures recently signed into law.

The Washington Post editors pretty much nail the issue:

AT THE SENATE intelligence committee hearing Thursday on Gen. Michael V. Hayden's nomination to head the CIA, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) asked the nominee a simple question: Is "waterboarding" an acceptable interrogation technique? Gen. Hayden responded: "Let me defer that to closed session, and I would be happy to discuss it in some detail." That was the wrong answer. The right one would have been simple: No.

It's not a question for which any answer other than "no" should have been given. If we announced to the world that we are a nation of laws, that we deplore violations of human rights in all corners of the world, then we cannot even allow the appearance of impropriety with regards to adhering to the McCain bill.

It is clear that some in Washington understand why. I remember watching some clips of the hearings after the Abu Gharaib scandal first broke. An impassioned Senator Joseph Biden (D-Delaware), frustrated by the apparent lack of understanding "of what the big deal was" with regard to brutal interrogation techniques being used at Guantanamo Bay in clear violation of the Geneva conventions replied: [and Eliel is paraphrasing here because he's not been able to locate the transcript of that hearing yet--Ed.] "Because when we up-hold these conventions, it gives others less reason to violate them when they have in custody people like my son.

The Hayden response makes me believe that too many of the policy-makers in this administration are watching 24 and have mistaken fictionalized threat-response for real ones. I can't shake the feeling that if Senator Feinstein had complied with the General Hayden's wishes and closed the door, he would have been whispering to her about how Agent Bauer had someone in custody and needed to use extreme measures to get information from the suspect.

Unfortunately, the global audience watching our government can tell the difference between our fiction and our reality. It's too bad some in Washington cannot do the same.