Apples and Oranges
I wanted to link to Elsinora’s diary at DKos, where she describes John Ascroft’s attempts to avoid admitting that he sanctioned torture (the "me" in the dialogue is Elsinora herself).
ME: First off, Mr. Ashcroft, I’d like to apologize for the rudeness of some of my fellow students. It was uncalled for–we can disagree civilly, we don’t need that. (round of applause from the audience, and Ashcroft smiles) I have here in my hand two documents. One of them, you know, is the text of the United Nations Convention against Torture, which, point of interest, says nothing about "lasting physical damage"…
ASHCROFT: (interrupting) Do you have the Senate reservations to it?
ME: No, I don’t. Do you happen to know what they are?
ASHCROFT: (angrily) I don’t have them memorized, no. I don’t have time to go around memorizing random legal facts. I just don’t want these people in the audience to go away saying, "He was wrong, she had the proof right in her hand!" Because that’s not true. It’s a lie. If you don’t have the reservations, you don’t have anything. Now, if you want to bring them another time, we can talk, but…
ME: Actually, Mr. Ashcroft, my question was about this other document. (laughter and applause) This other document is a section from the judgment of the Tokyo War Tribunal. After WWII, the Tokyo Tribunal was basically the Nuremberg Trials for Japan. Many Japanese leaders were put on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including torture. And among the tortures listed was the "water treatment," which we nowadays call waterboarding…
ASHCROFT: (interrupting) This is a speech, not a question. I don’t mind, but it’s not a question.
ME: It will be, sir, just give me a moment. The judgment describes this water treatment, and I quote, "the victim was bound or otherwise secured in a prone position; and water was forced through his mouth and nostrils into his lungs and stomach." One man, Yukio Asano, was sentenced to fifteen years hard labor by the allies for waterboarding American troops to obtain information. Since Yukio Asano was trying to get information to help defend his country–exactly what you, Mr. Ashcroft, say is acceptible for Americans to do–do you believe that his sentence was unjust? (boisterous applause and shouts of "Good question!")
ASHCROFT: (angrily) Now, listen here. You’re comparing apples and oranges, apples and oranges. We don’t do anything like what you described.
ME: I’m sorry, I was under the impression that we still use the method of putting a cloth over someone’s face and pouring water down their throat…
ASHCROFT: (interrupting, red-faced, shouting) Pouring! Pouring! Did you hear what she said? "Putting a cloth over someone’s face and pouring water on them." That’s not what you said before! Read that again, what you said before!
ME: Sir, other reports of the time say…
ASHCROFT: (shouting) Read what you said before! (cries of "Answer her fucking question!" from the audience) Read it!
ME: (firmly) Mr. Ashcroft, please answer the question.
ASHCROFT: (shouting) Read it back!
ME: "The victim was bound or otherwise secured in a prone position; and water was forced through his mouth and nostrils into his lungs and stomach."
ASHCROFT: (shouting) You hear that? You hear it? "Forced!" If you can’t tell the difference between forcing and pouring…does this college have an anatomy class? If you can’t tell the difference between forcing and pouring…
ME: (firmly and loudly) Mr. Ashcroft, do you believe that Yukio Asano’s sentence was unjust? Answer the question. (pause)
ASHCROFT: (more restrained) It’s not a fair question; there’s no comparison. Next question! (loud chorus of boos from the audience)
Thanks to Elsinora for exposing what Ashcroft’s defense against war crimes will be: The Senate reservations, and apples and oranges.
Is THIS on YouTube?
I’d enjoy watching it. As would the rest of the COUNTRY/WORLD.
WOW. I’m with the audience. Answer the question. This should be asked of everyone involve in the meetings, in public, over and over.
Apples and oranges? Riiiggghhhhtttt!
Let the trials begin…
The Daily Kos diary in the link has some really good photos, but I don’t see video. Surely at least a cell phone video will pop up soon. When it does, we need to put it everywhere and blogwhore the hell out of it.
Never thought I would be signing off on blogesphere “systemic whoring” but if there is a video out there, this soccer mom signs off on the approval of wide-spread distribution. (Oh my, I’m going to get it from bmaz — whoring, wide-spread and distribution all in the same sentence? So sorry all. No Dr. Evil pink finger displayed.)
I cannot believe that we have a former AG stating, “Apples and oranges,” in a public forum at an academic institution.
Did he ever learn to compare praxis to praxis and theory to theory while going through his esteemed learning experiences in his youth? Oh, that’s right, he did learn such critical thought and such thought would answer the question.
That’s Ashcroft on the Senate reservations. And yet not long before he had hectored and dismissed a student for not remembering the precise date of the ABC story.
Very fine diary post. That has cheered me up.
I thought that “random legal facts” comment very telling. The man was the Attorney General of the United States and he clearly participated in discussions regarding the torture of prisoners. Random legal facts? Are you kidding? Incarceration is to good for him.
Empty, have you seen any indication at all that the W/H torture meeting story will get any wide spread reporting?
Cbl,
It’s fair to say at this point that no widespread reporting about the NSC torture meetings is going to occur, for the time being. The NYT editorial from this past Sunday was, it seems, the last hurrah.
However, when The Torture Team by Philippe Sands appears in May, there may be another opening. In any case, the ABC disclosures have not gone unnoticed in the anti-torture movement. There is a cadre of activists and journalists at work out there who will not let this pass. At some point we will surely see the return of the repressed.
Ashcroft’s pouring parsing seems forced.
Thanks for passing this along, Marcy!
Yep – I guess when WE do it, it’s totally different, right John? Ashcroft is a complete weasel. No guts whatsoever. No taking responsibility for his actions, either. Great values there, John.
The only way the distinction between forcing and pouring would be relevant is if the victim had the ability to hold his breath indefinitely so water could not go into his nose/mouth and lungs. Mr. Ashcroft, please submit to a demonstration so you can better illustrate your point.
Mr. Ashcroft, history is not judging you kindly. Get used to it dirtbag.
– Tom
Also, because the head is below the lungs, most of the water drains back out anyway, whether it is “forced” or “poured”. It is the sensation of drowning (while still retaining consciousness) that leads to the excruciating pain and abject terror of waterboarding.
“Waterboarding is ‘drowning’, ‘water torture’: expert testimony“
Indeed. Malcolm Nance is a true hero. Why haven’t we heard anything from him lately?
Ashcroft, Gonzales, Feith, Rove, etc, etc, can’t screen their audiences the way GWB, Cheney, & the rest of the BushCo boys & girls still in power can. Hence this kind of questioning, heckling, demonstrations… How awkward for them, as they make the rounds of their speaking engagement calendars.
Not well prepped for a challenging question was our Mr. Ashcroft. If that’s all they’ve got going for a defense, they’ve got very little. Time to bone up on those Sen. reservations, JA, you’ll be asked again, maybe much more harshly, & the angry bluster won’t cut it then either.
Ashcroft & the others don’t seem to fathom how bad it’s going to get out there, that the blowback won’t just blow over. Their actions called down the Furies, & as we know from studying our mythology, the Furies never stop their pursuit.
Though it was a damn good question.
I think Ashcroft knew he was sunk when she said she had brought the Geneva Convention with her (which she describes elsewhere in the post).
It really encourages me that our college seniors are kicking the ass of the former AG. THen again, Ashcroft is one of the wizards behind Regent University…
Elsinora kicked his ass, no contest. I would have paid good money for a classroom filled w/seniors like her when I was teaching, though several were pretty close contenders.
She was extremely well prepared & let’s not forget, courageous.
I couldn’t have said it better. Bushco thinks we are going to forget their crimes…I don’t think so. We have been ridiculed, lied to, ignored, our constitution is in tatters, and we have been screwed for eight long tortuous years by this cabal of crooks. They are very foolish if they think this is over. I think the beginning of their prosecution is only beginning…
Thanks for the post EW — thoroughly enjoyed it — but it gets me riled up. I am embarrassed to admit that Ashcroft comes from my state of Missouri. I was so thrilled to have him out of office here, then he went to work for Bushco. Now he has his own lobbying group, making deals for Oracle, ChoicePoint and many clients hawking technology for Homeland Security. He is still screwing the American public while out of public office.
OT — did you see that Japan’s financial services minister, Yoshimi Watanabe is telling Washington they need to fix the credit crisis before it gets worse with a public bailout. He’s saying the global credit crisis is going to get worse and is the biggest financial disaster for the world since the 1930s. It looks like a lot of world financial leaders are afraid. I hope they don’t all call us to up on our loans. That is a very scary thought.
Well, I’m not sure what Ashcroft is talking about, but I think there does sound like a difference between what the Japanese did (as described here) and what I’ve read about waterboarding. Don’t get me wrong. I still think it’s torture. And is Ashcroft saying that they voluntarily had water poured on them?
Still, I think when you start drawing comparisons between what the Japanese and the Germans did in WW2, it gives Bush and Co an easy out. It’s too easy for them to say, what we advocated isn’t as bad as killing millions of Jews and raping Nanking. There’s plenty of evidence out there without bringing that up.
I really disagree with this. The comparison is not to Japanese activities. The comparison is to the fact that we tried people for torture, and in the Alstoetter case, we tried people for establishing a regime of war crimes and crimes against humanity connected to the justice system.
I note, as I did in an earlier thread, that the German Army refused to cooperate in the Night and Fog regulation (Nacht Und Nebel Erlassen), because it violated international law.
I’m with you. They broke the law. But this administration breaks the law by playing up their talking points, and if you start accusing them of being as bad as, or worse than, the nazis, then that gives them a free pass on all the news shows.
I think it’s much better to go after them with things like the United Nations Convention against Torture, which leave Ashcroft squirming around for some “Senate reservations” which would be bull, even if they do exist.
I see the point, and agree to some extent. I think the value of the Nuremberg trials is the precedent the US established which I think it will be impossible for US Courts to ignore. Elsinora asked if Ashcroft agreed with the sentence in the case, which Ashcroft cannot answer. I think that is an effective way to use the trials.
I understand that overreaching can play right into Bushcos hands. But I think that is outweighed by the importance of keeping Bushco on it’s heels. We need them to panic. In 1946 the US govt EXECUTED people for water torture. Bushie admitted to committing water torture just last week. Bushco is just now realizing Ashcroft’s ludicrous distinction of ‘pouring’ vs. ‘forcing’ won’t fly. We need to be direct and relentless, “Mr Bush, you have commited crimes for which the penalty is execution.”
The rule of law WILL prevail. And we can make fear work for us.
P.S. For intelligent and humane commentary on these enormities, visit “Humanity Against Crimes.” Ondelette is emerging as one of our most powerful voices of conscience.
http://humanityagainstcrimes.blogspot.com/
Thanks for the linky thing.
So, it’s not forced?? They don’t tie the person down, hold him in place and “pour” water on him?? To me, the forced part has to do with the “tie, him, hold him in place”. Seems to me unless the guy is chasing the stream of water for a shower, it’s forced.
You say tomato, I say torture.
Mr. Ashcroft’s Christian guilt was peeking through his loyal courtier’s well-paid via DOJ contracts hide. His anger-as-defense mechanism was in overdrive. He ranted about an immaterial distinction between methods of enforced drowning. NOT “simulated” drowning; there’s no pretend water filling the lungs when using either method, it’s the real thing.
When used as torture rather than as a method of assassination, torturers stop the drowning before they kill the victim, though torturers aren’t always able to judge how far an exhausted victim can go, especially when they the repeat the torture several times in a row.
Mr. Ashcroft couldn’t answer the question because to do so honestly would put him in jail. Herr Alstoetter, er, Mr. Ashcroft is justifiably scared and hiding from the truth. If his claims to being a devoted Christian are true, he should also be losing sleep, which seems appropriate since his prisoners were often deprived of it for days on end, another acknowledged form of torture. More than 100 US prisoners died in our custody, some from enjoying the water treatment.
As the chief legal officer of the United States, whose office issued the flawed opinions that purported to authorize torture, partly by definitional sleight-of-hand, who personally and repeatedly authorized his government to torture its prisoners, Mr. Ashcroft is criminally liable. He’s not alone.
Never mind apples and oranges. The problem with these “gentlemen” are the parse-snips.
Who leeked that to you?
parse-snips…that is good.
Bean there; done that.
What will turnip in the next investigation?
Goodness, all the corn in the comments…
Ok, all this morning punning has to stop.
As for your question, Jim, one can only hope there’s some kale time in their future.
Lettuce hope for the best, kumquat may.
More on topic…
I’m just glad Elsinora’s thinking beet Ashcroft to an intellectual pulp.
Orange you glad she asked the question?
From earlier in Elsinora’s diary, with emphasis added:
It certainly appears that there is a growing body of evidence that will lead to Ashcroft’s conviction, but the charge against him may be different from the one he described above.
I think a video is critical here, and there must be one. The excerpt above seems a transcription- it reads like a play; If accurate, it will no doubt be viral.
From the diarist’s Kospage:
“I’m Jewish, female, a college senior, almost 21, addicted to politics, and too obsessed with Shakespeare (especially Hamlet) for my own good….”
Not to be a buzzkill, but is it possible the excerpt is a script for what was expected to happen?
At least the local paper she cited for the photos does indeed have those photos. Some of the quotes from Aschroft about the protesters in her story also are in the paper’s coverage, but her exchange with him is not quoted.
Nothing posted yet at the student newspaper for Knox, but I would expect something eventually since she did say a reporter for the school paper took her name and other info.
A commenter at the paper’s website notes a contention over the definition of waterboarding, consistent with her excerpt. I believe she confronted Ashcroft, and hope it played exactly as written. I am very surprised no video or audio yet, as the exchange is so powerful and certainly reads like a transcript.
Thought she might be a Shakespeare freak, given her moniker is Elsinora:
HAMLET
Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands,
come then: the appurtenance of welcome is fashion
and ceremony: let me comply with you in this garb,
lest my extent to the players, which, I tell you,
must show fairly outward, should more appear like
entertainment than yours. You are welcome…
Did I mention that today is Shakespeare’s birthday? He’d be posting on this site with the rest of us; kicking butt and taking names.
Yes, it’s on my desk calendar, too. Happy B-Day to the Master. Great to fantasize he’d be a blogger & his talents put to great effect on the net. His fellow players would be commenting & contributing- the Burbages, Sly, Phillips, Heminges, et al. lending their support to their fellow & friend, the man they fondly called “Our Will.”
Ashcroft’s distinction of Pouring (oranges) or Forcing (apples) is a quibble – imvho, they are both forms of Mock Execution, which is a War Crime, in itself.
With Elsinora’s good question, it now seems safe to say that We can put Ashcroft in the “I Voted to Destroy the Torture Tapes” column.
The Combination of voting, as an NSC Principal, for the use of the Enhanced Interrogation Technique called ‘Simulated Drowning’ plus The Torture Tapes showing the application of the votes on a targeted Detainee – puts Ashcroft, and Every Other Torture-Ordering Principal, in the Docket for War Crimes.
Sure, Ashcroft has a bad case of Bush-Cheney Disease (Plagus Hypocritus) – he can spout the High Moral Line, but can’t personally tell right from wrong.
Sure, Ashcroft ‘believes’ there is a Humane Difference between Pouring and Forcing to convince a Person that he or she is Being Killed with Much Malice.
But, I’ll bet Ashcroft and his fellow Torturers ‘knew’ that the Torture Tapes Gave That Lie Away:
Any Rational, Sane, Moral Person would Know Torture when they Saw It for Themselves.
It seems So Obvious that he, and his Fellow NSC unPrincipals, Destroyed the Evidence that could potentially have Established their Actions as Humane. Why?
Because they ‘knew’ that The Torture Tapes, instead, recorded their Inhuman Depravity.
Votes plus Tapes equals All Bad Apples, including Rotten Johnny Ashcroft.
How could Ashcroft have threatened to resign over wiretapping but approve torture? I’m with the questioner at Knox who was booed by everyone. Does he have a soul?
Probably because Comey was able to rescind Yoo’s torture memo without the kind of immediate confrontation it took on wiretapping? And probably because Comey had to tell Ashcroft he was liable for the wiretapping before Ashcroft agreed to oppose it?
Works for me.
All of this speculation on “apples and oranges” leaves mushroom for error…
It was from clouds of fungus, Boletus islamofascistus, over NYC that Mr. Ashcroft and Ms. Rice were trying to protect us?
Going O/T
Here’s a good read on the economic forecast from the Asian Times:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/G…..2Dj02.html
To pick up on EW’s HC thread yesterday…here are some great perspectives by Juan Cole as well as addressing the Israeli spy ring…
http://www.juancole.com/
If she ran home and immediately wrote the post, then it could well be highly accurate even without some kind of memory aid, such as a tape. That she admitted to be very excited is consistent with this. It is only after “coming down” from the sympathetic surge (in the autonomic sense, not feeling for others) that you start to convert the memory from concrete to abstract.
As many of you probably know (being lawyers), there’s a reason why contemporaneous notes are taken more seriously than jottings made much later.
IOW Ashcroft knows what he approved is indefensible. So rather than defending it, he tells her to move on. Seems to me the former Attorney General knows perfectly well that he would lose in a court of law and he’s a bit freaked out by that.
Totally agree w/you.
Plus it’s interesting how John Ashcroft is coming across as the weak link in the chain. Especially interesting if you look @ all this from a prosecutorial POV.
Have to drive in to work now.
Thanks for the Hamlet excerpt above. Is suspect despite Elsinora’s clear affection for that play, Ashcroft must have made her think more strongly of Macbeth. I agree with you that he is the weak link. I think at the time he was genuinely torn by the excessive loyalty typical of BushCo and his personal misgivings that what they were doing was both morally wrong and illegal. Obviously he chose the wrong side.
OTOH a panicked Bushco may start WW3.
Fantastic post Marcy – thanks for finding it and passing it along. We need to keep bringing up torture, and you’ve kept at it. Good on you and keep it up.
Senate Reservations to UN Convention against Torture
http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/usdocs/tortres.html
Key word: Senate.
See section II (5):
Huh. Not Executive. Is this a root of some of the Article II UE claims? That the Executive is not bound to implement the Convention?
new ad(?) PSA(?) from Amnesty International which is apparently being shown in Europe, about waterboarding.
It’s well done and disturbing, though not gratuitously so. I think it would be good of a lot of Americans saw this.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/4/23/102139/112
37 – my take on that has been from the start that for the wiretapping issue there was the possiblity of direct liability and that liability would come from an entity – unlike DOJ – that was less criminal and more independent. FISC from the beginning established firewalls and presumably issued orders in connection with those firewalls. Teh Program was then actually run with complete disrespect and disregard for those rulings. FISC has already – under Lambert – demonstrated that it would permanently kick out someone, like a Fran Townsend perhaps, that fibbed to it and violated rules.
We now know that Larry Thompson would not sign FISC applications because of the way Teh Program was being operated and because he was worried about liability – that would have had to be liability imposed by the court, since the FISA applicatons were going there and were not, of themselves, a part of the illegal surveillance program – – but were subject to the court rulings.
As with your question about Ashcroft, keep in mind that Thompson merrily signed off on parts of the Arar rendition to torture paperwork without breaking a sweat. But the story that was printed indicates that it was his understanding of possible personal consequences that caused him to refuse to sign FISA applications.
40/9 – While I understand your points on the way matters should be pursued, the fact that some kinds of waterboarding/water torture result in a lot of water in the stomache as well as the experience of being drowned, while others are more about the drowning and less about the vomiting of water from the distended stomache, isn’t huge distinction. It’s kind of like saying the lynchings in this country were “different” than the hanging of Hussein in Iraq, bc here the heads were not severed, ergo, lynching isn’t a hanging.
Scott Horton hit some high points in this piece: The Valentine’s Day Torture Trifecta and IIRC TPM had a piece up contemporaneous to the Bradbury testimony (something like – we don’t waterboard like the Spanish Inquisition, more like the Khmer Rouge). From Horton’s op piece:
Forced vs. poured not apples and oranges. More like Jonathans vs. Granny Smiths. Either way, Big John didn’t like them apples.
Forced v pouring? AFAIK, all “waterboarding” methods are forced.
In the Philippines when US interferred in Philippines’ rebellion to evict Spanish colonialists, US poured water thru a funnel into throat of the forcibly restrained victim.
In the recent “waterboarding” as allegedly explained, water poured onto cloth was maintained as air-barrier on forcibly restrained victim’s breathing orifices…until unstoppable urge to breathe brought the water into lungs, etc.
Note that latter method follows recent torture tutorial of having victim self-administer the effect, as promulagated by military/spook “consultants”. […gambling in “clever strokes” which constitutes the very essence of theft, swindling and all sorts of similar anti-social deeds.” PKropotkin’s Memoirs, ca 1899″
I take it the commentators in this thread realize that the difference between “forcing” and “pouring” is spurious. For an extensive, authoritative discussion of the “water torture” in all its varieties, see Darius Rejali Torture and Democracy (Princeton, 2007). A roughly two-inch entry on this matter appears in the Index. It would be nice if Aschcroft would read it, especially the long sections referenced on “the CIA and” and “the Nazis and.”
Well, the thing about “apples and oranges” is: they’re both fruit.