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US: Senate Should Reject Bradbury Nomination
26 Mar 2008 16:51:26 GMT
 Source: Human Rights Watch
(Washington, DC, March 26, 2008) – The US Senate should reject Steven Bradbury's nomination as head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) because he authorized torture, Human Rights Watch and the Open Society Policy Center said in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee today. "Some government lawyers risked their careers to oppose the Bush administration's torture policies," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "The Senate should not promote a lawyer who gave the president permission to use torture."

The OLC is entrusted with providing the president and other executive branch agencies with legal advice that is an accurate and honest appraisal of applicable law, even if it places constraints on the policies of the executive. Bradbury, who has been serving as acting head of the OLC since June 2005, is believed to have signed off on at least two secret legal memos authorizing the use of torture.

The first, issued in 2005, reportedly authorized the use of waterboarding in combination with other abusive interrogation techniques, including head-slapping and extended exposure to cold. Then-deputy attorney general, James Comey, reportedly told colleagues at the time that he would be "ashamed" when the memo became public.

The second memo, issued in late 2005 as a bill prohibiting cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment was working its way through Congress, reportedly concluded that none of the already-approved interrogation techniques would violate this proposed law, in clear defiance of congressional intent.

The Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility is now investigating whether the lawyers responsible for these memos violated the department's professional standards.

"In declaring waterboarding and other abusive interrogation techniques lawful, Bradbury ignored over 100 years of legal precedent," Roth said. "He has proven himself to be the president's yes-man, rather than a neutral and honest adviser on the law."

Waterboarding and other abusive techniques approved by Bradbury have been prosecuted by US courts as torture for more than 100 years, since the Spanish-American War. After World War II, US military commissions prosecuted and severely punished enemy soldiers for having subjected American prisoners to waterboarding, forced standing, and other painful stress positions. And, as recently as 1983, the Justice Department prosecuted a Texas sheriff for subjecting prisoners to "water torture" to coerce confessions. The federal court judge told the sheriff at sentencing, "The operation down there would embarrass the dictator of a country."

Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee in February 2008, Bradbury argued that waterboarding, as used by the US government, was not torture because US interrogators did not allow "mass amounts" of water to enter the lungs of the victims, nor did they jump on the victims' distended bellies, as was done during the Spanish Inquisition, and by the Japanese soldiers prosecuted after World War II. By contrast, Bradbury explained, the United States used the form of waterboarding employed in training exercises by the US military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) school.

But the SERE school techniques were designed to expose members of the US military to the worst forms of torture practiced by totalitarian regimes. As described by former SERE school Master Instructor and Chief of Training Malcolm Nance, waterboarding used by the SERE school consists of "slow-motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of blackout and expiration – usually the person goes into hysterics on the board." Nance states it is unquestionably torture.

Moreover, the US soldier being subjected to waterboarding by his peers in SERE school knows that they will not actually let him die. The detainee subject to waterboarding at a secret CIA detention facility has no such confidence, making the prospect of execution by drowning quite real.

"Mock execution is the epitome of torture," said Roth. "That the feigned executioner acts to drown rather than shoot the victim makes it no less torture."

Bradbury's approval of torture also sets a precedent that endangers US service members and civilians abroad. "Imagine if the North Koreans captured an American and told the US government, 'Don't worry – we'll only use the good kind of waterboarding,'" said Roth. "The United States would no doubt be outraged, yet this is precisely what Bradbury suggests would be acceptable."


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