Lucia

de Vernai

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March 10, 2008

Bush Waterboarding Veto: Defending America the Proud, Egotistical and Overconfident

American culture is known for its fascination with enhancement. Whether we’re pondering plastic surgery, a software upgrade or more horsepower, the driving force is to make it better, faster, harder, stronger. That mentality doesn’t seem to escape our fearless leaders, and last week President Bush affirmed the national obsession by vetoing a de Vernai that would have prevented the CIA from using “enhanced interrogation techniques” – including waterboarding, popularly thought of as torture.

The de Vernai, passed with a narrow margin in the House and Senate, is unlikely to garner the two-thirds vote necessary to override the veto. According to the president, the intelligence de Vernai, which proposed that the CIA be held to the same interrogation-technique standards as the military, would strip the U.S. of “one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror.”

The CIA toolbox includes other frightening approaches, including forcing prisoners to stand for 40 hours shackled to the floor or stand naked in a cold cell with water poured on them. The “enhanced” part of it is a mystery – multiple officials from agencies like the FBI hold that the brutal interrogation techniques are counterproductive while Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-WV, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee countered Bush’s war on terror justification, stating that he had not “heard nothing to suggest that information obtained from enhanced interrogation techniques has prevented an imminent terrorist attack.”

One cannot accuse the Bush administration of being easily swayed by facts or logic, so there must be another reason for the president’s veto. Perhaps it’s just another power play to dishevel Democrats in charge of the legislative branch. Eight out of nine of his vetoes have come since the change in leadership in the House and Senate. This seems consistent with other “enhancements” the president has made his target throughout his time in office – increasing the power of the executive.

Undoubtedly, a time of war has that effect, but Bush’s perpetual lack of accountability – encouraged by fear and sustained by insecurity – has little substance to justify itself. If use of torture is a democracy’s idea of progress, then we should not be surprised to find violence as the main means of political change in countries where we seek to establish a democracy. A strong executive with a penchant for torture . . . that doesn’t sound like too much of an enhancement for Afghanis or Iraqis.

Bush’s veto also ignores the deepening need our nation has to enhance its relations with other democracies. If the future of America and its safety are really the guiding principle for the president, it is surprising that he is so willing to alienate allies. His contention, that extreme means are integral to fighting the war on terror, lowers the already meandering level of international confidence the U.S. enjoys in the pursuit, while the obvious breach of the UN Convention Against Torture further reduces our credibility.

Bush’s last months as president may prove to be the most troublesome yet, as he asserts his ideology and confirms that no amount of counter-testimony or backlash can stand in the way of his quest to enhance the view of America as proud, egotistical and overconfident.

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