November 15, 2005 - There are leaks and then there are leaks. Some are those leaks which jeopardize a mission, an army, or an agent’s undercover mission. Those are the ones described in the WWII posters that warned GI and civilian alike that “loose lips sink ships”. That is why the investigation into the politically motivated intentional exposure of a covert CIA operative is justified and important. Other leaks are those celebrated in the literature of Watergate that reveal those inner machinations of our political leaders; machinations that have been concealed from the public, not to protect a vital national interest from prying alien eyes but to protect a narrow and corrupt political interest from exposure.

It is now revealed that the US Defense Department not only condoned the use of torture against detainees taken in the Afghan and Iraqi wars but actively directed the application of those techniques against which the US was training its personnel to resist in Project Sere. DOD had studied and adapted those techniques to which US prisoners in the Korean and Vietnamese Wars were exposed. Shortly after the detention camp at Guantanamo was established US intelligence personnel were detailed from Gitmo to SERE not to learn how to resist the techniques that had been taught by the Red Army but to learn how to apply them.

John McCain knows those techniques well. He knows them in a way that most of us have been spared by Providence. While the rest of us can debate whether sleep deprivation; sensory isolation; or forced painful postures constitute “torture” John McCain knows. While the rest of us can fence over whether this technique or that is beyond the line dividing legitimate interrogation from torture Senator McCain knows the answer first hand. When the Whitehouse actively resists legislation to make the use of torture against US captives a crime it sends a message to the world – a message that does not support a national reputation as the champion of the freedom and liberty of the common man. When it does so while it tacitly accepting the DOD/CIA employment of the very techniques employed by our cold war adversaries it justifies Senator Durbin’s comparison of Administration policies to those of the KGB and Gestapo.

George Bush stands at the helm of the ship of state. He is driving it full speed ahead while he holds the course. When those of both parties warn him of the icebergs that lie in his path he decries them as giving comfort to America’s enemies. His remarks echo the rhetoric of an earlier time just as his policies echo those of earlier administrations. When his Titanic sinks from sight it will not be the loose leakers lips that have sunk her. It will be the commands of the captain.