Elect to End Torture '08

Human Rights First organized a series of meetings in 2007 in Des Moines, Iowa, and Concord, New Hampshire during which eight presidential candidates from both parties (including President Obama and Vice President Biden) met with fifteen retired military leaders. Several of these candidates credited these meetings with the military leaders with shaping their thinking on these issues.

On April 13, 2008, at CNN's Compassion Forum held on the campus of Messiah College in Pennsylvania, Senator Obama referenced the group of retired admirals and generals when stating unequivocally that his position as president would be that “We do not torture, period.”

He said, “And the reason this is important is not only because torture does not end up yielding good information – most intelligence officers agree with that. I met with a group – a distinguished group of former generals who have made it their mission to travel around and talk to presidential candidates and to talk in forums about how this degrades the discipline and the ethos of our military.” (CNN, 04/13/2008)

In December 2007, HRF hosted a series of meetings in Des Moines, Iowa. Seven presidential candidates from both parties met with fifteen retired military leaders. Governor Huckabee, addressed the press after the meeting, expressing his opposition to official cruelty. This press conference was the first time during the campaign that he had addressed this issue in detail:

After the Iowa poll showed that Republican voters like him but found him much less "presidential" and "electable" than Romney, Huckabee sought to build his foreign policy credentials, meeting with a group of retired generals who are in Des Moines to urge the 2008 candidates to commit to opposing torture. After the meeting, Huckabee joined Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in declaring his opposition to the interrogation procedure known as "waterboarding," and said he would support closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a contrast with the other leading Republicans. (Washington Post, 12/04/07)

Later, on January 6, 2008, Governor Huckabee referred again to the Iowa meeting on Fox News Sunday:

“I spent a couple of hours with 12 different general officers from the Navy and the Army and the Marine Corps. It was a very fascinating discussion. I share the same view that Colin Powell does, that every general officer that I know in the military shares, and that is that when you engage in torture, you do two things. First, you do not get the information that you really are seeking because it's rarely reliable. And the second thing is that you do something to the people who carry out the torture, and I'm not sure we want to do, and that is that we ask them to violate the very code that we teach them when they're going through the military.”

(Transcript, Jan. 6, 2008 edition of "FOX News Sunday With Chris Wallace”)

At the September 26, 2007 debate at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, two presidential candidates relied on information provided to them by retired military leaders at an April 2007 meeting hosted by Franklin Pierce Law School and Human Rights First when they rejected Tim Russert’s “ticking time bomb” hypothetical in the Democratic debate:

RUSSERT: I want to move to another subject, and this involves a comment that a guest on Meet the Press made, and I want to read it, as follows: Imagine the following scenario. We get lucky. We get the number three guy in Al Qaida. We know there's a big bomb going off in America in three days and we know this guy knows where it is. Don't we have the right and responsibility to beat it out of him? You could set up a law where the president could make a finding or could guarantee a pardon.

RUSSERT: Senator Biden, would you allow this presidential exception?

BIDEN: No, I would not. And I met, up here in New Hampshire, with 17 three- and four-star generals who, after my making a speech at Drake Law School, pointing out I would not under any circumstances sanction torture, I thought they were about to read me the riot act…

Seventeen of our four-star, three-star generals said, Biden, will you make a commitment you will never use torture? It does not work. It is part of the reason why we got the faulty information on Iraq in the first place is because it was engaged in by one person who gave whatever answer they thought they were going to give in order to stop being tortured. It doesn't work. It should be no part of our policy ever – ever.

RUSSERT: Senator Clinton, this is the number three man in Al Qaida. We know there's a bomb about to go off, and we have three days, and we know this guy knows where it is. Should there be a presidential exception to allow torture in that kind of situation?

CLINTON: You know, Tim, I agree with what Joe and Barack have said. As a matter of policy it cannot be American policy period. I met with those same three- and four-star retired generals, and their principal point – in addition to the values that are so important for our country to exhibit – is that there is very little evidence that it works.

CLINTON: Now, there are a lot of other things that we need to be doing that I wish we were: better intelligence; making, you know, our country better respected around the world; working to have more allies. But these hypotheticals are very dangerous because they open a great big hole in what should be an attitude that our country and our president takes toward the appropriate treatment of everyone. And I think it's dangerous to go down this path.

(Democratic Debate, MSNBC, 9/26/07)

After the debate, the Clinton campaign reiterated the importance of the meeting with generals and admirals in the formation of her anti-torture position.  A statement from Clinton spokesmen, Phil Singer, made after claims that Senator Clinton had changed her position to a tougher anti-torture stance:  “Upon reflection and after meeting with former Generals and others, Senator Clinton does not believe that we should be making narrow exceptions to this policy based on hypothetical scenarios.”  (Statement from Phil Singer, (posted in full on talkingpointsmemo.com, 9/27/07)

Senator Biden spoke out after the April meeting to oppose torture:

Following his meeting with the group on Saturday, Biden said the hour-long session reinforced his views that the detention center at Guantanamo Bay should be shut down and military interrogators should not be permitted - or ordered - to torture terror suspects to obtain intelligence. "I do not want to live in a country where I train the young women and men who defend this country on principles that I abhor," Biden said about military interrogators using torture. "Because they will come back to the United States of America, and I don't want that to be the core of my country. I don't want that to be who we are."   (Concord Monitor, 4/16/07)