By Spencer Ackerman - November 7, 2007, 2:11PM
Malcolm Nance, good-spirited though he is, is a pugnacious guy. Nearly 20 years' service in the Navy, including time instructing would-be Navy SEALs how to resist and survive torture if captured. Intelligence and counterterrorism expert. Several years in Iraq as a security contractor. So don't expect him to suffer in silence if his credibility is attacked during testimony to a House panel tomorrow about his
personal experiences with waterboarding.
"God forbid if there's even the slightest hint about my credentials," Nance says over tea in a Washington coffee shop. "You will see a spectacle on C-Span. I'll impugn
credibility in public. Let's see him give 20 years in the military, give up his family life, and then he can come talk. If not, shut the hell up."
Nance has become newly controversial for writing on the counterinsurgency/counterterrorism blog Small Wars Journal about his experiences teaching waterboarding for the Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) program. He's been subjected to the procedure personally, and unequivocally called it torture in a much-discussed post. Subsequently, a House Judiciary subcommittee contacted him during a business trip in the Middle East and asked him to testify at a hearing on so-called "enhanced interrogation" techniques that kicks off tomorrow morning.
Since he wrote the post, however, a number of comments have appeared on conservative blogs questioning Nance's military service record. (Small Wars Journal had to delete a number of particularly ad hominem comments.) Nance doesn't want to dignify the attacks -- "it's vet-versus-vet warfare," he laments. But he says he heard from a staffer for the Democratic majority on the committee that a Republican aide has been "questioning my credentials" to members in preparation for the hearing. In response, Nance sent the committee "17 years' worth of evaluations" from the Navy and told staffers how to find more material if needed. Emphatic about not getting swiftboated, he warns would-be assailants, "I'll chew your ass out."
moreWingnuts are pathetic!
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