I see you got the Dem talking-points memo.

Yes, the only reason a person would be opposed to secret prisons and torture is politics.

Torture? What Torture?
The UN's "definition" of "Torture" is a joke...
Protection for uniformed personnel of legitimate national military organizations is one thing, but for pirates, terrorists and "irregular" combatants I have a much lower standard of concern for their well-being. They shoud be treated as "outlaws"; those who's own actions have placed them BEYOND the protections of the Law.

Gratuitous abuse (Abu Ghiab, et al...) is unnecessary, unproductive, and should be...and is...against regulations and the UCMJ.

Harsh methods? "...Will they live, will they talk truthfully?", should be left to trained interrogators with reasonable, effective oversight.

You have a son. He goes to school at UCLA . One of his classmates is, one of the nearly15,000 Saudi citizens who is admitted to America on a student visas this year. This Saudi classmate is suspected by the FBI of involvement in a terrorist cell. He is apprehended based upon significant but not necessarily convincing evidence. He is questioned over a period of two weeks. During the first forty hours he is kept awake non stop. Subsequently he has plastic wrap sealed across his face and is repeatedly held under water until un-conscious and then revived only to go through the experience several more times. Finally he gives up your son's name in order to make the torture stop. He soon realizes that " in for a penny" is "in for a pound" and just giving up one or even several names is not enough to halt the torture. He must give up complete scenarios and implicate in detail, your son's role and involvement. None of his story told to the FBI is true, but the Saudi student does what he must to survive. Your son is apprehended and whisked away to a secret prison. Because it is a matter of national security you, as the parent are not informed and the Los Angeles police are looking for you son suspecting he is the victim of street crime. Your son also is tortured confesses and is tried by a secret court. The evidence, as well, is secret as a matter of national security and his attorney is never allowed to mount a proper defense for reasons that by now should be evident to you even if you are a flag waving, my country right or wrong, type. Your love of you family exceeds all else and you woul;d move heaven and earth to help your son. But how can you because he is now just a face on a milk carton and probably will remain so to you for ever. I for one am not willing to give up the 4th, and 5th amendment, or any part of the Bill of Rights. We can defend our country without destroying the sacred rights we posses as free men and women ; rights which were won with the sacrifice in blood over many centuries since the signing of the Magna Carta. Those of you who would allow the chief executive to operate without judicial oversight are fools and a greater threat to America than the terrorists.

And your point is.....?

michael savoca wrote: "You have a son. He goes to school at UCLA . One of his classmates is, one of the nearly 15,000 Saudi citizens who is admitted to America on a student visas this year..."

This sounds like a pitch (and not an entirely bad one), the kind of pitch made by an aspiring screenwriter to a movie producer, the kind that said producer has the ability to "green light"... or not. The UCLA part is good, because that means that if your screenplay gets a "go" it can be filmed right there in LA. And it just might. I mean you can never have too many good ABC "after school specials" can you?

A word of advice: the milk carton thing can be developed further, I see lots of potential for that. Also, something about the missing son's beautiful girlfriend who tries to find him would help. That sort of thing is always good for ratings.

Best of luck with your screenplay, Michael.

Starling, why the sarcasm towards m. savoca's post? Are you of the opinion that "this could never happen in America"? Do they have newspapers in UAE?

Actually, never mind, starling. Not interested.

A topic like this shouldn't (I believe) lend itself to be used as a tool for Dems to beat up on Reps or viceversa. Many can argue that the War on Terror is a different war, that the rules necessarily have to be different now, or even that the fu**ers are badasses and have it coming to them, right?

The legalese of tranferring detainees to Gitmo or not, or how it'll all affect our diplomatic friendships are truly secondary. There are bigger questions at hand, and the IR community doesn't seem to want to ask them.

Having lived overseas (i.e., outside the US) more than half my life, I have learned that justice is a thing that is hard to come by. A precious thing. It was one of the few things the world, however grudgingly, acknowledged about the US: whatever our flaws, it is a country where one can aspire to justice if one is wronged. No more.

Our nonchalance towards secret prisons is a tragedy of a magnitude that I lack the words to express.

St. James and M. Savoca:

actually my sarcasm was unwarranted and probably unkind. I say that in part because I noticed two hits to my site from this page after I posted my comment. One from the US state of Maryland and one from Argentina.

I think M. Savoca is an Italian name and I think he might hail from there. If so, I now know why a scenario that sounds implausible to me doesn't to him.

People were disappeared from Argentina in just the way M. Savoca described and so his experience may lead him to different conclusions about the relative frequency and likelihood of such things happening in the US. I understand why he and others may not necessarily believe it doesn't or that it couldn't happen here. I understand why news of CIA secret prisons might cause his anxiety of the kind I have never known.

thoughtfully,
starling

Thanks for that, starling. I'm the one who checked you out from Argentina. I lived in Argentina in the '70s (and now again) when the military took over and rescinded the constitution and established and kept marshal law for years. Check out crazy: it was literally illegal to be on the street after sunset yet I was assigned to study during the night shift during high school, getting out of school at 10 pm every night. The military had the right to shoot me every night on the way home, no questions asked. My mother would never let me leave the house on any occasion without making sure I was carrying my US passport, the only thing that might save me if I got caught up in a roundup. A true blessing to have been born in the US and carry that passport.

We are human and thus all carry a dark side. It isn't just Germans or Argentines or Rwandans capable of horrible actions on a societal level. It can happen anywhere given the right scenario.

And full disclosure: last night I rented "Imagining Argentina" (Antonio Banderas/Emma Thompson) about the '70s, and they pretty graphically showed how the military kidnapped and repeatedly raped women and girls. I ended up with the shakes and couldn't finish watching it.

So feeling a little temperamental today.

As much as I dislike the Bush-ites, this is a different situation than we have faced in the past.

I don't care much for some of their solutions, but then I don't have any better ideas.

St. James, thanks for the 'full disclosure'. Now instead of mocking your concerns, I will address them.

I think there are very few people who think that 'say anything to make it stop' torture is either legitmate or effective.

The sticking point to this whole debate is the definition of torture.

If it is defined down to the point where pissing on someone's book is torture, most reasonable people laugh and point out that by some standards that is considered performance art.

If authorities can do NOTHING, why bother even arresting suspects? Unless one is caught red-handed, there is no reason to talk because there is nothing that can be done to you.

There must be a balance. It is vital for our security that we find it. We must have a debate over this issue. However, there are some very non-serious folks out there - on both sides - that polarize it and present it in such either/or terms that nothing can be said.

Of course I don't want my son hauled off to a secret prison based the unsubstantiated word of a tortured person - Saudi Arabian or otherwise. You obviously set up a straw man.

The straw man from the other side is this: Same setup. Saudi man is known to go to a mosque that supports extremism (very likely scenario). Said Saudi, being here on a scholarship, has a very low cost-of-living so he lets everyone at the mosque, many of whom are poor, borrow his cellphone. Because the government is not allowed to monitor those calls - from a non-citizen's phone to foreign destinations - a plot to blow up the football stadium goes undiscovered. Your son is there and is killed.

We have to be able to talk about these things without shrieking at each other.

Thank you, St. James, for a good start.

Right kind of you, mrs izer.

I agree wholeheartedly on balance. As the Charging Rhino says above, the UN's definition of torture is a joke -- as seems to be much of what comes out of there these days.

But in these early years of the War on Terror, the United States as ringleader is setting troubling antecedents: Abu Ghraib, then Gitmo, and now secret prisons. I expect the United States to set the high water mark on important issues like this one, not further contaminate the cesspool. And what our leadership has said thus far -- both military and political -- is disgraceful and a really bad omen.

Defining something like what does or doesn't constitute torture in the 21st century is perhaps one of the most difficult issues our generation may have to do, and neither Gonzales, Bush nor Rumsfeld are capable of taking it in the right direction given their decisions thus far. (And I don't mean this as a jab at republicans; this very issue could well have been equally badly handled by a Clinton or Gore.)

The US has already established that it will ignore the UN when it feels the need to do so. But condoning Abu Ghraib and hiding prisoners in eastern european dungeons where there are no limits on what you can do to them does not speak of a great country. Like I said earlier, we all have a dark side; let's do our best to keep it at bay.

Since we have the most at stake on detering terrorism, why not come up with our own definition that we as a nation can live with, using the standards of Geneva and the UN as a starting point? Anything but this crap.

An issue is the definition of torture. I don't want to wade into those semantic waters, but I do want to say that each person has to look into his or her own heart and decide. Much of what has been described and admitted to sounds like torture to me.

Another issue to consider is the existence of secret prisons. These have been long reported about but until Bush's speech, the U.S. denied having them. So for years our government lied about the prisons? Why should we believe them about torture? Maybe they've done worse than has been admitted to. Who can say?

The government would like, if at all possible, to conduct these operations without oversight. That's why you have secret prisons in the first place, and why you fight for years to prevent trials for your prisoners. Lack of oversight of government actions, I contend, should be very disturbing to anyone, regardless of their political ideology. This is especially true when the government is dealing with an issue of morality and fundamental human dignity, like torture.

Another thing that should disturb people is moral relatavism. We cannot now criticize a nation for torturing people it identifies as enemies without looking like hypocrits. We have lost the power of moral suasion, which was a strength for the U.S. for so long, especially in the struggle against communist totalitarianism.

And a final thing that bothers me greatly is that torture now becomes part of the background noise. I think this is what happened at Abu Ghraib. Many of the people convicted for crimes against prisoners there were not smart people. They took their orders and their cues from their superiors and from the general environment in which they operated. Thus when it becomes OK for torture to exist (whether it's caled torture or some euphemism like "harsh measures"), ad hoc torture will likely occur.

Torture has always sickened me whenever I have read of accounts anywhere in the world. I'm heartsick that the U.S. is embracing it. I hope we will come to our senses.

From the UN Convention Against Torture:

"For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions."

If this is a joke, I don't see where the punchline is. Acts like desecrating the Koran are not considered torture by anyone. Instead, they are violations of the strict standards of decorum and behavior to which members of the armed forces are held while they are on duty. There are lots of things that are perfectly legal for civilians to do that are prohibited for military personnel.

Thanks to starling for his second thoughts. That was honorable. I share the belief that we must defeat the terrorists. In the process we should not destroy the constitution. I support the necessity of the president, ie the executive branch, , to eavesdrop and spy on domestic and international communications. But we must have judicial and congressional oversight. Otherwise the country…sooner or later… will descend into tyranny.

The question of how to separate "torture" from "lawful sanctions" and from "lawful interrogation" is an interesting and important one. I agree that there's a lot of space unmarked by hte UN definition, and the term "lawful sanctions" is greatly question-begging.

But that's not what we're debating in America. What we're debating in America is the legality of water-boarding and induced hypothermia, the legality of vicious beatings and violent threats against innocent family members. It really doesn't matter very much how well the UN or Geneva defines torture - when we accept water-boarding, we have lost any moral compass.

And as RWB smartly points out, the Bush administration wants not only hte right to torture, but the right to do so with no possibility of restrictions or oversight from the judicial or legislative branches of the government, or from the people or the press.

I'm sorry, but I just don't see the space for debate on the topic as presented in America. Who's going to stand up and defend induced hypothermia, and how do you take someone seriously as a moral agent when they announce that stand?

Div Guy said: "Who's going to stand up and defend induced hypothermia, and how do you take someone seriously as a moral agent when they announce that stand?"

Alan Dershowitz has already done that with his "ticking time bomb" scenario. He's been saying publicly for a few years that in certain situations, torture ought to be allowed. My mentioning this is not advocacy of his position, just pointing out that thoughtful and intelligent people have gone on record in support of some forms of torture under some circumstances and they have not stopped being considered serious "moral agents."

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/LAW/03/03/cnna.Dershowitz/

So DivGuy, please help me understand your position: is it (1) no to torture ever under any circumstances or (2) yes, under certain circumstances, but even then not water boarding or induced hypothermia?

We had these issues all through the cold war. It was traditionally claimed that the KGB could do absolutely any terrible trick they wanted, and our CIA was supposed to fight like boy scouts. But in practice there was a degree of tit-for-tat and gentleman's agreements and such. Like, I read about a USIA (USIS? It was a long time ago) officer in afghanistan before the russians invaded, who got invited to go out drinking by somebody else in the embassy. It turned out to be all the US embassy CIA agents watching stag movies with the russian embassy KGB agents, and after that it took a long time before his contacts would trust him again because they thought he had something to do with the spy clowns.

The professionals extended a degree of professional courtesy to each other, it was amateurs who got smushed. For awhile we bragged that we didn't need to torture people because our truth serum would get their secrets without it. But it turned out that the drugs could confuse somebody so he couldn't resist questioning, but the same confusion kept him from giving coherent answers.

Compared to the KGB, al qaeda etc are all amateurs. And they don't have the kind of contacts that encourage them to play by our rules. Mostly they don't even know what each other are doing outside their own cells, much less in vaguely-allied organisations. So our natural feeling is to treat all of them as bad as the worst of them have treated any american.

Our own public propaganda has persuaded a lot of UC citizens that our military and intelligence services are run entirely by boy scouts, and that it puts us at a disadvantage when we run up against ruthless enemies who don't play by the rules. But I think what really happened was a degree of tit-for-tat. And we don't have that with a loose collection of amateurs.

Alan Dershowitz has already done that with his "ticking time bomb" scenario. He's been saying publicly for a few years that in certain situations, torture ought to be allowed.

Well, let's say we have a ticking time bomb scenario. If we could save 10000 Americans, would you kill 5000 innocent Malaysian women and crush the genitals of 200 children? Or would you kill 100 Dutch teenagers and eviscerate 10 Canadian professors? And so on as the numbers go down. And if you would, does that mean that mass killing of innocents and the crushing of their genitals should be legal?

My point is that Dershowitz's argument is anything but serious, thoughtful or intelligent. The knowledge that a terrible act will lead to a good outcome is not a knowledge that happens in this world. And even given that it could happen, it is insane to make laws based on that - if we did, we could create laws to legalize absolutely anything.

Alex Tabarrok made an interesting point on this, though I don't agree with the whole argument:

Here is where economics can make a contribution. By making torture illegal we are raising the price of torture but we are not raising the price to infinity. If the President or the head of the CIA thinks that torture is required to stop the ticking time bomb then they ought to approve it knowing full well that they face possible prosecution. Only if the price of torture is very high can we expect that it will be used only in the most absolutely urgent of circumstances.

And, of course, Bush is not pushing for a "ticking time bomb" exception to a law against torture.

He's pushing for torture as a regular aspect of intelligence work and as a common part of the lives of US prisoners who are generally suspected to carry information from al Qaeda or similar organizations.

This is what the argument is about - legalized, everyday torture with no oversight, run through the executive branch. While the "ticking time bomb" argument is screwed up in itself, it is also not what the Bush administration is pushing for - their wishes are far more extreme.

Well, can anyone in the audience give sound reasoning for the US administration's position? As far as I can tell, the argument is, "It's a new kind of war which requires new rules." Or maybe "fewer rules".

Neocons could defend their beliefs eloquently; surely this faction can, too.

is it (1) no to torture ever under any circumstances or (2) yes, under certain circumstances, but even then not water boarding or induced hypothermia?

Starling, the problem here is to avoid sliding down that slippery slope.

Like, we know that some terrorists are selling drugs to finance their atrocities. So it follows that winning the drug war is part of winning the WoT. If we have to use harsh interrogation to get info from the drug lords, so be it. Our national survival is at stake. And of course, it will then take harsh interrogation to get the users to reveal their sources. So we wind up interrogating suspected users, which could be anybody....

There are lots of ways the justifications lead to torturing anybody who comes under suspicion. And if there's no oversight, who do you want to trust with that power? The power to decide that you are a suspect and torture you, on their own authority, because they have decided it benefits the USA. And they're responsible to nobody in the world but their supervisors, on up the chain of command to somebody who just might want to torture you for political gain.

So here's my suggested approach. Make harsh interrogation illegal. Period. Make the usual sentence amount to 6 months jailtime or more after good behavior etc, depending on just how bad it is. However, if you think you're in a situation where it's necessary, and it turns out you're right, the President can pardon you. And if it turns out you made a mistake and it wasn't absolutely necessary, you can still go to court and make your case about why you thought it was, and see if the judge is sympathetic.

Two years later publish the details of the court case where all the information was presented. At that point you're likely to be out of jail and anybody who cares enough can express their opinions to you. In two years there won't be much in the way of important secrets -- if the same methods are still working then the terrorists are no threat. So let the public see just what you were doing, and why you said you were doing it.

And of course, this should be extended to private citizens too. If you are a private US citizen and you think it's necessary to kidnap the Attorney General and torture him for information, the only rule is -- be right. If you actually get information the nation desperately needs you'll be pardoned. Otherwise, take the consequences. So -- if you're sure you're right -- grab those garden shears and start snipping away. It doesn't take that much skill. Snip off the last joint of a finger, and after it bleeds a little cauterise it. Then the next joint. That will show them you mean business. Then let them talk and only snip off another joint if they slow down or they say something you don't believe. If it's necessary, just clip away. The only rule is -- be right. If you aren't sure the conspiracy is for real, or if you aren't sure you have the right victim, then be careful. Nobody will blame you if you aren't willing to bet 6 months of jailtime on it.

Be sure.

Hasn't Bush repeatedly denied we had secret prisons in other countries?

And now he admits it was happening all along.

Why should we believe anything else he says?

Fool me once....

DivGuy, it is not my intent to defend either arguments made by Dershowitz or the administration. They are far more capable than I of doing that. My question (not directed solely at you) is one not addressed by the hypotheticals you proferred.

While Dershowitz's argument is a general one, the link I provided regarding his advocacy of torture was not: it was with regard to a very specific, real-life event- the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in 2003.

There was no doubt about who he was and with whom he was associated. There may have been doubts about what he knew but not about the fact that he was top tier al-Qaeda, from the highest echelon, and a 9/11 planner. (You may recall that the President mentioned KSM specifically in his address a few days back.)

Knowing that, do you waterboard this guy or don't you? Do you detain and interrogate in a secret prison, in Gitmo, or stateside? Do you outsource and let a friendly intelligence service soften him up first? Does he deserve a trial by jury before his "peers" in a US court or by a military tribunal? Could he even be convicted in a US court of law based on information he gave up under torture?

These are tough questions that don't have easy answers. I don't even pretend to know what they are. What I do know is that it's a lot easier to dismiss out-of-hand arguments in favor of the limited and proscribed use of torture than it is to confront the issues directly. (I'm not accusing anyone hear of doing this, that's just an observation.)

These are tough questions that don't have easy answers.

No, they're not. Torture is wrong. Torture needs to be illegal. These are basic moral stances, the absence of which is highly troubling.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed needs to be considered either a prisoner of war or an international criminal. Either way, we do not torture, and we certainly do not make torture legal and remove all possibilities for oversight.

What I do know is that it's a lot easier to dismiss out-of-hand arguments in favor of the limited and proscribed use of torture than it is to confront the issues directly

The Bush administration has offered no "limited" or "proscribed" use. Their position and legislation make judicial or legislative oversight practically impossible. You continue to severely moderate hte position of the Bush administration on this topic.

Torture might get a morsel of information you desperately want in a moment. then again it might not. Torture doesn't always yield the whole truth. But in either case a policy of torture is a policy that embraces a cancer that will rot us from within.

DivGuy, do you have a link to the Administration's proposed torture policy? I'm not asking to be smarmy, I'd actually like to read their own words on this issue.

adychka -

Marty Lederman's analysis of the administration's bill is the best I've seen, and it contains a link to the legislation if you want to slog through the thing.

Basically, the bill attempts to fully legalize violations of Geneva article 3, and thus to allow the administration-approved torture to continue. At the same time, the bill states that no court has jurisdiction to review these matters.

Somebody needs to psychoanalyze this bizarre notion that we either torture our prisoners, or else "do nothing."

Standard interrogation ain't "nothing." It works rather well.

But we see the psychology here. Our enemies are terrorists. They hide from us and frustrate us. And when we catch them, by god, we're going to make up for lost time. Etc., etc.

Sadly, these impotent-tough-guy fantasies seem to be directing our CIA interrogation policies.

[snip stuff I largely agree with...]

But in these early years of the War on Terror, the United States as ringleader is setting troubling antecedents: Abu Ghraib, then Gitmo, and now secret prisons. I expect the United States to set the high water mark on important issues like this one, not further contaminate the cesspool. And what our leadership has said thus far -- both military and political -- is disgraceful and a really bad omen.

One thing we need to be clear on is what is torture, and what isn't. Pissing on a Koran, IMO, isn't. While I am unfamiliar with the details of waterboarding, I think it very likely would be.

However, there are people who want to define torture as "anything unpleasant from the interrogatee's POV", and others who seem to think that anything that doesn't inflict permanent physical damage isn't. The truth is somewhere in between those extremes, but getting past the army of strawmen and finding people of good will to discuss the matter with is damn difficult.

Defining something like what does or doesn't constitute torture in the 21st century is perhaps one of the most difficult issues our generation may have to do, and neither Gonzales, Bush nor Rumsfeld are capable of taking it in the right direction given their decisions thus far. (And I don't mean this as a jab at republicans; this very issue could well have been equally badly handled by a Clinton or Gore.)

I concur.

As Commander in Chief, Bush's top priority is winning the conflict. Respecting the civil rights of non-citizens who are actively trying to kill the people he is sworn to protect is a very low priority in comparison.

What a lot of people do not seem to understand is that this has nothing at all to do with Bush's political affiliation. A Democrat in Bush's position would rank those priorities in the same order.

I do not understand why so many people seem to think things would be different if Gore or Kerry were in the White House. All I can conclude is that such people are spectacularly ignorant, or maliciously partisan. I hope it is the former.

The US has already established that it will ignore the UN when it feels the need to do so.

...As does every other great power...

But condoning Abu Ghraib and hiding prisoners in eastern european dungeons where there are no limits on what you can do to them does not speak of a great country. Like I said earlier, we all have a dark side; let's do our best to keep it at bay.

We need to make certain distinctions up front.

The first is that what is acceptable when dealing with a suspect arrested while legally in the US is one thing (IMO, such people should be treated as US citizens, with the exception that deportation would be an option).

The second is that completely different standards are applicable when dealing with a non-citizen, who was bearing arms against US or allied forces, outside US territory, while out of uniform.

IMO, people in the latter category have chosen to operate outside the boundaries of the laws and customs of warfare and do not qualify for Geneva Convention protections. This does not mean you can do whatever you wish to such people. It means that (IMO) the appropriate procedures are those used to deal with spies and saboteurs during wartime- and what you can do with such people is very, very different than what you are permitted to do with POWs.

Since we have the most at stake on detering terrorism, why not come up with our own definition that we as a nation can live with, using the standards of Geneva and the UN as a starting point? Anything but this crap.
-St. James the Lesser

No. As you mentioned earlier, the stuff coming out of the UN is a joke, and the Geneva Conventions are intended to protect uniformed combatants and non-combatant civilians. Our adversaries in this conflict do not qualify for either category.

If we truly want to regain the admiration of the international community, we should announce we will deal with all enemies within the framework of the US civilian justice system. This will provide international observers with the two things they most desire: an unquestioned moral exemplar, and lots of dead Americans.

rosignil wrote: "As Commander in Chief, Bush's top priority is winning the conflict. Respecting the civil rights of non-citizens who are actively trying to kill the people he is sworn to protect is a very low priority in comparison."

I read this kind of statement frequently. However, what do you say to someone who was captured and sent to Gitmo or Abu Ghraib or some secret prison who wasn't a terrorist? "Sorry I tortured you, my bad"?

We're constantly told that the people we have in captivity are the worst of the worst, definitely dangerous terrorists. But we know that isn't true because we continue to release people--people we have sometimes held for years--when we finally decide that they aren't faking and are in fact who they claimed to be--i.e., non-terrorists who somehow were in the wrong place at the wrong time. These people are "unpersons"--never mentioned when grave statesmen discuss "harsh measures" as if the only recipients of waterboarding or other heinous acts are undoubtedly guilty as sin. The definition of "terrorist" cannot be "anyone the U.S. captures" if we are to call ourselves an ethical nation.

I disagree with Dershowitz, but at least he said torture should only be used in conjuction with a "torture warrant"--i.e., there should be at least some judicial oversight of the executive. This administration doesn't even want that. Isn't is obvious that this is a recipe for abuse? Of course in such a situation, the executive will claim that the only recipients of this treatment were nasty terrorists, and that exercise of this treatment saved lives. Do you expect that they would admit to torturing innocent people, or that most torture was totally useless, or that some of the people who do the torturing are simply sadists?

This would be true even if it were Clinton or a Democratic administration asking for such rights--it could be any administration granted the right the torture by some feckless and morally weak legislature. But Bush is the president now who is asking the legislature to validate his already existing torture policies. This should be vigorusly opposed.

As Commander in Chief, Bush's top priority is winning the conflict.

In an ideal world this would be true. However, by now it is completely obvious that this is not Bush's top priority, and it isn't even anywhere near the top.

Bush's top priority is to increase his own power to do whatever-the-hell he wants. And one way he's doing that is to attempt to become entirely unaccountable for what he does.

And that's what this is about.

If the government gets to say anybody's a terrorist without having to provide any evidence, and they can keep suspected terrorists secretly, and they can do whatever they want to them, then what's left of the Constitution?

Of course you can choose to trust them to do the right thing.

What a lot of people do not seem to understand is that this has nothing at all to do with Bush's political affiliation. A Democrat in Bush's position would rank those priorities in the same order.

If we (Dem and Rep) didn't legalize torture during World War II or during the Cold War, why is it so obvious that anyone would legalize torture now, and legalize it without oversight? I see no reason to assume that any president would be doing this - hell, a President McCain wouldn't be doing this. The historical outlier is the Bush administration.

I agree with rosignol that careful descriptions of what is (a) acceptable interrogation, (b) unacceptable interrogation and (c) torture are important. What I don't understand is why, given that rosignol recognizes that the White House is torturing people, he or she puts on this "pox on both your houses" pose - it seems to me that torture must be opposed, and opposing torture with somewhat unclear definitions is not the moral equivalent of torturing, in any way.

The problem with definitions is that they encourage "torturing between the lines." (Or "tortured readings," etc.)

Cf. Mark Bowden on Israel's experiment with legalizing coercive interrogations:

"The Israeli court decided to allow certain carefully-defined methods of coercion, as opposed to outright torture. And what they found after a year or two was that, by loosening the ban just that much, it promptly led to widespread prisoner abuse. While there's certainly a difference between keeping someone awake for a long period of time, and gouging out someone's eyes, there appears to be no clear way of drawing a line between coercion and torture. Once you allow interrogators to inflict discomfort, it's a very small, short step to inflicting pain."

That's why the line needs to be drawn well on the side of decency and respect. Good interrogators don't need this coercive bullshit in the 1st place. Abusive techniques show, right away, that the interrogator has ceased regarding the subject as a person, and it's the relationship b/t interrogator & subject that produces the best intel.

I read this kind of statement frequently. However, what do you say to someone who was captured and sent to Gitmo or Abu Ghraib or some secret prison who wasn't a terrorist? "Sorry I tortured you, my bad"?

What kind of question is this?

Bad things happen in war, even to good people. This is a reason to avoid war when possible, but there are times when it is unavoidable. Should we refuse to take action against out enemies for fear of harming innocents in the process?

Of course not- such an approach would render us unable to oppose our enemies, and would create a perverse incentive for our enemies to deliberately use innocents as shields.

If you're going to fight a war, you fight to win, even if innocents are going to be harmed in the process.

We're constantly told that the people we have in captivity are the worst of the worst, definitely dangerous terrorists. But we know that isn't true because we continue to release people--people we have sometimes held for years--when we finally decide that they aren't faking and are in fact who they claimed to be--i.e., non-terrorists who somehow were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

...and some of them occasionally turn up as combatants attacking Americans after being released.

I would prefer that my government commit fewer errors than it does, but I know better than to expect perfection in any enterprise the US government engages in.

These people are "unpersons"--never mentioned when grave statesmen discuss "harsh measures" as if the only recipients of waterboarding or other heinous acts are undoubtedly guilty as sin.

I expect that merely being considered dangerous enough to confine for the duration of the conflict is not enough to rate harsh interrogation, much less torture- anyone in Guantanamo now would have been there for around 4 years, any intelligence they could provide would be quite stale by now. So can we please dispense with the presumption that anyone in Guantanamo is being tortured? It is not a valid presumption, and continually making the assertion inflames passions and clouds the issue.

The definition of "terrorist" cannot be "anyone the U.S. captures" if we are to call ourselves an ethical nation.

How about "anyone who bears arms against an enemy without abiding by the laws and customs of warfare"?

Back in the old days, when uniformed members of a national military did such things, they were considered war ciminals. These days, people deliberately commit atrocities and get a pass because they do not wear uniforms, while the people wearing uniforms place themselves at risk to avoid harming civilians, and are condemned.

The world has turned upside-down.

ps to various other commenters-

J Thomas- if all you are going to do is ascribe nefarious motives to someone, there is no point in responding to you. If you want to have a discussion, I'm happy to participate, if all you're going to do is call people nasty names, expect to be ignored.

DivGuy- I don't know what kind of interrogation is going on. I think it is very likely that procedures I do not appove of are being used, but I do not think they are being used casually or indiscriminately, and I also think it is likely that those procedures have resulted in information that has saved the lives of Americans- and that is why I am reserving judgement until more facts are known.

I am not so selfish that I expect my government to allow any of my fellow citizens to die so that I can have a clear conscience.

Anderson- if you can do the job better than the guys doing it now, you know who to call.

Three rosignol quotes not taken out of context:
"Bad things happen in war, even to good people"
"If you're going to fight a war, you fight to win, even if innocents are going to be harmed in the process"
"can we please dispense with the presumption that anyone in Guantanamo is being tortured?"

It is clear that this is a difficult and polemic topic. But rosignol, it is also clear that you are writing from the very comfortable position of a man sitting somewhere in American suburbia confident that he could never be in a Gitmo-type situation -- or even conceive what it might be like. You (like Rumsfeld) are tut-tutting the sad reality that War is Hell with nothing personal at risk.

But imagine for a moment that you weren't -- by the grace of God or good fortune -- born in America and you are actually in the Middle East. If you were one of those innocent schmucks who get bombed upon by the US and your child killed [apparently you should accept an, "Oops, sorry!" to make things right] or detained in Gitmo without anything resembling due process [where I guess from your comments you should then be grateful you aren't necessarily being tortured and orifices probed].

I think you have trouble empathizing with that position and those people. Because if you did, you wouldn't write the stuff you did. Definitely punish the bad guys, but make sure you're not using a shotgun approach and telling the innocent bystanders, Tough luck.

Much of what Rosignol says I can agree with. But one issue not so much. Three times in a recent post it is said that if Gore or other Dems were President things would not be much different. I don't agree. First and foremost we would not be in Iraq. Don't believe it. Do a search for April Gilspie. She was the US Ambassador to Iraq under Bush 1. Like a good dog at heel, Saddam asked George Bush's permission to invade Kuwait, and the President said this is an Arab matter (the cross drilling at the boarder into your oil field etc), and the U.S. has no preference as to how you handle this. Then after Saddam invaded, the first President Bush announced "this aggression will not stand".

Then comes the second President Bush, who, according to many reliable inside sources, was obsessed with attacking Iraq from nearly the first day he took office. (reported by his first treasurey secretary for example, and the official W Bush Biographer, who subsequently had his notes and his book cancelled.)

If we didn't go into Iraq we would have likely focussed greater efforts on Afghanistan, where the war there is, sadly, now turning against us. (read the recent resignation of the #2 ranking officer in the Scott's Guard ) It is an historical fact that the Bush administration failed to commit US ground troops to the battle of Torra Borra and for that reason OBL escaped. We could have captured or killed that monster and made an object lesson of him to the world. But now, 5 years later he continues to plot against us. Finally by all political scenarios likely one or both houses of congress would have been Republican controlled, and it is unlikely that a Democrat as President would have gotten the blank check for use of force that the current congressional leadership has granted President Bush.

It is said that sometimes the littlest things matter most. A small Cuban boy hanging on to a raft changes the course of the 2000 presidential election and there after the course of the world.

Anderson- if you can do the job better than the guys doing it now, you know who to call.

Pooh. The question is, do we listen to the guys who KNOW what they're doing, and who wrote the freakin' Army Interrogation Manual ...

... or do we listen to the CIA spooks whose whole approach is based on assiduous CIA imitation of KGB tortures, which themselves had the goal of terrorizing the population, as Yglesias reminds us?

We already know the Bush administration lies to us. This latest admission that yes, the secret prisons really were there all the time they said they weren't, is just the latest example.

So -- fool me twice?

Why would any reasonable person believe anything the Bush administration claims unless it's been independently verified by a reliable source?

It is clear that this is a difficult and polemic topic. But rosignol, it is also clear that you are writing from the very comfortable position of a man sitting somewhere in American suburbia confident that he could never be in a Gitmo-type situation

Of course not. As a US citizen, if I stopped shaving, grabbed a rifle, headed to Afghanistan, and survived to be taken prisoner, I'd be shipped back stateside and tried in federal court on various offenses.

This is because US laws have clear jurisdiction over US citizens. They do not have clear jurisdiction over what non-citizens do outside of US territory, which is a pretty fundamental problem with the 'give the people in Guantanamo trials' plan. Anything we charged them with in the US criminal code would be based on some kind of ex post facto law, which is explicitly forbidden in the US Constitution.

-- or even conceive what it might be like. You (like Rumsfeld) are tut-tutting the sad reality that War is Hell with nothing personal at risk.

Nothing personal execpt relatives who happen to work in some of the very tall buildings that al qaeda likes to land airplanes on, personal friends on active duty in the military, and various civil rights that are likely to be eroded in the process of making it more difficult for murderous SOBs to murder. All pretty minor compared to, say, being tortured, I suppose, but they're not nothing.

But imagine for a moment that you weren't -- by the grace of God or good fortune -- born in America and you are actually in the Middle East. If you were one of those innocent schmucks who get bombed upon by the US and your child killed [apparently you should accept an, "Oops, sorry!" to make things right] or detained in Gitmo without anything resembling due process [where I guess from your comments you should then be grateful you aren't necessarily being tortured and orifices probed].

If you want due process, abide by the Geneva Conventions, and I'll be happy to grant you the rights described in the portions of the GCs that the US is party to.

I think you have trouble empathizing with that position and those people. Because if you did, you wouldn't write the stuff you did.

How will empathizing solve the problem? At the end of the day, I can empathize my heart out, and there will still be a bunch of murderous SOBs who want me and mine (and you and yours) dead or converted to their particular flavor of death-cult.

This is an irreconcilable disagreement.

You're welcome to think this problem can be solved by empathizing with them, but please don't expect me to agree with you without a whole lot of supporting evidence.

Definitely punish the bad guys, but make sure you're not using a shotgun approach and telling the innocent bystanders, Tough luck.

If Roosevelt and Truman had fought WW2 that way, it would still be going on.

In war, bad things happen to good people.

This is not a reason to not fight wars, it is a reason to fight in such a way that the war ends as soon as possible.

This is because US laws have clear jurisdiction over US citizens. They do not have clear jurisdiction over what non-citizens do outside of US territory, which is a pretty fundamental problem with the 'give the people in Guantanamo trials' plan. Anything we charged them with in the US criminal code would be based on some kind of ex post facto law, which is explicitly forbidden in the US Constitution.

Well, yes. By the law, except for countries we're occupying, we're supposed to hand them over to their own governments or the governments of the nations they committed their crimes in, and present the evidence to get them tried there.

But this has the same problem we face taking them to court here -- we mostly don't have any evidence we're willing to present in court.

It's a puzzle, it is.

Does Noriega give us a precedent? Some people say that we invaded panama to grab a native panama citizen and try him in US courts for violating US drug laws.If we can try Noriega for breaking US drug laws can we try a bunch of arabs for aiding and abetting 9/11?

If you want due process, abide by the Geneva Conventions, and I'll be happy to grant you the rights described in the portions of the GCs that the US is party to.

The Geneva Conventions are not an agreement that only applies to prisoners from signatory nations. They apply as a blanket requirement on the nations who signed in their treatment of all prisoners.

Rosignol supports torture. There's really no way around it. Opposition to torture is such a basic moral stance that it frightens me how many weak souls have been cowed into believing that we don't need those morals anymore.

Another way of putting it - there's a pretty binary debate going on in our country today. Should torture be legal, or illegal? Currently, it is illegal, and as has been made entirely clear by the Hamdan decision.

The Bush administration wants to make torture legal. Rosignol supports the use of torture.

This isn't really something you can debate. Torture is wrong. It's a very basic corrollary to any secular or religious understanding of human rights or collective humanity. The intentional inflicting of severe pain, approaching death, upon those who cannot defend themselves, is moral evil.

Ros,

Regarding your WWII analogy: There's a huge difference between collateral damage that happens as a result of a bombing campaign and the torture of individuals held in secret detention facilities.

Put another way, we're on a slippery slope here. You're shrugging your shoulders at torture, on the theory that it's a necessary evil in order to win a war.

Nevermind that victory in this war is so ill-defined as to be unattainable (or rather, as attainable as the political currents of the day require it to be), and nevermind that the efficacy of torture in terms of providing useful, reliable intel is much in doubt; we still have a very basic problem:

This is not WWII. We are not fighting a war to crush a rising hegemon. As Robert MacNamara relates in The Fog of War, if the war had gone the other way, Lamay and others would've been tried as war criminals. I'm not exactly comfortable giving them a pass on the firebombing of Tokyo (or Japanese internment camps), but I can at least rationalize it within the framework of WWII, where, without going into great detail, the security of the United States was threatened on a fundamental level.

This is not WWII. Leaving the Rumsfeldian appeasement rhetoric aside, the threat to our security is nowhere near as great as it was then. What overriding security concern can justify our conduct (assuming you agree that torture is not a morally good or neutral thing)? Are we fighting this war in a manner that makes you proud to be an American? Finally, are you so knowledgeable about the methods of torture and the frequency with which they are being used that you can draw a line beyond which you would no longer be comfortable with what is being done in your name?

Personally, I think it's better not to start down that slope. The bottom is cluttered with the wreckage of Auschwitz.