For one, your post gives the lie to your own previous "we're loosing our soul"-type opinions. We have done much worse than the worst the Bush administration authorized and we're still breathing in air.
I admit I'm not too clear on the legal issues involved and I do tend to agree with Mathew Dallman that the Bush "enhanced interrogation" techniques do not constitute torture. At least, I can admit that reasonable people, who are responsible for the national security, can disagree about one technique or another.
However, from what I know, the enhanced interrogation of KSM did generate information that helped to thwart attacks against America.
The following gives a new twist to this:
Critics claim that enhanced techniques do not produce good intelligence because people will say anything to get the techniques to stop. But the memos note that, "as Abu Zubaydah himself explained with respect to enhanced techniques, 'brothers who are captured and interrogated are permitted by Allah to provide information when they believe they have reached the limit of their ability to withhold it in the face of psychological and physical hardship." In other words, the terrorists are called by their faith to resist as far as they can -- and once they have done so, they are free to tell everything they know. This is because of their belief that "Islam will ultimately dominate the world and that this victory is inevitable." The job of the interrogator is to safely help the terrorist do his duty to Allah, so he then feels liberated to speak freely.
This is the secret to the program's success. And the Obama administration's decision to share this secret with the terrorists threatens our national security. Al-Qaeda will use this information and other details in the memos to train its operatives to resist questioning and withhold information on planned attacks. CIA Director Leon Panetta said during his confirmation hearings that even the Obama administration might use some of the enhanced techniques in a "ticking time bomb" scenario. What will the administration do now that it has shared the limits of our interrogation techniques with the enemy? President Obama's decision to release these documents is one of the most dangerous and irresponsible acts ever by an American president during a time of war -- and Americans may die as a result.
I can't see anything in your discussions of torture that addresses this issue. I can't see any evidence that interrogators were doing anything but what Thiessen says they were: "helping the terrorist do his duty to Allah, so he then feels liberated to speak freely." I think that this is at least defensible as a moral position but it is absolutely unassailable from a national security perspective.
"this isn’t a Constitutional issue , it’s a criminal law issue, and the torture memos are beyond poorly reasoned from a legal standpoint."
I'm not sure what this means. Isn't the Constitution the basis of criminal law? I'm saying that criminal law needs to be adapted to meet the challenges of the global insurgency/asymmetric war. We need to do this within the limits of the Constitution, otherwise our ass is grass.
I know that Congress had and has the responsibility to do this. I know that they didn't do it. That's my whole point.
About the KSM waterboarding, you're saying that interrogators went beyond the limits permitted even by the memos (which according to you are unpermissable anyway). That's only more grist for my mill: we need clear limits on this type of thing, not just memos by government lawyers that can be used for political gain in the future.
Ooops! I guess I got the quote from an article that Transplanted Lawyer linked to. I don't think it's worth it to find now and I don't have time anyway. So, sorry about that!
In any case, I can't understand how getting KSM to give up info in less than a month can be called "ineffective."
I would agree with Cascadian, above, if this were a situation like the Nixon "enemies list" or where we were using torture on a massive scale to get bogus confessions, etc etc. But aren't all the cases that the memos deal with about using coercive interrogation techniques selectively to get information that would save American lives? Political enemies of the Bush administration weren't wiretapped and tortured; only foreign enemies, like KSM, were. I may go nuts if I hear one more "we're becomming damned" or "we're becomming monsters" comment. This isn't about heaven and hell. I'm sick of people mixing their religious beliefs into national security doctrine.
The CIA wants you to believe waterboarding is effective. Yet somehow, it took them 183 applications of the waterboard in a one month period to get what they claimed was cooperation out of KSM.
The above is from the article you recommend.
Somehow, the above author wants us to believe that waterboarding isn't effective. Getting KSM to give up information after a month, especially since we know that he was never really in any danger of dying under torture and that they only made him believe that he was, seems pretty effective to me. I'm sure this is a reason why he confessed in open court: he wants his martyr cred back. Do we really know that the info that KSM gave up was useless and therefore that waterboarding wasn't effective? I'm sure that a lot of this stuff is still classified and will be for a long time so I have to declare myself agnostic on this issue.
On the other hand, if the CIA can get someone like KSM to talk--after only one month--wouldn't this put the fear into al Qaeda operatives around the world? Don't we want them to be afraid of us?
Would the capture of KSM fit into the "ticking bomb" scenario somehow? It's just a question but it seems reasonable that the authorities felt that kind of "ticking bomb" pressure on them at the time (early 2003).
Would the capture of the man who planned or had a role in planning 9/11, World Trade Center 1993 bombings, the Operation Bojinka plot, an aborted 2002 attack on Los Angeles' U.S. Bank Tower, the Bali nightclub bombings, the failed bombing of American Airlines Flight 63, the Millennium Plot, and the murder of Daniel Pearl be legitimate reason to apply the "ticking bomb" template?
There never is an exact fit between any template and reality. That's why people have to be around to apply them. Otherwise, they're useless. Application is always a judgement call. Are we being fair if we demand that people be prosecuted for a judgement that in hindsight we think is wrong?
I'm not trying to apologize for torture or to defend it (although if I had been in charge, I may have ordered KSM's eternal torture as punishment for what he did, which is only one of millions of reasons why I'm not in charge.)
What I am trying to do is to beat the dead horse I killed a while back: we need a clear and open discussion of the constitutional limits on coercive interrogation. We need this discussion to happen in the Congress, where the result will be a new legal framework that we can all live with. Then, the "ticking bomb" scenario would have clear and open proceedures before it's applied, etc etc. and there would be no political hay to be made out of the issue. That's why I say that Congress has been avoiding its responsibility. I can understand why they are, since it's an issue where one is bound to give up a lot of negative sound-bites all the time.
That's what I do. But it's annoying to see Sullivan open up in a new tab and then have to close it and go back to what I was reading before. If you made it clear that you were linking to him, you'd save me some aggravation.
ED Kain: "your safest bet is to ditch your TV altogether. I haven’t seen one of these ads in years…."
That's another of the beauties of capitalism--anyone can just opt out with relatively low hassle.
Just so you know we have something in common, I opted out of TV before you were even born and my kids were raised without it. They learned to fight with each other and whatever instead of watching TV. They hated us for it then, but now, they've all told me they're grateful we gave them the opportunity to develop their imaginations.
It's not all that easy, since most people will reference TV all the time and these things stump me, like hearing people use words from a foreign language or slang I don't know. For kids, it's even worse.
Could you do me a favor? When you link to Andrew Sullivan, could you make that clear in the link itself somehow? That way I wouldn't have to click on the link and get frustrated because it's Andrew Sullivan BS again and then click "back" etc etc. Just as a favor, that's all...
You're getting all worked up about nothing... an ad campaign, for god's sake! Apple wants to sell computers and I guess they found a way to do it. That's about the size of it.
These people really must know what they're doing to spend so many millions of dollars on an ad campaign. The depressing part is that they're right and their idea works. People like to think that they're superior to others somehow and if it's as easy as buying a certain computer, then...
If you want to rant about something, how about the idea that people define themselves by the products they buy? Everything about advertising is "personality based." You probably don't remember the "Virginia Slims" ad--"You've come a long way, baby!". It was for a cigarrette, for the love of Pat! It's a hip and feminist way to stink up your house, hair, clothes, etc etc and probably die early. I always wondered who could possible take this stuff seriously. I always figured it was kids, since they're the ones who want to be hip, feminist or whatever. Once the marketer gets the kids to buy, then the adults will as well, if only because the kids turn into adults some day. That's why it works. Marketers are really the best psychologists out there today. They get results...out of kids!
You're not a kid anymore, are you? Who really cares about these ads except kids? Everyone else will just laugh at the humor, or not, and then won't remember the ad from one minute to the next.
You're not listening. Here are some facts: we have tolerated much worse behavior in Vietnam, WWII. Then, before that, there was the colonization of the Philippines, which was a long, counterinsurgency. Don't even get me on the topic of the Indian Wars. And so on. Are these facts enough for you?
If the slippery-slope was as much a danger as you say--We're all "becoming damned”--then we'd be tolerating a lot worse than caterpillar torture. Don't you think?
In contrast, one can see that the tendency is exactly the opposite of what you say--Americans today tolerate these things less and less.
The fact that we're even having this discussion is fact enough to show that I'm right. Imagine someone back in the 1880s raising the issue some government lawyer authorizing the military to hold an in'jun chief captive in a box with a caterpillar when we were giving them syphilis and turning them into hopeless alcoholics.
I understood the slippery slope argument before you were even born. Therefore, I understand that it can't be as deterministic as you seem to believe. We can always decline to go even further down that slope. If you're interested, Eugene Volokh has written a lot about this topic.
In the case at hand, history proves Volokh's point: Americans have been willing to tolerate a lot of practices in our foreign wars that they would never even consider tolerating at home. I look down on ideas like, "We cannot create a Room 101 without becoming damned" mainly because I lack the Puritan/religious spirit that this idea comes from. I don't believe in damnation. I think it's a concept for babies. But, more to the point, we have been engaging in such practices for a very long time--Scheuer only mentions the administrations with which he has direct experience. For example, the so-called greatest generation, in WWII, committed atrocities that would be unthinkable today. Read With the Old Breed, by Eugene Sledge (a WWII Okinawa vet) if you don't believe me. So, if using these techniques will "damn" us, we've been damned at least since WWII. If we are damned, then maybe being "damned" isn't so bad after all: we still have the greatest standard of living in all history.
Specifically with respect to the "torture memos," how can you seriously suggest that people be prosecuted for only thinking about certain practices--especially since reasonable people of good will can disagree as to whether these practices constitute torture. Like putting someone in a cage with a caterpillar! There's an ancient principle in the law: "nullus vulnero nullus poena" ("no harm, no penalty," or something like that).
Mark: "How, for instance, are sleep deprivation and housing in a box full of insects not 'procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality.'"
It appears that there never were people put in boxes full of stinging insects. There was the consideration of putting one extremely dangerous terrorist in a box with a caterpillar that he might think would sting him—although the interrogator was barred from telling him that it would. The technique was never even used
"You [the CIA] would like to place Zubaydah in a cramped confinement box with an insect. You have informed us [the Department of Justice] that he appears to have a fear of insects. In particular, you would like to tell Zubaydah that you intend to place a stinging insect into the box with him. You would, however, place a harmless insect in the box. You have orally informed us that you would in fact place a harmless insect such as a catapiller in the box with him."
An additional sentence at the end of this paragraph is redacted in the copy made public Thursday. Later in the same memo, Bybee concludes that "an individual placed in a box, even an individual with a fear of insects, would not reasonably feel threatened with severe physical pain or suffering if a caterpiller was placed in the box." Bybee adds, however, that the interrogators should not tell Zubaydah that the insect sting "would produce death or severe pain."
The insect interrogation technique, as it turned out, was never used by the CIA, according to a second declassified memo released Thursday.
What jumped out at me when I read the Carpenter post you link to was this:
What Bybee is describing here can't quite be called a "ticking bomb" scenario one might see in a movie or read about in a law review article, but it's about as close as one gets in real life. With the danger believed to be high and the detainee obviously knowledgeable, time becomes critical.
One can imagine a couple of default rules in cases of uncertainty about what constitutes torture: (1) err on the side of respecting the human dignity and health of the detainee, in accordance with longstanding national and international commitments and aspirations, or (2) err on the side of getting information believed to be necessary to protect human life, using techniques believed to work. The choice of default depends on which values seem paramount at the moment. It seems silly to think that these default rules and the values they represent are never in tension. And it seems too hard and pure to imagine that there aren't cases and times, like America in 2002, where one might sometimes choose the latter default rule over the former.
Where one could fault Bybee is in his initial call about which techniques are close to the line of torture and thus subject to an uncertainty default rule at all. Putting someone in uncontrollable fear of imminent death by drowning -- as in water boarding -- is a death threat. Forcing someone to stay awake for up to 11 days, perhaps by making them stand, shackled to a ceiling or wall (the precise method for keeping them awake is, incredibly, not even considered in the Bybee memo), at least runs a serious risk of causing severe physical or mental pain or suffering.
Bybee had before him a prospect we do not confront. If he refused to authorize the techniques the CIA told him it wanted to use, and on that basis the CIA did not use the techniques and did not get further information from Zubaydah, and a devastating terrorist attack followed, his high regard for human dignity would today be seen as a foolish and even calloused disregard for human lives.
All of this may argue for more precision in the definition of torture, including the banning of specific techniques of interrogation in federal law (as opposed to executive policy). Of course that would limit the flexibility one needs to meet unforeseen and dire circumstances. But one way or another torture will be given clearer definition: either in open democratic debate or in secret memos and prisons.
Carpenter's conclusion here supports my point about Congress's responsibility for legislating in the face of asymmetric warfare.
Well, Mark, I understand you. But I also understand that if you get two lawyers in a room, they'll argue about the law. That's what they're trained to do. I respect you, but I don't take your opinion as definitive, given the above. Are you an appeals lawyer? That is, are you an expert on the Constitution who can argue cases in the Federal Courts? Get two of these lawyers in a room and they'll argue about more than the law— they'll argue about the philosophy of the law, the history of the law, and the proper style for writing the law, probably for days. I'm saying that we need a group of these kinds of people to hash things out so that Congress can finally pass a law. If this happens (which it won't), then we'd have something like a national consensus on these things. I don't believe that this it the province of the courts, either. Correct me if I'm wrong. They're supposed to interpret the law, not make it.
As it is now, all we have is moral posturing and political shows.
I never said I supported torture. Like you say, link me! And don't put words in my mouth.
I may agree with you (or not) about torture weakening our ability, etc etc. My point is that the release of the memos also weakens it. A little moral ambiguity there for you, if you're interested. Well… it isn't my point. It's the point of the comments I linked to. I say they have a good point. That's all.
I was not condoning these practices by quoting Scheuer. I was only trying to show why the release of the memos is a show.
If you really thought you were a sinner and a fool, you would never have said that you were a sinner and a fool. That's how these things work.
Rats are not "self-righteous moralist pricks." They're just rats. You then would identify with O'Brian, who was the very archetype of a "self-righteous moralist prick." Just goes to show you…the artist can only do so much, but people will identify with whom they will…
Jaybird: That what everyone does, believe it or not. That's because Orwell was a great artist, not because you have any special moral sensibility or "fundamental alienation."
It's a good point to bring up, nevertheless. The situation described by Orwell had absolutely nothing to do with today's situation. It was similar to the Stalinist Terror. The key point, both in Orwell and in the Terror, is that suspects, like Winston, had done nothing wrong and posed no danger to anyone except possibly to the regime. None of the millions who were murdered in the Terror were terrorists who posed a danger to society. Nobody was being protected from Winston, which is the whole point of Orwell's book. Don't you think that today's situation is different?
The definitions may be clear for you but the application of such definitions is always a matter for the courts and lawyers. All I said was that the Bush admin argued for a wider interpretation than you (for example) will accept. I never said anything like "whatever interpretation the Bush Administration put on the pre-existing law must be reasonable," even by implication. I admit that I fall on the "wider interpretation" side of the spectrum, but you have no grounds at all to attribute any specific views to me, since I have not expressed them.
Just because Congress "did what it did and didn't do what it didn't do" does not let them off the hook as far as I'm concerned. I'm not really familiar with the Patriot Act, but isn't this about domestic affairs? Here, we're talking about our conduct in wartime, which is international affairs. I'm not aware that Congress has legislated on this but I'm probably wrong. If not, then I still say they have abdicated their responsibility since Congress is the only branch of government with the authority to make laws at all. Also Bush failed by not calling on them to step up and it looks like Obama will fail here as well.
I say that the situation calls for a thorough review of our legal framework. This is not chopped liver, as my Mom used to say. It's complicated and requires the efforts of probably hundreds of real constitutional scholars (not fake ones like Obama). The president has the power of convocation to do this but in the end, it's the Congress's job, which they could do even without the president's involvement. They won't do it while they're involved in moral posturing and grandstanding, which means that they won't do it ever.
Enough with the liberty and justice we hold so dear, our national honor and dignity! I get it: you're a morally righteous individual. That point is taken (over and over and over again). Why belabor the point? If you keep this up, I'm going to put you down as some kind of schoolmarmish moral scold.
I'm pretty sure that there will be no "truth commission." That's because these practices have gone on under both Republican and Democratic administrations for a long time and in the case of the Bush administration, Congress was fully informed as things went along and raised no objections at all. Like Scheuer said:
All of the whining to date has been nothing more than a Democratic effort to politically hang Mr. Bush — which is not a bad idea for his starting of the Iraq war — and to make sure that the far worse things that happened to those rendered under the direction of that merry pair of felons, Clinton and Berger, are hidden from public view.
The more potent objection to releasing the memos is that they give our practices away to the enemy and make it much more difficult for our intelligence operatives to do their jobs.
Another reason is
Current and former CIA officials, on the other hand, have warned that a public investigation into the agency's practices would push line agents into an uncontrollable political spectacle, chilling efforts to prevent future terrorist attacks.-- Shane Harris, NationalJournal.com
Instead of releasing these incendiary memos to no purpose at all, justice and national security would have been served had Obama called for a thorough revision of our legal framework so as to make it adequate to the challenges that asymmetric warfare poses. Then let sleeping dogs lie.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “a quote for the middle of the afternoon”
Sorry. The above is from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/20/AR2009042002818.html
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For one, your post gives the lie to your own previous "we're loosing our soul"-type opinions. We have done much worse than the worst the Bush administration authorized and we're still breathing in air.
I admit I'm not too clear on the legal issues involved and I do tend to agree with Mathew Dallman that the Bush "enhanced interrogation" techniques do not constitute torture. At least, I can admit that reasonable people, who are responsible for the national security, can disagree about one technique or another.
However, from what I know, the enhanced interrogation of KSM did generate information that helped to thwart attacks against America.
The following gives a new twist to this:
I can't see anything in your discussions of torture that addresses this issue. I can't see any evidence that interrogators were doing anything but what Thiessen says they were: "helping the terrorist do his duty to Allah, so he then feels liberated to speak freely." I think that this is at least defensible as a moral position but it is absolutely unassailable from a national security perspective.
On “Why I’m Conflicted on Torture Prosecutions”
"this isn’t a Constitutional issue , it’s a criminal law issue, and the torture memos are beyond poorly reasoned from a legal standpoint."
I'm not sure what this means. Isn't the Constitution the basis of criminal law? I'm saying that criminal law needs to be adapted to meet the challenges of the global insurgency/asymmetric war. We need to do this within the limits of the Constitution, otherwise our ass is grass.
I know that Congress had and has the responsibility to do this. I know that they didn't do it. That's my whole point.
About the KSM waterboarding, you're saying that interrogators went beyond the limits permitted even by the memos (which according to you are unpermissable anyway). That's only more grist for my mill: we need clear limits on this type of thing, not just memos by government lawyers that can be used for political gain in the future.
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Ooops! I guess I got the quote from an article that Transplanted Lawyer linked to. I don't think it's worth it to find now and I don't have time anyway. So, sorry about that!
In any case, I can't understand how getting KSM to give up info in less than a month can be called "ineffective."
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I would agree with Cascadian, above, if this were a situation like the Nixon "enemies list" or where we were using torture on a massive scale to get bogus confessions, etc etc. But aren't all the cases that the memos deal with about using coercive interrogation techniques selectively to get information that would save American lives? Political enemies of the Bush administration weren't wiretapped and tortured; only foreign enemies, like KSM, were. I may go nuts if I hear one more "we're becomming damned" or "we're becomming monsters" comment. This isn't about heaven and hell. I'm sick of people mixing their religious beliefs into national security doctrine.
The above is from the article you recommend.
Somehow, the above author wants us to believe that waterboarding isn't effective. Getting KSM to give up information after a month, especially since we know that he was never really in any danger of dying under torture and that they only made him believe that he was, seems pretty effective to me. I'm sure this is a reason why he confessed in open court: he wants his martyr cred back. Do we really know that the info that KSM gave up was useless and therefore that waterboarding wasn't effective? I'm sure that a lot of this stuff is still classified and will be for a long time so I have to declare myself agnostic on this issue.
On the other hand, if the CIA can get someone like KSM to talk--after only one month--wouldn't this put the fear into al Qaeda operatives around the world? Don't we want them to be afraid of us?
Would the capture of KSM fit into the "ticking bomb" scenario somehow? It's just a question but it seems reasonable that the authorities felt that kind of "ticking bomb" pressure on them at the time (early 2003).
Would the capture of the man who planned or had a role in planning 9/11, World Trade Center 1993 bombings, the Operation Bojinka plot, an aborted 2002 attack on Los Angeles' U.S. Bank Tower, the Bali nightclub bombings, the failed bombing of American Airlines Flight 63, the Millennium Plot, and the murder of Daniel Pearl be legitimate reason to apply the "ticking bomb" template?
There never is an exact fit between any template and reality. That's why people have to be around to apply them. Otherwise, they're useless. Application is always a judgement call. Are we being fair if we demand that people be prosecuted for a judgement that in hindsight we think is wrong?
I'm not trying to apologize for torture or to defend it (although if I had been in charge, I may have ordered KSM's eternal torture as punishment for what he did, which is only one of millions of reasons why I'm not in charge.)
What I am trying to do is to beat the dead horse I killed a while back: we need a clear and open discussion of the constitutional limits on coercive interrogation. We need this discussion to happen in the Congress, where the result will be a new legal framework that we can all live with. Then, the "ticking bomb" scenario would have clear and open proceedures before it's applied, etc etc. and there would be no political hay to be made out of the issue. That's why I say that Congress has been avoiding its responsibility. I can understand why they are, since it's an issue where one is bound to give up a lot of negative sound-bites all the time.
On “I think…”
That's what I do. But it's annoying to see Sullivan open up in a new tab and then have to close it and go back to what I was reading before. If you made it clear that you were linking to him, you'd save me some aggravation.
On “Why I care about this Apple vs. PC business”
ED Kain: "your safest bet is to ditch your TV altogether. I haven’t seen one of these ads in years…."
That's another of the beauties of capitalism--anyone can just opt out with relatively low hassle.
Just so you know we have something in common, I opted out of TV before you were even born and my kids were raised without it. They learned to fight with each other and whatever instead of watching TV. They hated us for it then, but now, they've all told me they're grateful we gave them the opportunity to develop their imaginations.
It's not all that easy, since most people will reference TV all the time and these things stump me, like hearing people use words from a foreign language or slang I don't know. For kids, it's even worse.
On “I think…”
Could you do me a favor? When you link to Andrew Sullivan, could you make that clear in the link itself somehow? That way I wouldn't have to click on the link and get frustrated because it's Andrew Sullivan BS again and then click "back" etc etc. Just as a favor, that's all...
On “Why I care about this Apple vs. PC business”
You're getting all worked up about nothing... an ad campaign, for god's sake! Apple wants to sell computers and I guess they found a way to do it. That's about the size of it.
These people really must know what they're doing to spend so many millions of dollars on an ad campaign. The depressing part is that they're right and their idea works. People like to think that they're superior to others somehow and if it's as easy as buying a certain computer, then...
If you want to rant about something, how about the idea that people define themselves by the products they buy? Everything about advertising is "personality based." You probably don't remember the "Virginia Slims" ad--"You've come a long way, baby!". It was for a cigarrette, for the love of Pat! It's a hip and feminist way to stink up your house, hair, clothes, etc etc and probably die early. I always wondered who could possible take this stuff seriously. I always figured it was kids, since they're the ones who want to be hip, feminist or whatever. Once the marketer gets the kids to buy, then the adults will as well, if only because the kids turn into adults some day. That's why it works. Marketers are really the best psychologists out there today. They get results...out of kids!
You're not a kid anymore, are you? Who really cares about these ads except kids? Everyone else will just laugh at the humor, or not, and then won't remember the ad from one minute to the next.
On “The Torture Memos”
Assumes facts not in evidence.
On “Who was Spengler?”
Thanks for the info. I'm a big fan too.
On “The Torture Memos”
You're not listening. Here are some facts: we have tolerated much worse behavior in Vietnam, WWII. Then, before that, there was the colonization of the Philippines, which was a long, counterinsurgency. Don't even get me on the topic of the Indian Wars. And so on. Are these facts enough for you?
If the slippery-slope was as much a danger as you say--We're all "becoming damned”--then we'd be tolerating a lot worse than caterpillar torture. Don't you think?
In contrast, one can see that the tendency is exactly the opposite of what you say--Americans today tolerate these things less and less.
The fact that we're even having this discussion is fact enough to show that I'm right. Imagine someone back in the 1880s raising the issue some government lawyer authorizing the military to hold an in'jun chief captive in a box with a caterpillar when we were giving them syphilis and turning them into hopeless alcoholics.
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I understood the slippery slope argument before you were even born. Therefore, I understand that it can't be as deterministic as you seem to believe. We can always decline to go even further down that slope. If you're interested, Eugene Volokh has written a lot about this topic.
In the case at hand, history proves Volokh's point: Americans have been willing to tolerate a lot of practices in our foreign wars that they would never even consider tolerating at home. I look down on ideas like, "We cannot create a Room 101 without becoming damned" mainly because I lack the Puritan/religious spirit that this idea comes from. I don't believe in damnation. I think it's a concept for babies. But, more to the point, we have been engaging in such practices for a very long time--Scheuer only mentions the administrations with which he has direct experience. For example, the so-called greatest generation, in WWII, committed atrocities that would be unthinkable today. Read With the Old Breed, by Eugene Sledge (a WWII Okinawa vet) if you don't believe me. So, if using these techniques will "damn" us, we've been damned at least since WWII. If we are damned, then maybe being "damned" isn't so bad after all: we still have the greatest standard of living in all history.
Specifically with respect to the "torture memos," how can you seriously suggest that people be prosecuted for only thinking about certain practices--especially since reasonable people of good will can disagree as to whether these practices constitute torture. Like putting someone in a cage with a caterpillar! There's an ancient principle in the law: "nullus vulnero nullus poena" ("no harm, no penalty," or something like that).
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Great! What's next, Robespierre? Revolutionar tribunals?
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So now people will be prosecuted for thinking about doing this stuff? This righteous wrath run amok.
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Mark: "How, for instance, are sleep deprivation and housing in a box full of insects not 'procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality.'"
It appears that there never were people put in boxes full of stinging insects. There was the consideration of putting one extremely dangerous terrorist in a box with a caterpillar that he might think would sting him—although the interrogator was barred from telling him that it would. The technique was never even used
On “Initial Thoughts on the Memos”
What jumped out at me when I read the Carpenter post you link to was this:
Carpenter's conclusion here supports my point about Congress's responsibility for legislating in the face of asymmetric warfare.
On “truth and consequences”
Sorry about that. I shouldn't have gone there since it's about your religious beliefs. I apologize.
On “The Torture Memos”
Jaybird: "We cannot create a Room 101 without becoming damned.
Then we've been damned for a long time, if you believe Scheuer.
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Well, Mark, I understand you. But I also understand that if you get two lawyers in a room, they'll argue about the law. That's what they're trained to do. I respect you, but I don't take your opinion as definitive, given the above. Are you an appeals lawyer? That is, are you an expert on the Constitution who can argue cases in the Federal Courts? Get two of these lawyers in a room and they'll argue about more than the law— they'll argue about the philosophy of the law, the history of the law, and the proper style for writing the law, probably for days. I'm saying that we need a group of these kinds of people to hash things out so that Congress can finally pass a law. If this happens (which it won't), then we'd have something like a national consensus on these things. I don't believe that this it the province of the courts, either. Correct me if I'm wrong. They're supposed to interpret the law, not make it.
As it is now, all we have is moral posturing and political shows.
On “truth and consequences”
I never said I supported torture. Like you say, link me! And don't put words in my mouth.
I may agree with you (or not) about torture weakening our ability, etc etc. My point is that the release of the memos also weakens it. A little moral ambiguity there for you, if you're interested. Well… it isn't my point. It's the point of the comments I linked to. I say they have a good point. That's all.
I was not condoning these practices by quoting Scheuer. I was only trying to show why the release of the memos is a show.
If you really thought you were a sinner and a fool, you would never have said that you were a sinner and a fool. That's how these things work.
On “The Torture Memos”
ED Kain:
Rats are not "self-righteous moralist pricks." They're just rats. You then would identify with O'Brian, who was the very archetype of a "self-righteous moralist prick." Just goes to show you…the artist can only do so much, but people will identify with whom they will…
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Jaybird: That what everyone does, believe it or not. That's because Orwell was a great artist, not because you have any special moral sensibility or "fundamental alienation."
It's a good point to bring up, nevertheless. The situation described by Orwell had absolutely nothing to do with today's situation. It was similar to the Stalinist Terror. The key point, both in Orwell and in the Terror, is that suspects, like Winston, had done nothing wrong and posed no danger to anyone except possibly to the regime. None of the millions who were murdered in the Terror were terrorists who posed a danger to society. Nobody was being protected from Winston, which is the whole point of Orwell's book. Don't you think that today's situation is different?
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The definitions may be clear for you but the application of such definitions is always a matter for the courts and lawyers. All I said was that the Bush admin argued for a wider interpretation than you (for example) will accept. I never said anything like "whatever interpretation the Bush Administration put on the pre-existing law must be reasonable," even by implication. I admit that I fall on the "wider interpretation" side of the spectrum, but you have no grounds at all to attribute any specific views to me, since I have not expressed them.
Just because Congress "did what it did and didn't do what it didn't do" does not let them off the hook as far as I'm concerned. I'm not really familiar with the Patriot Act, but isn't this about domestic affairs? Here, we're talking about our conduct in wartime, which is international affairs. I'm not aware that Congress has legislated on this but I'm probably wrong. If not, then I still say they have abdicated their responsibility since Congress is the only branch of government with the authority to make laws at all. Also Bush failed by not calling on them to step up and it looks like Obama will fail here as well.
I say that the situation calls for a thorough review of our legal framework. This is not chopped liver, as my Mom used to say. It's complicated and requires the efforts of probably hundreds of real constitutional scholars (not fake ones like Obama). The president has the power of convocation to do this but in the end, it's the Congress's job, which they could do even without the president's involvement. They won't do it while they're involved in moral posturing and grandstanding, which means that they won't do it ever.
On “truth and consequences”
Enough with the liberty and justice we hold so dear, our national honor and dignity! I get it: you're a morally righteous individual. That point is taken (over and over and over again). Why belabor the point? If you keep this up, I'm going to put you down as some kind of schoolmarmish moral scold.
I'm pretty sure that there will be no "truth commission." That's because these practices have gone on under both Republican and Democratic administrations for a long time and in the case of the Bush administration, Congress was fully informed as things went along and raised no objections at all. Like Scheuer said:
The more potent objection to releasing the memos is that they give our practices away to the enemy and make it much more difficult for our intelligence operatives to do their jobs.
Another reason is
Instead of releasing these incendiary memos to no purpose at all, justice and national security would have been served had Obama called for a thorough revision of our legal framework so as to make it adequate to the challenges that asymmetric warfare poses. Then let sleeping dogs lie.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.