On torture, or the claims about torture

[eisely]

The following piece comes from the Wall Street Journal.

 

Now I don't know whether water boarding is torture or not. However, as the writer points out, if the congressional democrats still believe that water boarding is torture there is nothing preventing them from passing such legislation instead of merely relying on Obama's executive order. But then, that would require people in congress to take a stand on a difficult issue.

 

________________________________________

 

When Leon Panetta comes before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday about his nomination to head the Central Intelligence Agency, he ought to be asked tough questions about the things he's said about torture. And he will.

 

At a time when key congressional Democrats are backing calls to investigate Bush administration officials for war crimes, it would help if our elected representatives first answered the tough questions themselves. But they won't. And therein lies the key to understanding contemporary congressional morality.

 

For the past few years, no word has been more casually thrown about than "torture." At the same time, no word has been less precisely defined. That suits Congress just fine, because it allows members to take a pass on defining the law while reserving the right to second-guess the poor souls on the front lines who actually have to make decisions about what the law means.

 

Last February, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid thumped loudly when they sent George W. Bush a bill that would have limited the CIA to the interrogation techniques found in the Army Field Manual -- knowing full well that he would veto it. Now they have a Democratic president who says he shares their views. So why not send him a bill declaring once and for all that waterboarding and other interrogation techniques constitute torture?

 

Manifestly our system of government gives them the right to do so. As CIA Director Michael Hayden noted in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in September 2007, the "CIA operates only within the space given to us by the American people. . . . That space is defined by the policy makers we elect and the laws our representatives pass."

 

Of course, defining that space would require something in short supply in Washington: an adult conversation. In such a conversation, good men and women could present the case for enhanced interrogation without having their words twisted and finding themselves held up in public as latter-day Torquemadas. Such a conversation might also begin by examining the reigning assumption of today's debate: that context and circumstances have nothing to say about what we call torture.

 

This is not the reasoning we apply in other areas. Consider a police officer who kills a criminal in a justifiable shooting. We do not call that murder, because the circumstances surrounding the act determine our judgment of that act. If that's true for something as serious as killing, is it really impossible that similar reasoning might apply to interrogation practices that leave no permanent physical or mental damage?

 

At times, even critics inadvertently make the point. When it is argued, for example, that Navy Seals have undergone waterboarding as part of their training, the response is, well, waterboarding someone as part of his military training is different from waterboarding someone in custody. Yes: Of course it is. In the real world, circumstances and context are crucial to our moral judgments.

 

While we're at it, let's forget about the theoretical ticking time bomb. Instead, consider a real assertion: Leaders in our intelligence community have declared that the intelligence gained from enhanced interrogations of high-value terrorists have helped save innocent lives.

 

You don't believe them? Fine. Bring in the people who know -- behind closed doors if you want them to speak honestly and avoid spilling classified information. And then come to an informed conclusion.

 

In a better day, Congress would allow the executive branch a great deal of latitude during a time of war. We, however, do not live in a better day. In our day, senators and congressmen call for inquisitions of people who operate within a vague torture statute that Congress could easily clarify if it wanted.

 

A year ago, the Speaker of the House expressed herself thus: "Failing to legally prohibit the use of waterboarding and other harsh techniques," she said, "undermines our nation's moral authority, puts American military and diplomatic personnel at risk, and undermines the quality of intelligence."

 

So what's stopping her? The ban President Barack Obama has put in place is not a law but an executive order that can be reversed. This order came, moreover, with a huge back door in the form of a "task force" that will study whether eliminating waterboarding and other enhanced techniques will affect our intelligence needs.

 

If Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Reid believe their own public statements that waterboarding and other techniques are both torture and ineffective, they ought to incorporate their words into a law that takes these practices off the table forever.

 

That, of course, would mean a vote that would force lawmakers to face up to the real-life consequences of their actions -- and submit those actions to the judgment of the American people.

 

And as Mr. Obama is learning, the one thing that frightens Congress more than al Qaeda is accountability.

 

 

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Well, the US prosecuted Japanese soldiers who used waterboarding as torture, so I'd say it's torture.

[eisely]

Prosecuting Japanese soldiers would be an important precedent. The main point of the article is not whether water boarding per se is properly considered torture beyond the boundaries of permissable interrogation techniques, but the hypocrisy of our congress. If the democrat majorities in congress really accept this view they should be willing to vote on it again when they have a president who shares their views.

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

So your whole point was a red herring to divert attention from the Bush administration's use of torture and Gonzales' memos OKing it? Are you really trying to criticize Democrats for not moving fast enough to reverse Bush's introduction of torture, while never criticizing the Bush administration for using torture?

 

I guess I'd call that tortured logic.

[TheScout]

Were the Japs signatories to the Geneva Conventions?

 

If so the American servicemen were protected.

[eisely]

I am not convinced that the Bush administration did anything wrong in this area, but I keep an open mind on the subject.

 

What I am saying is that the democrat representatives (e.g., John Conyers) are serious in their intent to criminalize policy differences and demand prosecution of Bush administration people, then such representatives should have the guts to put a bill in the hopper again to force the issue. Show me a bill.

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

A bill to do what? Presumably, if Bush officials broke the law or treaties like the Geneva Conventions, no bills need to be passed to prosecute them. And if Bush officials didn't break the law, it would be unconstitutional to try and pass an ex-post facto law. So I don't know what kind of bill you want to see. What would it do?

[eisely]

A bill to proscribe in detail those practices the congress thinks should be prohibited to employees of the federal government, whether CIA, FBI, military, or whatever. If the democrats in congress wish to prohibit certain practices then they should exercise their constitutional power to do so.

 

This has nothing to do with whether or not any charges should be brought against Bush administration people. They can only be charged under the law as it existed at the time, including applicable treaties that the US has signed and ratified.

 

If the congress wants to make it illegal for a federal employee to ask somebody's name, the congress can do that. Rather than dance around the issue, the congress should put up or shut up.

[CalicoPenn]

Patience, Grasshopper.

 

Congress has been in session for 1 month. During that time, the House was concentrating on an economic recovery package and the Senate has been concentrating on a new presidential administration's cabinet picks.

 

Give them a bit of time, and they'll probably get to it fairly quickly.

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Well, in my opinion, the Bush administration ignored the Geneva Conventions, and all that's really required is to state that the US will go back to observing the Geneva Conventions.

[Beavah]

A bill to proscribe in detail those practices the congress thinks should be prohibited to employees of the federal government, whether CIA, FBI, military, or whatever.

 

Yah, that would be a foolish bill, eh?

 

By enumeratin' prohibited practices, yeh allow everything else. Such a bill would only succeed in permitting a variety of torture practices not anticipated by Congress in writin' the bill.

 

There's nothing particularly ambiguous about our treaty obligations and laws with respect to torture. Doesn't need another law. It needs a jury.

 

I dislike criminalization of policy differences, eh? But this ain't one of 'em. Torture of prisoners is criminal, and criminals should be prosecuted.

 

Beavah

 

[TheScout]

"By enumeratin' prohibited practices, yeh allow everything else."

 

The original argument why the Bill of Rights was not in the Constitution.

[GernBlansten]

Its just situational ethics.

After WW2, we prosecuted and executed those who waterboarded our soldiers.

Now its OK to do it. What changed?

[DanKroh]

Come on, Gern, isn't it obvious what's changed?

 

Those were our soldiers, these are foreigners.

[Kahuna]

>>Were the Japs signatories to the Geneva Conventions?