But that’s what you said in the previous post. You said you were concerned about this administrations potential actions. Here:
And just to be clear, I don’t think sleep deprivation is always torture. I think the CIA should be able to use that technique for interrogation. If this bill disallows that, then I’m even more against it.
I don’t know specifically which techniques fall under the category of “non-DOD techniques”, so I really can’t respond to your first sentence other than to say what I said earlier: if sleep deprivation is outlawed by this bill, then I’m against it.
However, I’m not sure how the events at Abu Ghraib are relevant here. They were illegal at the time they were committed, and people have been prosecuted for those actions under laws that have nothing to do with the DTA of 2005 or this current legislation. If those laws didn’t stop that from happening, I don’t see how this law would.
Defend that “it is unclear to me…”? No, you make it clear to me why it should be so.
Neither you nor I have read the Army Field Manual. For either of us to state that that should be the guide would be arguing from ignorance. If, as has been proposed by Richard, the AFM disallows the use of sleep deprivation, then I don’t support this bill, and I’m starting to see why Obama and Clinton didn’t want to go on record with a vote for or against it. They would have to debate John McCain, who seems to have a reasonable position on this subject, and one that (I believe) a clear majority of Americans would agree with.
I don’t understand what you’re arguing here, John. First you argued that this bill didn’t do anything (or you were skeptical that it did). Now that you’ve been disabused of that, you seem to be arguing that the bill isn’t a good thing. Is that right? You now concede it does have a significant effect, you just don’t like it?
A lot of stuff happened at Abu Ghraib. Much of it wasn’t illegal according to the Bush administration’s interpretation, including the things you apparently favor (severe sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, minor beatings, systematic humiliation, etc.). And the reason it is relevant is because it demonstrates how damaging these techniques are to our battle against terrorist recruitment. It destroys the image of the US as a protector of human rights.
I wanted confirmation of what the bill actually said (which only came with your recent post). I stated early on that it was unclear to me the the AFM should be the governing body for the CIA, long before you actually quoted the legislation. So, you took care of the first part, but not the second.
Why is the AFM the appropriate guide to use for the CIA? And why is sleep deprivation a tool that we want the CIA not to be able to use?
I’m only incidentally interested in the part about Clinton and Obama. We’ll never know for sure, and pretty much anything we argue is going to be speculation. If you want to brush that off, it’s fine with me.
That seems simple enough. It’s much preferable to the current setup where Justice and the president get to pick and choose what’s allowable on any particular day;
On the second point, I’m not sure I’d be any more persuasive than the half-dozen threads on sleep deprivation, etc., that we’ve already had on this board. So I’m happy to just agree to disagree on that.
I don’t think it’s good policy to try and enumerate the interrogation techniques allowed to be used by the CIA as part of a piece of legislation. In fact, I think that would be a terrible idea. I have no problem allowing the House and/or Senate Intelligence Committee(s) to review and approve whatever manual the CIA uses, but that should be done in a classified manner.
Is it good policy to let the president and the attorney general decide what goes on their own?
Until there are limits to that, there’s no point in doing anything in a classified manner.
Bush doesn’t think there are any limits. So, where does that get us? Besides, the AFM itself is, in part, classified. There is no point having a CIA (ie, a spy agency) if everything it does is spelled out in legislation.
No, of course not. But there is obvious and indispensable value in having everything it can’t do spelled out in legislation, just as with every other agency; and that is the world most of us (truly or falsely) thought we were living in before this Administration began.
Has that ever been done before? I don’t consider it “obvious and indispensable” at all.
The CIA, being a spy agency, is unique. As such, it stands to reason that it should have some unique features, and that those would be related to it’s covert actions.
I never thought that. I would call that point of view naive, at the very least.
I would expect the FBI to operate under stricter regulations than the military, in the same way that I would expect the military to operate under stricter regulations than the CIA. I would, however, expect the CIA to operate within the bounds of the Geneva Conventions, to the extent that they apply in any given case. I would hope that our military would have stricter standards than those, which I would consider to be the bare minimum.
But just to be clear, the GCs are pretty high level documents, not getting into anywhere near the detail one would expect from something like the AFM.
Fine. I don’t think that any “spy” agency should automatically have everything it can’t do spelled out in legislation “just as with every other agency”. That was the argument I was responding to. Do you agree with **BG **on that point?
The DIA, being part of the military, may have good reason for wanting to stay within the AFM. That doesn’t surprise me.