Oh, I’ve always been willing to suspect the CIA of complicity in coups d’etat, assassinations, black ops – all sorts of unsavory and criminal practices having nothing whatsoever to do with an intelligence-gathering mission. I could cite many well-documented examples (Iran, Chile, maybe even the abortive coup in Venezuela). But I always believed those things happened because of insufficient Congressional oversight and insufficient DOJ policing and insufficient political will to stop them, not because such activities were expressly or even implicitly authorized by U.S. law. The distinction is crucial.
And interrogation through torture, even psychological torture, is way over the line even by those standards.
Thanks for the link. That gives a good clarification of Clinton’s stated position, although she limits her objection to waterboarding specifically, and doesn’t address other interrogation techniques. Still, she mentions the AFM specifically. Obama does, too, so I would presume that either would sign this bill if he/she were president. I will retract my doubt about that.
Are you asking if I think the CIA shouldn’t even have to spell out these techniques to the Senate? I mean, that’s what we’re talking about here, since only the Senate gets to read the whole AFM. The point is that whatever the classified section does include, we know it doesn’t include the sleep deprivation, waterboarding, etc., because the Senate has told us as much.
But on the general principle, I think that it’s entirely appropriate to spell out the limits of how they can interrogate detainees, given the CIA’s blunders in this area. Does that help terrorists prepare for capture? Maybe. Though, as we’ve seen, the techniques we use become public whether we list them in statutes or not. I think whatever leverage “secret” interrogation techniques gives the CIA, it is far outweighed by the damage done to our reputation by allowing the CIA to use techniques which most of the world condemns.
All that is apart from the moral argument against many of these “secret” techniques, which I think is also compelling.
I’ve always expected that those Congresscritters with enough clearance were aware of much, if not most, of what was going on.
Well, ask 100 people to define torture and you’re likely to get 100 different answers. Like I said earlier, I’m happy to have the Intelligence Committees of the House and the Senate approve of CIA techniques, and I think they should. However, I think the the CIA needs to be given more leeway than the military does, and I don’t want the extent of that leeway made public.
Now, it could very well be that the AFM, with it’s 10 censored pages, would be perfectly adequate for the CIA to get its business done. But we’ll probably never know that. I don’t know about Clinton (too much of a political animal), but I consider Obama and McCain to be apolitical on the issue of torture, so I would suggest that reasonable people can disagree on this subject. Your earlier comments would imply otherwise.
I may be misunderstanding you, but I think you’re offering a false dichotomy here. It’s possible to increase Congressional oversight of CIA activities without making the particulars public. Because in the end, we have to have some trust in our elected officials. If they are not exercising proper oversight, it doesn’t matter how many laws we pass if we have a president like Bush. If we don’t have a president like Bush, then this becomes much less of a problem.
Assuming you mean 54, he says it should be spelled out in legislation. That legislation could be public or classified. In this case, it’s classified. But even in the theoretical case of public legislation, I think that’s OK too for the reasons I pointed to.
Indeed, as I pointed out in my post, that’s what we’re talking about in this very instance with the restriction to the AFM which is partially classified.
The effective counter for torture is information discipline, all clandestine organizations know this. Nobody knows more than they need to. If anyone is captured, you assume that he gave them everything. You tell your people not to resist torture, because there is no point. Then, torture simply becomes an excercise in malice.
True. But it’s also up to the Pentagon, not the CIA, as to whether or not it remains classified. Still, I see the CIA and the Pentagon as having quite distinct missions. I have no problem with “we don’t talk about sources or methods” wrt to the CIA. I want it to be that way (within the bounds of Congressional oversight). On that point we may simply have to agree to disagree.
McCain supported the veto. Only the latest act in his total abdication of principle. His whole campaign has been nothing but a fire sale on every bit of personal credibility and integrity he’s ever built up.
Torture is stupid. It does not work. Saddam was very outgoing with an agent who seemed to befriend him. It is typical for those who actually in the business to say torture is ineffectual .
It also says if we have you ,you are guilty and know things we want. They apparently are lesser humans and should have no rights. It is a terrible message about who we are and what we think about citizens of other countries. Bad message. It diminishes all of us personally .It diminishes America.