[Dean's World] Dean: Agreement On "Torture"

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Dean:
Agreement On "Torture"
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1159011662.shtml


   Quoted:

     The details of this week's compromise on detainee treatment between
     the White House and a small group of Senators led by John McCain
     are complicated. But the upshot of the agreement is simple and
     welcome: Aggressive CIA interrogations of such high-level al Qaeda
     prisoners as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be able to continue.

     The CIA program was thrown into legal limbo by the Supreme Court's
     June ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which said that Common Article 3
     of the Geneva Conventions applies to our conflict with al Qaeda. It
     was a bad ruling, since Article 3 is intended to apply to civil
     wars. But its vague prohibitions against "humiliating" and
     "degrading" treatment nonetheless became the law of the land,
     exposing CIA interrogators to potential legal jeopardy for conduct
     as benign as using women to question Muslim detainees.

     So the White House went to Congress asking, among other things, for
     help in clarifying what terms like "humiliating" and "degrading"
     actually mean. Senator McCain and his allies objected that this
     would be tantamount to "rewriting" the Geneva Conventions. But
     their objection wasn't very convincing, since every country in the
     world already interprets Article 3 and somebody in the U.S. has to
     do so in real-world situations; legal clarity is better than
     leaving that job to activist judges and lawyers. In the end, the
     Senators came most of the way toward the White House position.

     Congress will specify what it considers "grave" breaches of
     Geneva--such as torture and cruel and inhuman treatment. But it
     will be up to the Executive Branch--with Congress's advance
     blessing--to go ahead and issue a public Executive Order defining
     "non-grave" breaches. This isn't exactly the full-throated
     Congressional endorsement that CIA interrogators ought to be able
     to expect. But it is still an unprecedented acknowledgement that
     some forms of aggressive interrogation are both necessary and
     permissible in the war on terror.

     To be more specific, it's a fair bet that waterboarding--or
     simulated drowning, the most controversial of the CIA's reported
     interrogation techniques--will not be allowed under the new White
     House rules. But sleep deprivation and temperature variations, to
     name two other methods, will likely pass muster. This is not about
     "torture" or even "abuse," as some Administration critics
     dishonestly charge, but about being able to make life uncomfortable
     for al Qaeda prisoners who have been trained to resist milder forms
     of interrogation.

   More [1]here.

References

   1. http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008986