The Ticking Time Bomb & Coerecive Interrogation

Soccer Dad sent me a link to an article near a decade old written Stephen Flatow in the NYT. The article illustrates a "ticking time bomb" scenario - a scenario when our intelligence agencies have reason to believe that a terrorist in our custody has information that could stop a terrorist plot slated to occur in the near or, at least, foreseeable future. In a post below, I address Rick Moran's argument that such a scenario is purely the stuff of fiction. Here is a heart breaking real world example of a ticking time bomb scenario from the pages of the NYT:

On Aug. 21, 1995, Suffiyan Jabarin, a 26-year-old Palestinian member of the terrorist organization Hamas, blew himself up on a bus in the heart of Jerusalem, taking the lives of four people -- three Israelis and an American -- with him.

I followed the story of the bombing on Bus 26 quite closely; my 20-year-old daughter, Alisa, had been killed by an Islamic Jihad suicide bomber on a bus in Israel four months earlier. A few days after the Aug. 21 attack, Israeli and American newspapers reported that the man who masterminded it, Abdel Nasser Issa, had been in Israeli custody two days before the bombing.

Israeli authorities had arrested Mr. Issa on suspicion of terrorist activity and questioned him the same way they would question anyone else: posing questions and waiting for answers. Mr. Issa revealed nothing unusual to his interviewers. It was only after the bus bombing that Karmi Gilon, then chief of Israel's secret service, the Shin Bet, authorized the use of ''moderate physical force.''

The next morning, Mr. Issa, who had not been told of the bombing of Bus 26 the day before, told the Israelis about his plan for that attack. He also provided information that led to the arrests of 37 Hamas militants who had been planning additional bombings.

Mr. Gilon told reporters that the blood of the next victims of terrorism would have been on his hands if physical pressure had not been used in the interrogation of Mr. Issa. And Yitzhak Rabin, then Prime Minister of Israel, said that had the Shin Bet applied such pressure earlier, the attack on Bus 26 might have been prevented.

In the last two years, the Shin Bet has averted 90 planned terrorist attacks. Yet the United Nations Committee Against Torture recently condemned Israel's methods of questioning suspected terrorists as torture, even though Israel limits and regulates the use of force and allows detainees to petition the highest court to stop possibly illegal measures. . . .

I have always cherished America's unparalleled standards of individual and human rights. But the Middle East is different from the United States. Israel lives in what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called ''a very tough neighborhood.'' Indeed, more than 200 Israelis have been killed in terrorist attacks during the past four years.

The most important obligation of any country is protecting the lives of its citizens. To hold individual human rights as an absolute rule when occasional exceptions to that rule can prevent the random murder of civilians seems to me morally unjustifiable. Moreover, Israel's use of limited physical pressure during interrogations, a practice that is regulated and regularly reviewed, cannot be compared with the uncontrolled torture of suspects employed by some of Israel's neighbors, like Syria. . . .

I cannot consider the individual rights of a Palestinian detainee in an Israeli jail as a separate issue from protecting the lives of bus passengers. Nor do I have the luxury of examining this question from an abstract moral perspective.

If applying limited physical pressure to a suspected terrorist can spare even one parent the pain of losing a son or a daughter, I am all for it. In the meantime, I pray that the conditions that give rise to the need for such methods will speedily come to an end.

Read the entire article. It is of course depressing to know that the decision to conduct a coercive interrogation did not occur in the above case until after people died. Still, it would seem that the information gleaned did stop other similar bombings.

The tough neighborhood Mr. Flatow describes came to our shores on 9-11. There can be no doubt that it will come again given the opportunity. This also ties in to my post here, examining the moral issues that surround coercive interrogation tactics. Talk of protecting lives in the abstract as a moral imperative of the President is one thing. Hearing it through the pen of a man who lost his daughter to terrorism gives the issue the solidity it deserves.

Read More...

Summary only...

Obama: Releasing Memos & Degrading Our National Security

Obama's decision to release the legal memos on interrogation techniques prepared by OLC lawyers during the Bush Administration was a wrong-headed move meant by Obama to, one, show his moral superiority to the world, and two, to satisfy his radical base who have been clamoring for years to prosecute Bush and his administration, ostensibly for war crimes, etc. It comes at a cost of the severely degrading of our national security and, with Obama's decision to allow persecution of the OLC lawyers, has opened a Pandora's Box that could well tear this nation apart.
___________________________________________________

On Thursday last, ostensibly in response to a lawsuit filed by one of the most destructive forces in American society, the ACLU, President Obama ordered the Justice Dept. to withdraw its state-secrets objections to the release of four memos from the Bush years. These memos were drafted by the Office of Legal Counsel in response to queries from the CIA as to whether certain interrogation techniques were lawful under U.S. law and our treaty obligations.

To be clear, the government was under no true compulsion to release these memos. The State Secrets defense would have worked in this case, even if the lower Court had ruled otherwise. Such a ruling never would have survived appeal, one, because the material's release would work harm to our national security and, two, because procedurally, the appropriate members of Congress had been briefed and given their approval to the program. Obama's claim that the lawsuit justified release of the memos was an utter canard. Further, Obama ordered the release of these memos over the strong objection of five current and former intelligence chiefs.

So why do it?

Clearly, Obama was trying to establish his moral superiority with the chattering classes throughout the world. He is and was explicit about that. The NYT reported that Obama "condemned what he called a “dark and painful chapter in our history” and said that the interrogation techniques would never be used again." There has been other similar moral preening since. The NYT Times also reported:

. . . Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, cautioned that the memos were written at a time when C.I.A. officers were frantically working to prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing,” said Mr. Blair in a written statement. “But we will absolutely defend those who relied on these memos.”

Apparently, the respect afforded Obama by Le Monde journalists takes precendce in his mind over American national security and the safety of its citizens. That is a luxury, if not a fantasy, that Obama can revel in simply because we have been successful in interdicting terrorist attacks since 9-11.

I think it reasonable to speculate that Obama also took this move - releasing the memos but saying initially that no one would be prosecuted over them, either at CIA or OLC - as a bone to quiet his radical base. He grossly miscalculated. It only increased their lust for blood, but more on that later.

All of this raises a series of issues. Specifically, this will do untold harm to our nation's security by degrading the effectiveness of intelligence efforts and creating an incredibly risk averse legal class. I am speaking here of the kind of legal class in that gave us the Jamie Goerlick's infamous Chinese Wall. Further, and amazingly, it presumes that we are now safe from terrorist attack. Three, it was and is a very selective release of information. Four, it ignores the role of Congress in this process. And lastly, it has truly opened a Pandora's Box, given Obama's threat to cross the Rubicon and pursue prosecution of the OLC lawyers. That is the criminalization of political differences - something unknown in this country.

As to the effect this release of memos has had on the CIA, there was this from left wing commentator David Ignatius:

At the Central Intelligence Agency, it's known as "slow rolling." That's what agency officers sometimes do on politically sensitive assignments. They go through the motions; they pass cables back and forth; they take other jobs out of the danger zone; they cover their backsides.

Sad to say, it's slow roll time at Langley after the release of interrogation memos that, in the words of one veteran officer, "hit the agency like a car bomb in the driveway." President Obama promised CIA officers that they won't be prosecuted for carrying out lawful orders, but the people on the firing line don't believe him. They think the memos have opened a new season of investigation and retribution.

The lesson for younger officers is obvious: Keep your head down. Duck the assignments that carry political risk. Stay away from a counterterrorism program that has become a career hazard. . . .

Read the entire article. But Ignatius speaks only of the non-legal members of the CIA. What of the lawyers who have to decide whether something proposed by the CIA is legal and give guidance to the agency. Any lawyer who would willingly even render an opinion in such an instance now would be the penultimate fool. Make no mistake, the witch hunt just unleashed by Obama will turn our intelligence agencies and their legal advisors into the most risk averse organization on this planet. Our ability to gather intelligence from here forward is now seriously compromised. No need to take my word for that, you can take the former CIA Director's, Gen. Hayden. Further, we are likely to see legal advice of the kind provided by Jamie Goerlick that, in an effort to cover her legal ass, was a direct cause of the intelligence failures of 9-11.

A second issue raised is what this means for the terrorism threat. The irony of the remarks by the Obama Administration upon release of the memos and their implication is plumbed by Bill Kristol in an excellent essay at the Weekly Standard:

So: We were once in danger. Now we live in "a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009." Now, in April 2009, Obama's Director of National Intelligence seems to be saying, we're safe.

Good news, if true. And it would be an amazing tribute to the preceding administration's efforts in the war on terror--efforts that Democrats have been saying for years were making us less safe. Apparently, the old policies worked. The threat from al Qaeda has gone. We now have the luxury of "reflection," as President Obama put it in his statement, the luxury of debating and deploring what we did back in the bad old days when there was a war on. After all, "we have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history."

Leave aside how dark and painful the chapter really was. The question is, Is it over? Is the chapter in which we had to focus on preventing further attacks really through? Isn't there still a war against the jihadists on?

Of course Blair and other senior Obama officials have elsewhere suggested that the terror threat remains real, and even urgent. Why else the maintenance of the Bush era surveillance program? Why else the decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, and to deploy more Predator strikes into Pakistan?

But can we then afford Obama's "dark and painful chapter" attitude, exemplified by his forgoing certain interrogation techniques in the present and future, and his exposing and deploring what was done in the past? Can we afford an intelligence director who tries to excuse his boss by telling us we are now safe?

Read the entire article. Those questions posed by Mr. Kristol are very pertinent indeed.

As we now know, this release of information by Obama - with some very pertinent redactions - was very selective indeed. While he released information on the interrogation tactics and decried them as of little value, he withheld information on the intelligence garnered as a result of those interrogation techniques. Other information released in the past week has been subject to similar careful editing, though the Obama administration has claimed inadvertence. Stephen Hayes, also writing at the Weekly Standard, takes note and sees therein the deliberate politicizing of intelligence:

I suppose, that a series of fortunate coincidences has resulted in the public disclosure of only that information that will be politically helpful to the Obama administration. It is also possible that Dick Cheney has taken up synchronized swimming in his retirement.

Read the entire article.

In order to evaluate the enhanced interrogation program in the public square, it is of obvious importance that we know 1) what, if any ill effects those subject to these techniques suffered, 2) the value of information gleaned from use of these techniques, and 3) whether the information could have been extracted without use of the techniques. As to bullet one, none of the people on whom these techniques were used have complained of any lasting effect of which I am aware. As to bullets two and three, by just about every account I have read, from George Tenet to Michal Hayden and even to the current intelligence chief - an avowed opponent of the program - the information gleaned from use of these techniques saved countless innocent American lives by allowing the breakup of plans to attack in Los Angles and New York. The New York Times today claims that its impossible to say whether the information saved lives. I seriously doubt that, but will await release of unredacted documents and further information before making a final decision.

Yet another issue, in light of Obama's green lighting of prosecution of the OLC attorneys for rendering legal opinions in this matter, is the role of Congress. Representative Peter Hoeksta notes in the WSJ today that members of both parties were repeatedly briefed on the enhanced interrogation tactics employed on three select detainees and that nary an eye - including Nancy Pelosi's eye - was batted. As Rep. Hoekstra notes, regarding calls for an investigation, it must assess Congressional approval of the program, it must include a full review of the information gleaned as a result of the program, and lastly:

An honest and thorough review of the enhanced interrogation program must also assess the likely damage done to U.S. national security by Mr. Obama's decision to release the memos over the objections of Mr. Panetta and four of his predecessors. Such a review should assess what this decision communicated to our enemies, and also whether it will discourage intelligence professionals from offering their frank opinions in sensitive counterterrorist cases for fear that they will be prosecuted by a future administration.

Perhaps we need an investigation not of the enhanced interrogation program, but of what the Obama administration may be doing to endanger the security our nation has enjoyed because of interrogations and other antiterrorism measures implemented since Sept. 12, 2001.

Somehow I doubt the far left now holding the reins of power in Washington will be amenable to any of those areas of inquiry. Read Rep. Hoeksta's entire article.

Lastly, when Obama announced his decision to release these memos, he likewise indicated that he did not intend for anyone to be prosecuted for them. As Hot Air notes, like virtually all Obama pronouncements of principle, this one came with an expiration date. By Monday, no doubt in response to vociferous urging from his radical far left base, Obama announced open season for prosecution of the lawyers who drafted the legal memos approving of the enhanced interrogation techniques.

I blogged on my analysis of the legal memos here. I read them in full and with an open mind. I know more than a little about the law. My conclusion regarding the OLC memos was that they present colorable legal arguments that the enhanced interrogation techniques fell short of the legal definition of "torture." I also concluded that there were some weaknesses in the analysis such that reasonable people could disagree. That said, as of yet, I have heard not a single principled argument in disagreement. I emphasize that because quite literally everyone I have seen and heard on the topic has cited no opposing precedent to support their conclusory assertions and labels that the interrogation techniques were unlawful torture. At any rate, what Obama, Soros and the far left want to do now is, as they indicated prior to the election, criminalize their disagreement. I could imagine no greater threat to the fabric of our nation. Even the attempt to do this is going to set off a maelstrom the likes of which we have never seen in this country since, well, 1861 I would have to say.

It does not end there. As I see it, if Obama and his far left base succeed in successfully prosecuting the attorneys over this, then President Obama will have abandoned his most sacred duty - to support and defend the Constitution. That is the day the far left crosses the Rubicon and we cease to be a free nation. The day any one of the OLC attorneys are marched into prison because of a political disagreement can and should be the day a true civil war - one that involves violence - starts in this country. Trust me when I say that up until three days ago, never did I think it the remotest possibility that those words would ever pass my lips.

Read More...

Summary only...

Chickens, Eggs & Coerrcive Interrogation At WaPo

Its an age old conundrum - which came first, the chicken or the egg. It has no identifiable answer because both are necessary for the chicken life cycle. Nonetheless, WaPo has apparently decided it in favor of the chicken. The Wapo is expressing outrage, shock and horror that the CIA considered using coeercive interrogation before asking for a legal opinion from the OLC.

The Chicken: The lead story at the Washington Post is "Harsh Tactics Readied Before Their Approval"

Intelligence and military officials under the Bush administration began preparing to conduct harsh interrogations long before they were granted legal approval to use such methods -- and weeks before the CIA captured its first high-ranking terrorism suspect, Senate investigators have concluded.

Previously secret memos and interviews show CIA and Pentagon officials exploring ways to break Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees in early 2002, up to eight months before Justice Department lawyers approved the use of waterboarding and nine other harsh methods, investigators found.

Ummm, no kidding?

The Egg: What the WaPo fails to do is explain how the lawyers at OLC could ever have been asked to render a legal opinion on these matters if the CIA hadn't considered the coercive interrogation methods first and decided they wanted to use them.

I am reminded of the story of one politician of the last century who is reputed to have used accusatory language in speeches against his opponent to describe wholly normal, benign events with a decidedly sinister twinge. If I recall correctly, one of the lines of his speech was - At college, my opponent MARTICULATED!!!! I see little if any difference between that politician and today's WaPo coverage of the coeercive interrogation techniques.

This article, though far more articulate than that written by the NYT and slightly fisked in my post below, tracks many of the same talking points as the NYT article. The big talking point is the claim that coeercive interrogation methods do not work and are likely to lead to false information. Lacking even the modicum of intellectual honesty displayed by the NYT, WaPo raises this claim in its article but neglects to include claims that such methods were directly responsible for saving American lives.

There are a few other lines from the WaPo article that are noteworthy. One is how they conclude the article, after suggesting that, on one occasion, coeercive interrogation techniques may have been used before the OLC finalized their opinion.

Brent Mickum, one of Abu Zubaida's attorneys in a habeas corpus proceeding in U.S. District Court in Washington, said he believes the Justice Department's Aug. 1, 2002, memo retroactively approved coercive tactics that had already been used.

"If torture occurred before the memo was written, it's not worth the paper it's written on, and the writing of the memo is potentially criminal," Mickum said.

That is a non-sequiter if there ever was one. It is a collateral attack on the legal opinions in an attempt to discredit them without having to address the substance of the opinions. Further, it presupposes that 1) the OLC wrote their memos with the foreknowledge that the tactics were already in use, and 2) wrote their finding specifically to justify the use, ignoring precedents which, as I discussed in a post here, do not apparently exist. Both are spin and pure speculation. The WaPo of course raises none of those issues, merely finishing with the good soundbyte.

There are two final points raised in the article worthy of mention. The first is from Senator Carl Levin who is apparently readying a highly selective witch hunt in Congress and is attempting to somehow shoehorn the coercive interrogation techniques used by the CIA into the "frat party" stunts of some out of control enlisted soldiers at Abu Ghraib:

Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the committee, said the new findings show a direct link between the early policy decisions and the highly publicized abuses of detainees at prisons such as Abu Ghraib in Iraq.

"Senior officials sought out information on, were aware of training in, and authorized the use of abusive interrogation techniques," Levin said. "Those senior officials bear significant responsibility for creating the legal and operational framework for the abuses."

He is right, senior officials were aware - including Senate and House Democratic leadership who were briefed on the coeercive interrogation techniques in 2002. How he is going to get around that is something I am waiting to see.

Lastly, there was this interesting paragraph:

The report shows Pentagon officials reaching out to the military agency for advice on interrogations as early as December 2001 and finding some specialists eager to help. By late 2001, counterterrorism officials were becoming frustrated by the paucity of useful leads coming from interrogations -- a meager showing that was linked, according to one Army major, to interrogators' insistence on "establishing a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq," the report said.

Setting aside for a moment that it attempts to raise the tired canard that there was no link between al Qaeda and Iraq, the fact that there were a "paucity of useful leads" certainly suggests that normal interrogation methods were failing. I am sure we will see much more of this in the days to come.

Read More...

Summary only...

Torture, Persecution and Morality

Obama today opened the door for political show trials of those individuals in the Office of Legal Counsel who, when requested by the CIA, rendered a legal opinion that certain proposed methods of interrogation did not constitute torture and were legal under U.S. law and treaties. This is purely and simply the criminalization of political disagreement, far more reminiscent of Stalinist Russia than any period in U.S. history. It highlights the moral cowardice of the left masquerading as moral superiority. It further displays the left's utter disregard for freedom of speech and their intolerance of dissent.
____________________________________________________________


The left, and Obama in particular, have made a huge show of claiming that the coercive interrogation of al Qaeda prisoners to obtain intelligence - not confessions, mind you, but intelligence to protect thousands of innocents against these psychopaths - was immoral and illegal. According to Obama at his speech to the CIA yesterday, the interrogation methods used by the CIA on at least two suspects, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Abu Zabaydah, were in violation of the letter of the law and the spirit of American "values" - a term he did not define. And according to Obama today, the door is now open for the prosecution of those attorneys who wrote legal opinions finding that the enhance interrogation techniques were lawful. You can find the legal opinions here.

Let's take the moral issue first since this turns morality on its head. Put yourself in the shoes of the President - the person charged with the defense of our nation. Now, let's assume for a moment the following are true:

1. We have captured Prisoner X, a high ranking member of al Qaeda.

2. Prisoner X undoubtedly has knowledge of plans or people who are planning to kill innocent Americans and who will, if given the opportunity, do so on a massive scale.

3. The information Prisoner X possesses has a reasonably high likelihood of allowing the U.S. to thwart those plans.

4. Prisoner X has not provided any intelligence in response to normal methods of interrogation.

5. Prisoner X may well respond to repeated applications of coercive techniques that cause short term pain of moderate intensity, panic and emotional distress, but which a) causes no long term damage; and b) are sufficiently safe that they are used on our own military in training.

6. If you refuse to push the limits of the interrogation beyond the norm into a this moderately gray area based on your conscience, then you are, in all probability, condemning many innocent Americans to die.

Assuming all of the above are true, which is the truly moral position to take in this case?

Is drawing a bright line at the use of coercive techniques truly the most moral option? Many innocent people whom you are sworn to protect will die if you choose not go beyond normal interrogation tactics. On the other side of the balance sheet, do so and you get to go to sleep feeling morally superior. Plus you maintain popularity with the chattering classes of the far left, here and in Europe.

My question is, then, if you choose the bright line and refuse to engage in coercive interrogation, isn't that really just narcissism and utopianism masquerading as morality? Is it in fact a position of supreme moral cowardice?

Please note that every condition I have described above actually applied to Abu Zabaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Numerous CIA officials and, most recently, Dick Cheney have credited the use of those coercive techniques with saving numerous innocent lives. Indeed, there is this today from CNS News:

The Central Intelligence Agency told CNSNews.com today that it stands by the assertion made in a May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that the use of “enhanced techniques” of interrogation on al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) -- including the use of waterboarding -- caused KSM to reveal information that allowed the U.S. government to thwart a planned attack on Los Angeles.

Before he was waterboarded, when KSM was asked about planned attacks on the United States, he ominously told his CIA interrogators, “Soon, you will know.”

According to the previously classified May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that was released by President Barack Obama last week, the thwarted attack -- which KSM called the “Second Wave”-- planned “ ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles.”

So where do you think the moral choice lies?

Having addressed the moral issue, let's take a look at the legal one's as expressed in the recent Justice Dept. memo's released by Obama. For those on the left clamoring to destroy the right by using the police powers of our nation - and to whom Obama today gave a green light - the legal opinions rendered by John Yoo, and others are beyond any question criminal. To listen to these people is to believe that there is no room for honest difference of opinion.

Putting aside the conclusory labels of the far left for a moment, and before delving into the legalese, let's apply some common sense to arrive at a working definition of "torture." Its much harder than it seems as you move away from techniques that are obviously torture.

Let's start with the obvious ones. The al Qaeda field manual for torture, liberated by U.S. troops in an April 2007 raid on an al Qaeda safe house / torture chamber, provides some examples along with helpful illustrations. Here are the first two of those illustrations.



Here is a photo of the back of one man found in the al Qaeda safe house who had been subject to a few of these methods:



I'd say that's evidence of actual torture.

There are many more methods of interrogation / punishment in the book - electrocution, breaking of limbs, beating with sticks, flogging, plucking out of eyes, burning with a blow torch or hot iron, etc. I think we can all agree that those fall under any one's definition of "torture." What makes them so?

One, all of the techniques described above are meant to cause extremes of pain. Further, each will result in serious and long lasting injury, with equally long lasting pain and suffering. Lastly, many run a real risk of being fatal to the victim.

If we take away all of those conditions, is it still possible to call something torture?

If I cause you pain by giving you a paper cut, am I torturing you? Clearly I am acting to cause you pain, but if that is not "torture," then where does torture start?

If I keep you awake beyond your bedtime when your tired, would you define that as torture? Clearly I am causing suffering, but at what point does such suffering become tantamount to "torture."

Real people's lives hang on your answers - so do be intellectually honest. Where would you draw the line? What precise conditions would you set to define the line at which permissible coercive interrogation ends and torture begins? That is the vexing question.

The actual law at issue is no more precise in establishing a bright line than the common sense analysis we just went through, though it does track with that analysis. Chapter 18, Section 2340(1) of the United States Code defines torture as:

. . . an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering . . . upon another person within his custody of physical control.

I must admit, I had a real belly laugh reading both the hard left and some of their apologists on this issue who paint the answers to the above question as crystal clear and beyond the scope of any legitimate debate. For example, this from, surprisingly, Rick Moran at Rightwing Nuthouse:

As the Bybee memo proves beyond any reasonable doubt, the Administration was seeking a legal fig leaf in order to skirt that law as well as international treaties of which we are a signatory that clearly defines torture.

This is conclusory - and completely ridiculous. I defy Rick or anyone else on the frothing left to come up with the actual precedent showing this "clear" definition of torture. More so, I defy them to show how this clear precedent - which they all seem able to identify with ease on the left - applies to bring waterboarding or, for that matter, any other technique as described in the memos under the legal definition of "torture."

The bottom line, the detailed legal analysis in those memos appears to me to present sound legal arguments. Like all arguments, by very definition it can also be argued the other way. But, based on those memos, the claim that Yoo and the others at OLC provided deliberately false or fatuous arguments - or, for that matter, that they reasoned backwards to justify a conclusion rather than forward to arrive at one - can only be made by people who are utterly biased at the start - ie., the entire far left - or who have wholly put aside their analytical skills on this one.

For example, to recap for those on another planet for the past few years, waterboarding involves strapping a person down on a board inclined slightly beyond 90 degrees, placing a cloth or piece of plastic over the persons nose and mouth, then pouring water on it. It gives the sensation of drowning, though there is no physical danger and no water actually enters the nose or mouth. It is sufficiently benign that it has been done thousands of times on our own soldiers as part of certain specialized training. Mostly, waterboarding induces a momentary panic that lasts for twenty to forty seconds at a time. So the question then is whether that is inflicting "severe physical or mental pain or suffering." Here is a snippet of some of the reasoning on this found in the Bybee Memo:

Section 1340 defines torture as the inf1iction of severe physical or mental pain or suffering. We will consider physical pain and mental pain seperately. See 18 U.S.C. § 2340(1). With respect to physical pain, we previously concluded that "severe pain" within the meaning of Section 2340 is pain that is difficult for the individual to endure and is of such intensity akin to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, See Section 2340A Memorandum at 6. Drawing upon the TVPA {Terror Victims Prevention Act} precedent, we have noted that examples of acts inflicting severe pain that typify torture are, among other things, severe beatings with weapons such as clubs, and the burning of prisoners. See id at 24. We conclude below that none of the proposed techniques inflicts such pain.
. . . .
As we understand it, when the waterboard is used, the subject's body responds as the
subject were drowning even though the subject may be well aware that he is in fact not drowning. You have inrormed us that this procedure does not inflict actual physical harm. Thus, although the subject may experience the fear or panic associated with the feeling of drowning, the waterboard does not inflict physical pain. As we explained in the Section 2340A Memorandum, "pain and suffering" as used in Section 2340 is best understood as a single concept, not distinct concepts of "pain" as distinguished from "suffering." See Section 2340A Memorandum at 6 n.3. The waterboard, which inflicts no pain or actual harm whatsoever, does
not, in our view inflict "severe pain or suffering." Even if one were to parse the statute more finely to attempt to treat "suffering" as a distinct concept, the waterboard could not be said to inflict severe suffering. The waterboard is simply a controlled acute episode, lacking the connotation of a protracted period of time generally given to "suffering."

Feel free to pick this apart - so long as you do so without simply stating unsupported conclusions.

At any rate, what the released memos show, in excruciating detail, was a very thorough legal analysis of the language of the statute and existing precedents ending in a not unreasonable conclusion that the proposed actions of the CIA, as set forth in detail, did not fall within the legal definition of torture. It is a colorable argument. So how can it possibly be criminal?

The bottom line - it can't be. And if the far left goes ahead with Obama's blessing and, for the first time in America of which I am aware, criminalizes political differences, then this really will be the start of a civil war.

Read More...

Summary only...

CIA Chief Hayden Discusses the Bhutto Assassination, Pakistan, & Interrogations

CIA Director General Hayden, has stated that the man responsible for Benazair Bhutto's assassination by Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, pictured right. Per the Long War Journal, Baitullah Mehsud is the leader of the newly created Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan. Baitullah was appointed leader of the orgnaization after a gathering of local Taliban leaders throughout the tribal areas and the Northwest Frontier Province in mid-December. Mehsud is also behind a spike in violence by the Taliban as they seek to destabilize the Pakistani government.

This today from a Washington Post interview with General Hayden:

. . . Offering the most definitive public assessment by a U.S. intelligence official, Hayden said Bhutto was killed by fighters allied with Mehsud, a tribal leader in northwestern Pakistan, with support from al-Qaeda's terrorist network. That view mirrors the Pakistani government's assertions.

The same alliance between local and international terrorists poses a grave risk to the government of President Pervez Musharraf, a close U.S. ally in the fight against terrorism, Hayden said in 45-minute interview with The Washington Post. "What you see is, I think, a change in the character of what's going on there," he said. "You've got this nexus now that probably was always there in latency but is now active: a nexus between al-Qaeda and various extremist and separatist groups."

Hayden added, "It is clear that their intention is to continue to try to do harm to the Pakistani state as it currently exists."

. . . "This was done by that network around Baitullah Mehsud. We have no reason to question that," Hayden said. He described the killing as "part of an organized campaign" that has included suicide bombings and other attacks on Pakistani leaders.

. . . Hayden made his statement shortly before a series of attacks occurred this week on Pakistani political figures and army units. Pakistani officials have blamed them on Mehsud's forces and other militants. On Wednesday, a group of several hundred insurgents overran a military outpost in the province of South Waziristan, killing 22 government paramilitary troops. The daring daylight raid was carried out by rebels loyal to Mehsud, Pakistani authorities said.

For more than a year, U.S. officials have been nervously watching as al-Qaeda rebuilt its infrastructure in the rugged tribal regions along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, often with the help of local sympathizers.

In recent months, U.S. intelligence officials have said, the relationship between al-Qaeda and local insurgents has been strengthened by a common antipathy toward the pro-Western Musharraf government. The groups now share resources and training facilities and sometimes even plan attacks together, they said.

"We've always viewed that to be an ultimate danger to the United States," Hayden said, "but now it appears that it is a serious base of danger to the current well-being of Pakistan."

Hayden's anxieties about Pakistan's stability are echoed by other U.S. officials who have visited Pakistan since Bhutto's assassination. White House, intelligence and Defense Department officials have held a series of meetings to discuss U.S. options in the event that the current crisis deepens, including the possibility of covert action involving Special Forces.

Hayden declined to comment on the policy meetings but said that the CIA already was heavily engaged in the region and has not shifted its officers or changed its operations significantly since the crisis began.

"The Afghan-Pakistan border region has been an area of focus for this agency since about 11 o'clock in the morning of September 11, [2001], and I really mean this," Hayden said. "We haven't done a whole lot of retooling there in the last one week, one month, three months, six months and so on. This has been up there among our very highest priorities."

Hayden said that the United States has "not had a better partner in the war on terrorism than the Pakistanis." The turmoil of the past few weeks has only deepened that cooperation, he said, by highlighting "what are now even more clearly mutual and common interests."

Hayden also acknowledged the difficulties -- diplomatic and practical -- involved in helping combat extremism in a country divided by ethnic, religious and cultural allegiances. "This looks simpler the further away you get from it," he said. "And the closer you get to it, geography, history, culture all begin to intertwine and make it more complex."

Regarding the public controversy over the CIA's harsh interrogation of detainees at secret prisons, Hayden reiterated previous agency statements that lives were saved and attacks were prevented as a result of those interrogations.

He said he does not support proposals, put forward by some lawmakers in recent weeks, to require the CIA to abide by the Army Field Manual in conducting interrogations. The manual, adopted by the Defense Department, prohibits the use of many aggressive methods, including a simulated-drowning technique known as waterboarding.

"I would offer my professional judgment that that will make us less capable in gaining the information we need," he said.

Read the entire article.

Read More...

Summary only...