Snow tries to explain the inexplicable.
Bush's press conference illustrates the vagueness of the language in the Geneva Convention about torture because we apparently need to torture except we don't torture unless it's terrorists who know about the nuke and you have only 15 minutes to find out and you luckily have a waterboard and a car battery on hand even though it's been proved that information gathered under torture is unreliable and it makes us lose our moral high ground and threatens our soldiers but Bush doesn't care because he really really wants to torture and wants his people to back him up.... except when they don't.
It will always be the grunts not the brass that take the fall anyway.
Update: excellent work on the specifics of torture. "..the question must be placed in its historical and international context -- namely, whether Congress should grant the Executive branch a fairly unbounded discretion to use such techniques where such conduct would place the United States in breach of the Geneva Conventions. And that, of course, changes the calculus considerably. Does Congress really want to make the United States the first nation on earth to specifically provide domestic legal sanction for what would properly and universally be seen as a transparent breach of the minimum, baseline standards for civilized treatment of prisoners established by Common Article 3 -- thereby dealing a grevious blow to the prospect of international adherence to the Geneva Conventions in the future?"
ON the military plane back from America's most fa mous terrorist holding
ReplyDeletepen, the in-flight film was "V for Vendetta," a screed that tries to justify
terrorism. It was a fitting end to a surreal, military-sponsored trip.
The Pentagon seemed to be hoping to disarm its critics by showing them how
well it cares for captured terrorists. The trip was more alarming than
disarming. I spent several hours with Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., who
heads the joint task force that houses and interrogates the detainees. (The
military isn't allowed to call them "prisoners.")
Harris, a distinguished Navy veteran who was born in Japan and educated at
Annapolis and Harvard, is a serious man trying to do a politically
impossible job. I spoke with him at length, and with a dozen other officers
and guards, and visited three different detention blocks.
The high-minded critics who complain about torture are wrong. We are far too
soft on these guys - and, as a result, aren't getting the valuable
intelligence we need to save American lives.
The politically correct regulations are unbelievable. Detainees are entitled
to a full eight hours sleep and can't be woken up for interrogations. They
enjoy three meals and five prayers per day, without interruption. They are
entitled to a minimum of two hours of outdoor recreation per day.
Interrogations are limited to four hours, usually running two - and (of
course) are interrupted for prayers. One interrogator actually bakes cookies
for detainees, while another serves them Subway or McDonald's sandwiches.
Both are available on base. (Filet o' Fish is an al Qaeda favorite.)
Interrogations are not video or audio taped, perhaps to preserve detainee
privacy.
Call it excessive compassion by a nation devoted to therapy, but it's
dangerous. Adm. Harris admitted to me that a multi-cell al Qaeda network has
developed in the camp. Military intelligence can't yet identify their
leaders, but notes that they have cells for monitoring the movements and
identities of guards and doctors, cells dedicated to training, others for
making weapons and so on.
And they can make weapons from almost anything. Guards have been attacked
with springs taken from inside faucets, broken fluorescent light bulbs and
fan blades. Some are more elaborate. "These folks are MacGyvers," Harris
said.
Other cells pass messages from leaders in one camp to followers in others.
How? Detainees use the envelopes sent to them by their attorneys to pass
messages. (Some 1,000 lawyers represent 440 prisoners, all on a pro bono
basis, with more than 18,500 letters in and out of Gitmo in the past year.)
Guards are not allowed to look inside these envelopes because of
"attorney-client privilege" - even if they know the document inside is an
Arabic-language note written by a prisoner to another prisoner and not a
letter to or from a lawyer.
That's right: Accidentally or not, American lawyers are helping al Qaeda
prisoners continue to plot.
There is little doubt what this note-passing and weapons-making is used for.
The military recorded 3,232 incidents of detainee misconduct from July 2005
to August 2006 - an average of more than eight incidents per day. Some are
nonviolent, but the tally includes coordinated attacks involving everything
from throwing bodily fluids on guards (432 times) to 90 stabbings with
homemade knives.
One detainee slashed a doctor who was trying to save his life; the doctors
wear body armor to treat their patients.
The kinder we are to terrorists, the harsher we are to their potential
victims.
Striking the balance between these two goods (humane treatment,
foreknowledge of deadly attacks) is difficult, but the Bush administration
seems to lean too far in the direction of the detainees. No expense spared
for al Qaeda health care: Some 5,000 dental operations (including teeth
cleanings) and 5,000 vaccinations on a total of 550 detainees have been
performed since 2002 - all at taxpayer expense. Eyeglasses? 174 pairs handed
out. Twenty two detainees have taxpayer-paid prosthetic limbs. And so on.
What if a detainee confesses a weakness (like fear of the dark) to a doctor
that might be useful to interrogators, I asked the doctor in charge, would
he share that information with them? "My job is not to make interrogations
more efficient," he said firmly. He cited doctor-patient privacy. (He also
asked that his name not be printed, citing the potential for al Qaeda
retaliation.)
Food is strictly halal and averages 4,200 calories per day. (The guards eat
the same chow as the detainees, unless they venture to one of the on-base
fast-food joints.) Most prisoners have gained weight.
Much has been written about the elaborate and unprecedented appeal process.
Detainees have their cases reviewed once a year and get rights roughly
equivalent to criminals held in domestic prisons. I asked a military legal
adviser: In what previous war were captured enemy combatants eligible for
review before the war ended? None, he said.
America has never faced an enemy who has so ruthlessly broken all of the
rules of war - yet never has an enemy been treated so well.
Of Gitmo's several camps, military records show that the one with the most
lenient rules is the one with the most incidents and vice versa. There is a
lesson in this: We should worry less about detainee safety and more about
our own.
Some 20 current detainees have direct personal knowledge of the 9/11 attacks
and nearly everyone of the current 440 say they would honored to attack
America again. Let's take them at their word.
Richard
Could you give me a link rather than edit it so I can't find the source? Who wrote this?
ReplyDeleteAnd here is a link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/07/AR2006090701488_pf.html