Big day today.
The long-awaited CIA Inspector General's report was released by the Obama administration today. Much of it remains classified, and a good part of the balance is old news (particularly after the weekend's leaks). But I would most humbly recommend that everyone read the highlights. Like how people wearing the flag of the United States of America conducted mock executions, threatened detainees with handguns and power drills while they sat bound and naked but for a hood, boasted about raping the mothers and killing the children of suspects. And this was only the stuff that went beyond the guidelines offered by the Bush Justice Department. Standard operating procedure included all kinds of chilling activities, during which several detainees died in custody.
The report makes the claim that the CIA's detention and interrogation program provided valuable guidance in counter-terrorism operations, but basically states that the effectiveness of any of the "enhanced techniques", as they are called, is indeterminate. It doesn't commit one way or the other, so but for the redacted content of the report, the question remains open. But the report is quite clear that many if not most of the individuals involved in the interrogations were cognizant of the legal culpability they were risking, to say nothing of the damage to their own reputations and the Agency's effectiveness.
It is this report, by all accounts, that most motivated Eric Holder to announce that he is conducting a preliminary investigation into the crimes contained therein. He is targeting the officers and agents who tortured detainees (and in some cases killed them) in manners that went beyond the boundaries identified in the Yoo/Bybee/Bradbury Office of Legal Counsel memos. Barack Obama has indicated that this decision belongs to the Attorney General and him alone, as befits the apolitical nature of his responsibility.
The actions Holder is taking are a good first step, and the individuals who have spent years trying to get this report declassified (notably the ACLU) deserve a great deal of credit. But the largest danger here, as I've written before, is that in prosecuting only the violators of the Bush DoJ protocols, the Obama administration is implicitly offering legitimacy to the protocols themselves, and the manner in which they were constructed. To review - US law has stated for decades that "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" treatment, as outlined in the torture statutes, is to be interpreted in roughly the same manner as the guidelines set out in the Fourth, Fifth, and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution. This implies that if it could be done to a terrorist, it could be done to anyone in government custody, citizen or not. Regardless of what President Obama has made his own policy, the Bush Justice Department gave the CIA rulings that incorporated sleep deprivation, beatings, extended cramped confinement (with and without insects), waterboarding, stress positions, and other "harsh treatment". into the realm of legal treatment, under the theory that unless an action could be proved to cause years of mental suffering, pain approaching that caused by organ failure, or unless the treatment was inflicted solely for the purpose of sadistic pleasure and not real intelligence gathering, the prohibitions couldn't be construed to apply. All indications are that this conclusion was drawn with the full knowledge that it was legally unsound, but the Agency was instructed to proceed nonetheless. The so-far undisclosed report from the Office of Professional Responsibility on the torture memos recommends disciplinary action against the lawyers who wrote them, on the grounds that they were written in bad faith - that is, with the knowledge that they would be used to justify illegal behavior. But in declining to prosecute or even investigate the policy-makers, in deciding to focus on the grunts instead, Holder is effectively saying that there's nothing to hold the government accountable for. Just a difference of opinion, that's all.
What cracks me up about this is hearing the yahoos on TV saying that the tyranny which ends the American experiment will come in the form of a public health insurance plan.
Two more quick items - one, Obama today also affirmed his policy of renditioning terror suspects to foreign countries, except now he promises to make sure they won't be tortured once they get there. Why don't I feel encouraged. Two, Obama also announced the creation of a new team of expert interrogators for high-value detainees, controlled by the White House instead of the CIA. Yeah, that ought to help.
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