Oct 6, 06:21 PM
Senate votes to limit interrogation techniques
This is really good news.
The Senate voted 90-9 to attach to a military spending bill an amendment that establishes the Army Field Manual as the standard for the interrogation of Department of Defense detainees and prohibits “cruel, inhuman, and degrading” treatment of persons in the detention of the U.S. government.
Forty-three Republican senators joined the Democrats in voting to pass the amendment, of which John McCain was the primary sponsor. The White House fiercely opposed the amendment and threatens a veto, so it is all the more impressive that such a high number of senators voted for it.
The appropriation bill still has to clear a House/Senate conference committee, and the amendment could be stripped off during that process. We need to put pressure on representatives to support American values and leave the amendment in place.
The bad news is that the amendment wouldn’t apply to the CIA. But I’ll accept this as a important step and a sign that legislators and military experts are taking the issue a little more seriously.
From the WP:
McCain read a letter on the Senate floor from former secretary of state Colin L. Powell, who endorsed the amendment and said it would help address “the terrible public diplomacy crisis created by Abu Ghraib.” Powell joins a growing group of retired generals and admirals who blame prison abuse on “ambiguous instructions,” as the officers wrote in a recent letter. They urged restricting interrogation methods to those outlined in the U.S. Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation, the parameters that McCain’s measure would establish.
McCain cited a letter he received from Army Capt. Ian Fishback, who has fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. “Over 17 months, he struggled to get answers from his chain of command to a basic question: What standards apply to the treatment of enemy detainees?” McCain said. “But he found no answers…The Congress has a responsibility to answer this call.”
That letter from the generals and admirals [PDF] is worth quoting:
The abuse of prisoners hurts AmericaÂ?s cause in the war on terror, endangers U.S. service members who might be captured by the enemy, and is anathema to the values Americans have held dear for generations. For many years, those values have been embodied in the Army Field Manual. The Manual applies the wisdom and experience gained by military interrogators in conflicts against both regular and irregular foes…It also recognizes that torture and cruel treatment are ineffective methods, because they induce prisoners to say what their interrogators want to hear, even if it is not true, while bringing discredit upon the United States.
It is now apparent that the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and elsewhere took place in part because our men and women in uniform were given ambiguous instructions, which in some cases authorized treatment that went beyond what was allowed by the Army Field Manual. Administration officials confused matters further by declaring that U.S. personnel are not bound by longstanding prohibitions of cruel treatment when interrogating non-U.S. citizens on foreign soil. As a result, we suddenly had one set of rules for interrogating prisoners of war, and another for �enemy combatants;� one set for Guantánamo, and another for Iraq; one set for our military, and another for the CIA. Our service members were denied clear guidance, and left to take the blame when things went wrong. They deserve better than that.
Capt. Ian Fishback, the West Point grad who wrote to McCain in support of his amendments, also gave an account of what happened in his division to Human Rights Watch, and when HRW’s report came out Sept. 24, it made it clear in the days before the vote on the amendment that abuses did not end with Abu Ghraib.
Without Fishback’s involvement, and the bravery it took for him to speak out, this amendment might not have passed. He’s a hero.
I particularly like this line from his letter to McCain:
Terrorism inspires fear and suppresses ideals like freedom and individual rights. Overcoming the fear posed by terrorist threats is a tremendous test of our courage. Will we confront danger and adversity in order to preserve our ideals, or will our courage and commitment to individual rights wither at the prospect of sacrifice? My response is simple. If we abandon our ideals in the face of adversity and aggression, then those ideals were never really in our possession.
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