The topic of my inaugural post is a tough one. The major headlines this week are not about government spending, failing companies, drug violence along our borders, or even the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This would come as a relief were they not filled instead with stories about torture of terror suspects in the Bush administration.
The first part of the debate is whether or not varying methods used by the CIA are considered torture or enhanced interrogation techniques, which I shall dub "EIT" as a throwback to that other dubious, three-letter justification for the invasion of Iraq. A majority of Americans view the EITs in question as torture, and I agree. However, that is the American opinion now, and we weren't privy to the decision-making then. The definition of these interrogation methods is central to the argument and is essentially where the problem began. Loose guidelines for what defines torture, which is illegal in the United States, gave Bush administration officials and lawyers the wiggle room that they needed in order to approve techniques like water-boarding, wall-slamming, extended sleep deprivation, and phobia exploitation. Before you start painting "War Criminals" signs, plan your protest route, and decide who's bringing the coffee and donuts, remember that Bush's administration was hell-bent on protecting the lives and sovereign soil of our country. You could argue that that qualifies them as "hell-bound" but I would generally diagree if you asserted they should be jail-bound. To prevent future manipulation of the mid-April-thunder-shower grey that surrounds interrogating terror suspects, I suggest the CIA form a review board made up of intelligence officials, phsycologists, human rights academics, and Congressional representation to determine which methods are viable for information extraction, and which go too far.
Defining the EITs as torture aside, the second part of the debate is whether or not to prosecute those in the Bush administration who legitimized those methods. The blame game falls into three different tiers of accountability. The first is the ground level operatives who carried out the EITs, presumably in good faith of the legality of their work. That legality brings us to the second tier: the lawyers who affirmed for the former president and his staff the legal justification of torture. They are also accountable for the authoring of the now infamous legal memos, released by President Obama's administration. The final and highest tier, of course, runs to high-level government officials that approved the use of EITs, up to and including National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, Vice President Dick Cheney, and even President Bush. It is almost unanimously agreed upon that the ground-level tier be exempt from prosecution, excepting the usual extremist opinions. It is actions of the lawyers and administration officials that are up for debate.
The interest in investigation varies; polls indicate that Americans are split on whether the Justice Department, under new Attorney General Eric Holder, should pursue legal action against the previous administration. On one side, there are anti-Bush activists that are pushing for investigation and prosecution. Whether or not those for investigation want justice or political vengeance will depend on the individual. On the other side, there are also many that view prosecution of one administration by its successor as an uneccessary and potentially dangerous precedent. I think Senator John McCain of Arizona, a victim of years of torture himself, speaks to the situation very well.
So should the Bush era strategies for interrogating terror suspects be dragged further into the light, or shooed under the rug? Investigation should continue into the details so that we can ensure the same errors are not made in the future. However, I do think transparency of the treatment of terror detainees has to be complete. If we learn of the details of how we obtained information, Americans also deserve to know what came of information. By some accounts, information obtained through EITs prevented the Library Tower, the tallest building in Los Angeles, from being struck by a "Second Wave" plot. Whether this is true or not has yet to be revealed, but at the risk of alienating any readership in my first post, I have to agree with Cheney's call to reveal memos that he says proves that lives were saved. I don't mean to say that anything justifies torturing, but it is in the interest of full disclosure. Mistakes were made in the zealous protection of Americans against terror. In a way, torture is a parallel to Iraq. The Bush administration acted on an impulse to keep Americans safe. In hindsight, invading Iraq may not have been the best choice and torturing terror suspects diminishes our values and global standing. But hindsight is 20/20 and its time for us to move on and assure our government is more transparent going forward.
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