The debate over torturing suspected terrorists flared anew this week, after The New York Times reported that the Justice Department was secretly endorsing harsh interrogation techniques at the same time that the Bush administration was publicly denying it had abused any prisoners. Classified memos unearthed by the Times explicitly authorized simulated drowning, head-slapping, and induced hypothermia, while implicitly sanctioning the use of stress positions and sleep deprivation. One memo, written in response to a 2005 law banning “cruel, inhuman, and degrading” interrogation methods, simply declared that none of the methods employed by the CIA violated that standard.
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The memos were written in 2005 under the direction of then–Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, shortly after the administration declared torture “abhorrent to American law and values.” Addressing the issue this week, President Bush said that “this government does not torture people” and adheres to “U.S. law and our international obligations.” But the White House declined comment on what practices it believes are legal and ethical.
In July, after the Supreme Court ruled that the treatment of suspected terrorists is bound by the Geneva Conventions, Bush issued an order prohibiting simulated drowning, also known as waterboarding, and some other methods previously used by the CIA. But congressional Democrats and some Republicans said the memos show that the White House has been deceptive. “I’m tired of these games,” said Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller. The White House said key members of Congress had been briefed on the interrogation policy.
What the editorials said
Who does Bush think he’s fooling? said The Washington Post. He can call these techniques whatever he likes, but according to common sense, to say nothing of international law, they are torture. Now we learn that the Justice Department has been secretly concocting a contorted legal justification for this disgrace. “The administration has essentially been operating its own clandestine legal system, unaccountable to Congress.”
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For that, Americans should be grateful, said The Wall Street Journal. If Congress had its way, terrorist interrogations would be “as tame as a church social.” Fortunately, the CIA didn’t have its hands tied when it pried information out of al Qaida masterminds Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, likely saving countless lives. Isn’t it telling that Democrats “smear” the administration with “the generalization of ‘torture,’” but never say which techniques they would sanction in the war on terror?
What the columnists said
Here’s a good rule of thumb, said Andrew Sullivan in the New York Post: If the Nazis developed a technique, we shouldn’t use it. Many of the methods approved by the Justice Department were, in fact, treated as war crimes after World War II. Even the administration’s preferred euphemism, “enhanced interrogation,” is “the exact term innovated by the Gestapo.” International law defines torture as infliction of “severe mental or physical pain or suffering.” That our government is now playing semantic games with “severe’’ puts us in some ugly company.
But crying “torture” over slaps and loud noises, said Bret Stephens in The Wall Street Journal, is like calling abortion doctors murderers. “This isn’t argument. It’s moral bullying.” Even waterboarding, arguably the most extreme tactic in the U.S. arsenal, is something that CIA agents volunteer to undergo during training. Do you think they’d allow someone to stick needles under their fingernails? True brutality should not be an option. But, sometimes, it’s necessary to compromise our own moral standards for the sake of “self preservation.”
That’s a false choice, said Robert Baer in Time.com. Legal or not, “torture doesn’t work.” As a former CIA field officer, I’ve seen firsthand that regimes that use torture are great at intimidating their citizens, but lousy at producing useful intelligence. When prisoners are in great pain or in great terror, they’ll say everything and anything, and you can’t tell what is true and what is not. In short, we’re “spending a lot of international capital for very little return.”
What next?
Disclosure of the torture memos is likely to complicate next week’s Senate confirmation hearings for Attorney General–designate Michael Mukasey. Some Senate Democrats wanted to delay the hearings altogether, unless the Bush administration turned over the documents to them. Lawmakers withdrew that threat, but now say they will press the nominee on the torture issue. They also plan to seek a commitment from Mukasey to replace Steven Bradbury, the Justice Department official who wrote the controversial directives.
Musharraf is re-elected—apparently
The Pakistani government was in limbo this week, after President Pervez Musharraf was re-elected in a vote marred by boycotts and legal challenges. Opposition parties in the national and provincial assemblies—the bodies that choose the president—boycotted the election, saying that Musharraf could not run for office while still serving as chief of the armed forces. Those delegates who did vote gave the president a landslide victory of 98 percent. The result, though, won’t be confirmed until next week, when the Supreme Court rules on whether Musharraf was legally eligible to run.
Musharraf has said that once he’s re-elected president, he will step down as army chief before his current presidential term ends, on Nov. 15. That was one of the terms of a deal he struck with former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, which also calls for the government to drop corruption charges against Bhutto, clearing the way for her to return from exile.
Can we really trust Musharraf? asked The New York Times in an editorial. “Time and again” he has promised to relinquish control of the army, “but even now he is playing cute about when—and whether—that might happen.” The Bush administration has consistently supported the authoritarian Musharraf, supposedly because he is a staunch ally in the war on terror. Yet even in that area, he has “delivered a lot less than promised.”
That’s putting it mildly, said The New York Sun. Musharraf has been trying to put on a good show this week, sending troops into the tribal region of Waziristan to root out Islamic militants. But he hasn’t dared to go after militants in a concerted way, because Pakistanis would consider him a stooge of the United States. As a result, large parts of Pakistan are now “beyond government control,” as al Qaida and Taliban forces have expanded their influence. But perhaps with Bhutto back in the picture, Musharraf would have more public backing to make the hard calls.
That’s unlikely, said Mark Sappenfield in The Christian Science Monitor. Most Pakistanis see the Western-educated Bhutto, too, as a U.S. puppet. And to make matters worse, they resent her back-room deal with Musharraf that paves the way for her return. Nor have they forgotten the corruption that marred her earlier administration. Elections or no, “many Pakistanis feel that their future has now been decided—and they have not even had a say in it.”
British troops to leave Iraq
Gordon Brown, Britain’s new Prime Minister, announced this week that he would withdraw roughly half of the 5,000 British troops currently stationed in Iraq, in what is likely the start of a full-scale pullout by the U.S.’s principal ally. The White House downplayed the news, but U.S. officials privately acknowledged it as a clear sign that Anglo-U.S. relations are no longer as warm as they were under Tony Blair, Brown’s predecessor. The British public is overwhelmingly against the war, but Brown said the withdrawal was simply a reflection of the improved security situation in Basra, where British troops have been stationed.
So much for President Bush’s “coalition of the willing,” said the Los Angeles Times in an editorial. It was never much of a coalition to begin with, but the departure of Britain, our only real ally, makes it official. Brown’s decision is “momentous” not for its practical, military impact, but because it represents the final, fatal repudiation of Bush’s tired old “argument that stability in Iraq is of vital importance to the entire Western world.”
Actually, the military impact of the British withdrawal from Basra could be significant, said Timothy Phelps in Newsday. The southern city may not be as volatile as Baghdad, but it sits on the main road to Baghdad from Kuwait, which the U.S. Army relies upon for most of its supplies. Worse, there are “growing signs of an incipient civil war” between Basra’s competing Shiite factions. Politically and militarily, the British withdrawal will leave Basra “in near total chaos.”
It will also badly strain the “Special Relationship,” said Nile Gardiner in National Review Online. Culturally and economically, the U.S. and Britain will always be “intricately entwined.” But strategists in Washington may soon start shopping around for a new best friend. For Britain’s sake as much as ours, Brown should realize that our two nations are at war with the same enemy and show the “mettle and determination” for which the British were once renowned. At the moment “he looks more like Neville Chamberlain than Winston Churchill.”
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