Finding out what we need to know

Heather Mac Donald writes on NRO:

The release of another previously classified Justice Department memo on the interrogation of terrorists (here and here) has reignited the specious “torture narrative,” propounded gleefully by Bush-administration critics. The narrative holds that the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib was the direct and even intended consequence of a set of executive-branch legal opinions on the status of terrorist detainees and the president’s wartime authority. The New York Times announced in an April 4 editorial that the latest declassified memo leaves no doubt that the “abuse of prisoners” was “calculated policy” rather than “rogue acts.” “When the abuses at Abu Ghraib became public, we were told these were the depraved public actions of a few soldiers,” the editorial concludes. “The Yoo memo makes it chillingly apparent that senior officials authorized unspeakable acts.”

Besides smearing the Bush administration, the torture narrative aims to discredit the use of stress-interrogation techniques by equating such techniques with torture. The persuasiveness of this equation rests on one crucial condition: ignorance of the actual techniques that the Pentagon approved for use on captured terrorist suspects. Those techniques, designed to overcome the detainees’ fierce resistance to traditional interrogation methods, had nothing to do with the Abu Ghraib sadism and are light years from torture. Nor do they depend on the controversial claims about executive power in this latest DOJ memo and others like it. Nevertheless, thanks to unimpeded agitation by rights activists and administration opponents, the use of stress techniques is now wholly discredited, despite their reported efficacy and necessity.

Two points. One the "torture" of prisoners at Abu Ghraib consisted mainly of making them pose in embarrassing positions while naked (the sort of thing done to college fraternity pledges) and making them watch a couple of the guards have sex (Lindie England wasn't all that good looking but torture is a bit over the top). To be fair some of them were punched or hit with batons, but to be even more fair that also goes on with fraternity pledges (remember Animal House, "Thank you sir, may I have another")

I'm not saying that any of this is right, but making the prisoners participate in and watch the kind of things which are labeled "performance art" and can be seen in pretty much any public place in San Francisco on any Saturday afternoon when the weather is warm seems a bit of a thin excuse to have the kind of cow the congressional left and the media establishment tried to give birth to over the affair.

And what makes it all so infinitely sadder is that the Republican party's nominally Republican nominee has jumped on the anti-torture bandwagon and grabbed the reigns.

Ms. Mac Donald reminds us of exactly what these now banned stress-interrogation techniques consisted of:

The seven additional interrogation methods that the Secretary of Defense authorized in April 2003 for use on resistant detainees at Guantanamo Bay, relying in part on Yoo’s March 14 memo, fell far short of the outer boundaries of presidential power. They did not violate any laws against torture or criminal assault. Since the proponents of the torture narrative work so hard to keep those methods (since withdrawn) out of the public eye, it is worth reprinting them in full:

—Change of Scenery Up: Removing the detainee from the standard interrogation
setting (generally to a location more pleasant, but no worse).

—Change of Scenery Down: Removing the detainee from the standard interrogation setting and placing him in a setting that may be less comfortable; would not constitute a substantial change in environmental quality.

—Dietary Manipulation: Changing the Diet of a detainee; no intended deprivation of food or water; no adverse medical or cultural effect and without intent to deprive subject of food or water, e.g., hot rations to MREs [meals ready to eat].

—Environmental Manipulation: Altering the environment to create moderate discomfort (e.g., adjusting temperature or introducing an unpleasant smell). Conditions would not be such that they would injure the detainee. Detainee would be accompanied by interrogator at all times.

—Sleep Adjustment: Adjusting the sleeping times of the detainee (e.g., reversing sleep cycles from night to day.) This technique is NOT sleep deprivation.

—False Flag: Convincing the detainee that individuals from a country other than the United States are interrogating him.

—Isolation: Isolating the detainee from other detainees while still complying with basic standards of treatment. [Caution: The use of isolation as an interrogation technique requires detailed implementation instructions, including specific guidelines regarding the length of isolation, medical and psychological review, and approval for extension of the length of isolation by the appropriate chain of command. This technique is not known to have been generally used for interrogation purposes for longer than 30 days. Those nations that believe detainees are subject to POW protections may view use of this technique as inconsistent with the requirements of Geneva III.]

The foregoing guidelines insist that interrogators take care to avoid inflicting any injury on a detainee. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reiterated that “U.S. Armed Forces shall continue to treat detainees humanely, and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of the Geneva Conventions.” All interrogation methods — whether conventional or supplementary — required a specific interrogation plan, the presence or availability of qualified medical personnel, appropriate supervision, and senior approval.

Now I want you to understand something. If they are terrorists or if they are taken on the battlefield bearing arms against America or its allies in the cause of Islam then you can't hit them hard enough to please me. As far as I'm concerned you can tie them down and snip off three or four fingers with a bolt cutter just as a way of saying hello and letting them know that you are serious and then start asking them questions.

But that's not how the law sees things. But aggressive interrogation techniques like the above mentioned stress methods and waterboarding must be allowed in a world where Russia cannot account for all its Soviet era nukes, where a rogue state with a starving population like North Korea and an Islamic nation like Pakistan already have nukes and where an Islamofascist theocracy like Iran will soon have nukes.

The stakes are just too damn high for us to not use every tool in the toolbox to keep our people safe.

The NRO article concludes with this:

. . . The new rules for interrogation, issued in September 2006, are even stricter than the previous ones interrogators found so useless. If the country is attacked again on a large scale, however, the country will have to reopen these debates and answer some hard questions.

Hard questions indeed.