Torture, by any other name, is torture, whether it be simulated drowning through “waterboarding” or other harsh tactics used by interrogators to extract information from prisoners.
That’s why we are glad that House and Senate negotiators are moving forward with legislation that would require all U.S. intelligence agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, to follow rules set out by the U.S. military that ban eight aggressive and controversial interrogation tactics.
These tactics are generally banned by federal law and international treaties, yet have been used on suspects after the Sept. 11 attacks. When Republicans controlled Congress, they gave the president discretion to determine what interrogation techniques to use. We hope this will settle the definitions once and for all.
Besides torture being anathema to our values and system of justice, it is in the best interests of Americans captured overseas to have our country adhere to the Geneva Convention, protecting prisoners of war from “acts of violence or intimidation.”
Torture is against U.S. law, and if American soldiers are bound by rules that prohibit it, why shouldn’t intelligence operatives be, too?
Last week’s agreement between the House and Senate came on the same day that CIA director Michael Hayden disclosed that his agency had videotaped its officers in 2002 using aggressive interrogation techniques against two al-Qaeda suspects. But the tapes were destroyed three years later, reportedly against the advice of some Bush administration officials.
According to various reports, some members of Congress were informed of their existence and the decision to destroy them.
We also learned last week that key members of Congress, including current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were given detailed briefings in 2002 on the CIA’s overseas detention sites and harsh ways of making prisoners talk, including waterboarding.
Pelosi and others should have raised objections then, or exposed such abusive practices. The Washington Post reported last week that people present at the meeting described the reaction of lawmakers as “mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support.” That is astounding.
Still, Pelosi and others can begin to restore America’s standing in the world by approving the legislation while also finding out what was on the destroyed tapes, who gave the OK for the torture, and who authorized their destruction.
