cia secret prisons, leaks, and the war on terror

[dksuddeth]

since the story about CIA run secret prisons, or black sites, first broke last month I've had to seriously question the morals and ethics of our government representatives and the people that support them. By US and International treaties/laws secret prisons are illegal, is this correct? If so, should we not, as people of a lawful nation, condemn these 'black sites' and seriously consider prosecution or impeachment? Why, if these elected representatives are sworn to uphold the constitution, are they so interested in pursuing the leak instead of investigating the crimes involved in running these prisons?

Before anyone starts spouting the same type of statements that SecState is using to justify this blatant violation of laws what i'd like to know is should we, as a nation, throw away the lawful nature of our society with the axiom of all is fair in love and war and leave it on the ash heap of history or should we seriously consider these prisons as war crimes?

[Chilek9]

I've never heard of "black sites" being illegal. Got anything to show differently? (I'm asking if you've seen anything different and if so I'd like to see it). Detention centers have, traditionally, been low key if not outright secret. We haven't signed off on a lot of international agreements like the landmine ban treaty and the ICC so I wouldn't be surprised to find out that even if such a treaty existed (which I doubt) that we hadn't agreed to it.

[dksuddeth]

it is my understanding that Sen. Lindsey Graham, a former judge advocate, is on record accusing the Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of shifting the focus of investigations from why these illegal prisons exist to how information of them was leaked to the public. Why would he call them illegal if they weren't? Of course that could also explain why 3 days after the story broke that graham submitted an amendment to remove the detention of unlawful combatants from all jurisdiction of the courts.

again, i had asked if these 'black sites' were legal. I'm assuming they wouldn't be but i'm asking for clarification.

[Chilek9]

Why would he call them illegal if they weren't? Because he's trying to inflame the situation in his party's favor. It happens all the time. Everything I have seen indicates that the court system cannot reach beyond the borders of the U.S. to cover a person who is not a U.S. citizen. The jurisdiction of the U.S. does not go outside our borders which is why children born to U.S. citizens have VERY specific rules about how they can or cannot derive their citizenship from their parents. In other words, if the CIA wants to operate a "black site" there is nothing in law to stop them, AS LONG AS they don't engage in the practice of torture, as defined by the United States Code.

[dksuddeth]

Originally Posted by Chilek9

Why would he call them illegal if they weren't? Because he's trying to inflame the situation in his party's favor. It happens all the time. Everything I have seen indicates that the court system cannot reach beyond the borders of the U.S. to cover a person who is not a U.S. citizen. The jurisdiction of the U.S. does not go outside our borders which is why children born to U.S. citizens have VERY specific rules about how they can or cannot derive their citizenship from their parents. In other words, if the CIA wants to operate a "black site" there is nothing in law to stop them, AS LONG AS they don't engage in the practice of torture, as defined by the United States Code.

if the jurisdiction does not reach beyond our borders, then explain extraordinary rendition. If there is a legal precedent to operate 'black sites' then there must be documentation. The executive branch is not an autonomous organization and MUST have oversight from congress. I'm simply not understanding why, if these are legal, that those in the government refuse to confirm or deny their existence. The only reasonable deduction would be that they are illegal, or at least a gray area, and would only serve to outrage the american people in to a backlash against the government.

[raveneye]

Condi says she can't explain why people undergo rendition, she says "there are some things that we simply can't talk about." This is another in a long line of instances where the Bush administration is telling us that we simply have to trust them.

I can't think of any legitimate reason whatsoever to send these people out of the United States. The only possible reason would be so that we're free to do things to them that would be illegal in the U.S. For example, to interrogate them using more extreme techniques than are allowed in the U.S. These techniques would be things like mock drowning, waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and stress positions.

Here's what Condi needs to answer:

--why do we need to send prisoners to Egypt and Syria to be questioned (where torture is routine)? Why wouldn't places like Sweden be acceptable?

--why does the administration not dispute the prisoners' own charges that they were forced to undergo mock drownings and similar ordeals in places like Egypt and Syria?

--why is Cheney adamant about letting the CIA off the hook in the torture ban?

[raveneye]

Here's what Lexis came up with in the U.S. Code under extradition rights and torture.

United States policy with respect to the involuntary return of persons in danger of subjection to torture. Act Oct. 21, 1998, P.L. 105-277, Div G, Subdiv B, Title XXII, Ch 3, Subch B, § 2242, 112 Stat. 2681-822, provides:
"(a) Policy. It shall be the policy of the United States not to expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture, regardless of whether the person is physically present in the United States.
"(b) Regulations. Not later than 120 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the heads of the appropriate agencies shall prescribe regulations to implement the obligations of the United States under Article 3 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, subject to any reservations, understandings, declarations, and provisos contained in the United States Senate resolution of ratification of the Convention.
"(c) Exclusion of certain aliens. To the maximum extent consistent with the obligations of the United States under the Convention, subject to any reservations, understandings, declarations, and provisos contained in the United States Senate resolution of ratification of the Convention, the regulations described in subsection (b) shall exclude from the protection of such regulations aliens described in section 241(b)(3)(B) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1231(b)(3)(B)).
"(d) Review and construction. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, and except as provided in the regulations described in subsection (b), no court shall have jurisdiction to review the regulations adopted to implement this section, and nothing in this section shall be construed as providing any court jurisdiction to consider or review claims raised under the Convention or this section, or any other determination made with respect to the application of the policy set forth in subsection (a), except as part of the review of a final order of removal pursuant to section 242 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1252).
"(e) Authority to detain. Nothing in this section shall be construed as limiting the authority of the Attorney General to detain any person under any provision of law, including, but not limited to, any provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act [8 USCS §§ 1101 et seq. generally; for full classification, consult USCS Tables volumes].
"(f) Definitions.
(1) Convention defined. In this section, the term 'Convention' means the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, done at New York on December 10, 1984.
"(2) Same terms as in the Convention. Except as otherwise provided, the terms used in this section have the meanings given those terms in the Convention, subject to any reservations, understandings, declarations, and provisos contained in the United States Senate resolution of ratification of the Convention.".

[raveneye]

And here's the definition of "torture" from the U.N. Convention:

http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/39/a39r046.htm

1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any
act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is
intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or
a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a
third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or
intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on
discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at
the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or
other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or
suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

[raveneye]

And here are the exceptions to the prohibition of extradition to countries where torture is allowed (from section 241(b)(3)(B) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1231(b)(3)(B))):

(B) Exception. Subparagraph (A) does not apply to an alien deportable under section 237(a)(4)(D) [8 USCS § 1227(a)(4)(D)] or if the Attorney General decides that--
(i) the alien ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in the persecution of an individual because of the individual's race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion;
(ii) the alien, having been convicted by a final judgment of a particularly serious crime is a danger to the community of the United States;
(iii) there are serious reasons to believe that the alien committed a serious nonpolitical crime outside the United States before the alien arrived in the United States; or
(iv) there are reasonable grounds to believe that the alien is a danger to the security of the United States.

[dksuddeth]

so basically the government left every part of that a gray area with enough leeway to do whatever the hell they want as long as they don't outright claim thats what they're doing. what a great people we are.

[raveneye]

Well it seems gray enough, but that doesn't mean it's not illegal. If it's entirely legal, then why don't they just come out and admit what they're doing?

And what they're doing is pretty clear: ferrying terror suspects overseas, where the CIA is torturing them to gain information about planned attacks. They're doing this because it would be illegal in the U.S. And they justify it on the basis of national security. This is a post 9/11 world, so tactics that used to be considered wrong are now apparently fair game.

Folks, if you don't like this, make sure you go to the polls next year.

[Mojo_PeiPei]

Raveneye, I don't think foreign terrorists are every taken to the US first, that would really fuck with jurisdiction issues.

[samcol]

For me it is kind of irrelevant to get involved in what the law is in the US and the UN law and this and that. Torture is wrong, the nazi tortured, vietnamese tortured, Saddam tortured, now we torture. I don't need a law to tell me what they are doing is wrong. Americans have long been against torture now we are being sold on it.

Torture is either good or bad. If it's bad when past regimes did it, then it's bad what the CIA is doing now. I'm tired of the atempts by the white house and pentagon at sidestepping and doublespeaking their way out of this mess.

[Willravel]

Originally Posted by samcol

For me it is kind of irrelevant to get involved in what the law is in the US and the UN law and this and that. Torture is wrong, the nazi tortured, vietnamese tortured, Saddam tortured, now we torture. I don't need a law to tell me what they are doing is wrong. Americans have long been against torture now we are being sold on it.

Torture is either good or bad. If it's bad when past regimes did it, then it's bad what the CIA is doing now. I'm tired of the atempts by the white house and pentagon at sidestepping and doublespeaking their way out of this mess.

Exactly, I coulnd't have put it better myself. In addition to the moral implications, there are logistical implications as well.

As a student of psychology, I have always been taught that torture is not a reliable source of extracting information (taught by people who have enough know how of p[sychology that I trust them and what they taught me). I've seen tapes in my old classes of tortured prisoners giving false testimony simply in order to alleviate the torture for a little while. The intel on Saddams WMDs is supposedly from a tortured former Iraqi official. The only logical reason to torture is to create fear within a populace, and that is the very definition of terrorism. I'll say it again: Torture does not extract reliable information.

[roachboy]

the only bit of advertising for "democracy" american style more damaging than the fact of rendition, torture, potentially endless detention without any hope of due process (and so without any hope of determining actual guilt) and so on is the bush administration's seming obsession with justifying all the above, more often than not in narrowly legalistic terms.
but the legal justifications are transparently idiotic and everyone but blind supporters of this administration knows that--which positions them behind the thinking exhibited by the administration itself.
the real justification for the actions undertaken by the bush squad lay elsewhere.

when condy rice was in germany, her basic argument in defense of american policies of rendition, torture, and the possibility of endless detention without due process (and so without any hope of determining actual guilt) was "we are doing this to save lives" in the context of a life-and-death struggle between the american imperial machine and its hallucinated negation----"terrorism"--this is the defense given by every regime that has usurped dictatorial prerogatives to itself---every last one of them has attempted to frame its actions in terms of a life-and-death struggle that overrides the niceties of law and ethics.

the other interesting point in her defense is that the only lives that enter into consideration are those of people not directly affected by the bushpolicies at the heart of this controversy---apparently, if you are suspected of activities that the bushpeople do nto like and you get swept into their legal black hole, your life is of no consequence---regardless of your actual role, regardless of whether you were involved in "terrorist" activities, or look like someone who might be, regardless of guilt or innocence--you cease to exist and so you cease to matter. perhaps you cannot violate the rights of people whose existence you erase. maybe questions of guilt or innocence are irrelevant in some basic way in any event---maybe ultimate justice lies with some god and so what temporal powers do to human beings is ultimately of no real consequence.

[Mojo_PeiPei]

RB you need to stop lying to yourself and posting patently false information: Endless detention of illegal foreign combatants has been upheld by American law and the courts which interprets said law. The only due process that America is required to show these people is combatant designation hearings, outside of that, we can do with them as we please (sans torture).

[dksuddeth]

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei

RB you need to stop lying to yourself and posting patently false information: Endless detention of illegal foreign combatants has been upheld by American law and the courts which interprets said law. The only due process that America is required to show these people is combatant designation hearings, outside of that, we can do with them as we please (sans torture).

are you saying that the SCOTUS has given the green light for the US government to torture foreign nationals or terrorists?

[Mojo_PeiPei]

No I am not, just saying the law is drastically different for them as far as protections. As a result we get that gray area, which I am all for exploiting to the benefit of National Security when it comes from immoral sociopaths the likes of Al Qaeda.

[rofgilead]

Endless detention of detainees may have been allowed by the courts - but it is WRONG. It is clearly morally wrong, and defending this practice is abhorrent.

Secret torture camps in foreign counties is even sicker. But the CIA has smeared their own names in so many messed up activities already that this isn't that surprising.

I wish we really had moral leadership (not people who pretend to be moral by talking about Jesus while starting wars).

[Mojo_PeiPei]

What's immoral about sticking it to people who grossly violate moral law/legal law/natural law?

[Willravel]

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei

What's immoral about sticking it to people who grossly violate moral law/legal law/natural law?

If we are detaining them, that means that they have not been proven to be people who violate moral law/legal law/natural law. They are innocent until proven guilty, not necessarily as a rule of law, but as a rule of general american morality, based on the laws we live under and agree with.

[alpha phi]

Originally Posted by rofgilead

Endless detention of detainees may have been allowed by the courts - but it is WRONG. It is clearly morally wrong, and defending this practice is abhorrent.

Secret torture camps in foreign counties is even sicker. But the CIA has smeared their own names in so many messed up activities already that this isn't that surprising.

I wish we really had moral leadership (not people who pretend to be moral by talking about Jesus while starting wars).

That's the difference between legal and just
We are a nation of laws......not a nation of justice
Our police are Law Enforcement Officers....not peace officers.
The CIA has been involved in Immoral and Unjust activities
from their creation....that is their purpose.....by law.
The SS was legal (in Germany) up untill Germany was defeated

[roachboy]

i am surprised that you are not concerned about determinations of innocence or guilt, mojo. because you seem to spend some time reading law, i would have thought that determinations of guilt would be important to you. ah well, live and learn i guess---the rationale i talked about in my post seems only to be recapitulated in your response.

it is also surprising that you would tacitly support a notion of the role of torture in interrogation (that is prior to any trial) that worked so well for the inquisition---you might ask yourself why so much modern law was elaborated in order to protect citizens from that kind of abuse. in case the point is not clear: torture is not new---it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that information gathered under such conditions would in all likelihood be more about the victims desire for the torture to stop as it would any "truth"--so not only is the tactic barbaric, but the information obtained is often worthless. but no matter, i suppose: not for you at least.

unless you really believe that the Law is drawn to the Guilty so due process is just gravy--but i'd like to let you in on something--when kafka talked about this view of the law, he was making fun of it.

even if you are correct in your narrow focus on the letter of the law in this case, i have to say that your defense of torture strikes me as appalling.

[dksuddeth]

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei

No I am not, just saying the law is drastically different for them as far as protections. As a result we get that gray area, which I am all for exploiting to the benefit of National Security when it comes from immoral sociopaths the likes of Al Qaeda.

the law should NOT be drastically different for anyone. Thats what the law is about, no discrimination or favoratism. The detention issue I could be in favor for, provided theres an official tribunal or hearing, with congressional oversight, to determine their status. Torture, however, is completely immoral and unethical. No amount of explanation or justification will ever legitimize it. Even as much as I'd like to see it done to zarqawi, it would still be wrong and we are supposed to be above that.

[Chilek9]

Originally Posted by rofgilead

Endless detention of detainees may have been allowed by the courts - but it is WRONG. It is clearly morally wrong, and defending this practice is abhorrent.

Secret torture camps in foreign counties is even sicker. But the CIA has smeared their own names in so many messed up activities already that this isn't that surprising.

I wish we really had moral leadership (not people who pretend to be moral by talking about Jesus while starting wars).

Why is endless detention wrong? We did it in World War 2 to thousands upon thousands of Germans, Italians, Romanians, Japanese and so on. They were called PRISONERS OF WAR. Detention with no end in sight. It is more morally wrong to release them to go back to the battlefields and kill Americans, again. Which many of those that have been released have been caught doing.

As for "secret torture," I know that the black sites are secret, but there's no evidence that there is torture. In some events, I approve of torture when it makes the difference between another 9/11 and the moral qualms of torture, I could live with a little PTSD to prevent another 3,000 dead.

The President didn't start this war, he is merely engaged in fighting it. Maybe you should get involved, too.

[alpha phi]

Originally Posted by Chilek9

Why is endless detention wrong? We did it in World War 2 to thousands upon thousands of Germans, Italians, Romanians, Japanese and so on.

Are you serious?.....How would you like to be inturned because of your race
like the japanese were

Originally Posted by Chilek9

They were called PRISONERS OF WAR.

The current adminstration has gone through great lenghts to call the current
detainees anything but PRISONERS OF WAR to avoid Geneva laws

Originally Posted by Chilek9

Detention with no end in sight. It is more morally wrong to release them to go back to the battlefields and kill Americans, again. Which many of those that have been released have been caught doing.

If I were going about my daily buisness, and got picked up by a forigen
goverment....flown to an undisclosed location....abused/interroegated
/whatever word is politically chosen.
Then found to be innocent, I'd be pissed too.
The arrest is the immoral event here

Originally Posted by Chilek9

As for "secret torture," I know that the black sites are secret, but there's no evidence that there is torture. In some events, I approve of torture when it makes the difference between another 9/11 and the moral qualms of torture, I could live with a little PTSD to prevent another 3,000 dead.

The evidence is showing up every day
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1206-04.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/...657735,00.html
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/...icle331070.ece
http://www.timesofoman.com/newsdetails.asp?newsid=22793
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20...nt_3881107.htm

Originally Posted by Chilek9

The President didn't start this war, he is merely engaged in fighting it. Maybe you should get involved, too.

who is the commander in chief?
are you still under the delusion Saddam supported osamma
that would be the CIA that trained him.....
who made the first strike......Hint: shock and awe

[Willravel]

Originally Posted by Chilek9

The President didn't start this war, he is merely engaged in fighting it.

I disagree. Saddam has never made an attack on US soil. We've invade his country durring two wars and have bombed and sanctioned him for over a decade. Even going by what the Bush administration has been saying, we did start this war.

[aKula]

Even if the US is not torturing people in their own prisons (in eastern Europe and afghanistan) their practice of rendition also sends some people to places such as Egypt where they are totured.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...111102065.html

Italian prosecutors on Friday formally requested the extradition of 22 U.S. citizens believed to be CIA operatives on charges that they seized an Egyptian Islamic cleric off a Milan street in early 2003 and flew him to Cairo, where he later said he was tortured.

Not only is this morally and legally dubious it also hurts the reputation of the USA abroad (both in the public and government).

[trickyy]

if we're going to talk about WWII, it should be said that rebuilding germany was a breeze in comparison to iraq. progress has been made, but it's hard to say that the insurgent situation is improving. hopefully we learn from the experience and, in the future, stay away from the quaint ideas of pre-emption, preventative war, indispensable nationhood, unilaterlism, etc.

back to the topic at hand, i thought this was old news when it was first reported. i too am surprised that people are defending what is alleged to be happening. of course, it is easy to say that we should "stick it to" a "foreign terrorist." but it is hard to say how often this is actually happening (or if it is at all)...that is, the right person is harshly interrogated/shipped to romania only to reveal important information. the system doesn't allow for much transparency at all...which might be okay if it weren't for the continual reports of shocking abuse and false arrest.

after reading the tecuba report, watching the abu garib situation, and hearing stories from both prisoners and soldiers, it is apparent that the systems of brutal interrogation and identifying legitimate terrorists are both seriously flawed. mixing these two flawed elements has been a disaster on several occasions. while this characterization might be incorrect on the whole, the administration won't trust us with information to the contrary. thus, it's hard to give them much leeway for secret jails in the darker corners of the earth.

Captain Ian Fishback notes:

Some argue that since our actions are not as horrifying as Al Qaeda's, we should not be concerned. When did Al Qaeda become any type of standard by which we measure the morality of the United States?

Others argue that clear standards will limit the President's ability to wage the War on Terror. Since clear standards only limit interrogation techniques, it is reasonable for me to assume that supporters of this argument desire to use coercion to acquire information from detainees. This is morally inconsistent with the Constitution and justice in war. It is unacceptable.

If we abandon our ideals in the face of adversity and aggression, then those ideals were never really in our possession. I would rather die fighting than give up even the smallest part of the idea that is "America."

[raveneye]

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei

What's immoral about sticking it to people who grossly violate moral law/legal law/natural law?

If you don't think it's immoral on principle, then you might consider the harm it does to our troops.

[dksuddeth]

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei

What's immoral about sticking it to people who grossly violate moral law/legal law/natural law?

you know, i do believe thats how the term 'moral relativity' started.

[aKula]

Yes which is ironic as stopping moral relativity is a goal of straussian ideology and therefore also a goal of the the neo conservatives.

[Chilek9]

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

if the jurisdiction does not reach beyond our borders, then explain extraordinary rendition. If there is a legal precedent to operate 'black sites' then there must be documentation. The executive branch is not an autonomous organization and MUST have oversight from congress. I'm simply not understanding why, if these are legal, that those in the government refuse to confirm or deny their existence. The only reasonable deduction would be that they are illegal, or at least a gray area, and would only serve to outrage the american people in to a backlash against the government.

Extraordinary rendition is returning a person to their own home country or to a country that will take them because we don't want them anymore. It's not like we're going to take them home and keep them staked out in the back yard and water them twice a day. There doesn't need to be a legal precedent for the CIA to operate a facility, only an order from the executive branch. Of course there's going to be documentation. I'm willing to bet it all has a great big TOP SECRET stamped on it. That would mean we probably won't see even the blacked out versions for another ten years or so. The only REASONABLE deduction is that the existence and location of those facilities is that the information is CLASSIFIED and, therefore, not subject to public release. No grey to it. Its release would only serve to act against the security of the United States and our lawful operations.

[Mojo_PeiPei]

Originally Posted by Chilek9

Its release would only serve to act against the security of the United States and our lawful operations.

I think this sentence is key, but you negated to throw in one key word. It would act against our sovereignity as a state.

[roachboy]

Qaeda-Iraq Link U.S. Cited Is Tied to Coercion Claim
By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 - The Bush administration based a crucial prewar assertion about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda on detailed statements made by a prisoner while in Egyptian custody who later said he had fabricated them to escape harsh treatment, according to current and former government officials.

The officials said the captive, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, provided his most specific and elaborate accounts about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda only after he was secretly handed over to Egypt by the United States in January 2002, in a process known as rendition.

The new disclosure provides the first public evidence that bad intelligence on Iraq may have resulted partly from the administration's heavy reliance on third countries to carry out interrogations of Qaeda members and others detained as part of American counterterrorism efforts. The Bush administration used Mr. Libi's accounts as the basis for its prewar claims, now discredited, that ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda included training in explosives and chemical weapons.

The fact that Mr. Libi recanted after the American invasion of Iraq and that intelligence based on his remarks was withdrawn by the C.I.A. in March 2004 has been public for more than a year. But American officials had not previously acknowledged either that Mr. Libi made the false statements in foreign custody or that Mr. Libi contended that his statements had been coerced.

A government official said that some intelligence provided by Mr. Libi about Al Qaeda had been accurate, and that Mr. Libi's claims that he had been treated harshly in Egyptian custody had not been corroborated.

A classified Defense Intelligence Agency report issued in February 2002 that expressed skepticism about Mr. Libi's credibility on questions related to Iraq and Al Qaeda was based in part on the knowledge that he was no longer in American custody when he made the detailed statements, and that he might have been subjected to harsh treatment, the officials said. They said the C.I.A.'s decision to withdraw the intelligence based on Mr. Libi's claims had been made because of his later assertions, beginning in January 2004, that he had fabricated them to obtain better treatment from his captors.

At the time of his capture in Pakistan in late 2001, Mr. Libi, a Libyan, was the highest-ranking Qaeda leader in American custody. A Nov. 6 report in The New York Times, citing the Defense Intelligence Agency document, said he had made the assertions about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda involving illicit weapons while in American custody.

Mr. Libi was indeed initially held by the United States military in Afghanistan, and was debriefed there by C.I.A. officers, according to the new account provided by the current and former government officials. But despite his high rank, he was transferred to Egypt for further interrogation in January 2002 because the White House had not yet provided detailed authorization for the C.I.A. to hold him.

While he made some statements about Iraq and Al Qaeda when in American custody, the officials said, it was not until after he was handed over to Egypt that he made the most specific assertions, which were later used by the Bush administration as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons.

Beginning in March 2002, with the capture of a Qaeda operative named Abu Zubaydah, the C.I.A. adopted a practice of maintaining custody itself of the highest-ranking captives, a practice that became the main focus of recent controversy related to detention of suspected terrorists.

The agency currently holds between two and three dozen high-ranking terrorist suspects in secret prisons around the world. Reports that the prisons have included locations in Eastern Europe have stirred intense discomfort on the continent and have dogged Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit there this week.

Mr. Libi was returned to American custody in February 2003, when he was transferred to the American detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, according to the current and former government officials. He withdrew his claims about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda in January 2004, and his current location is not known. A C.I.A. spokesman refused Thursday to comment on Mr. Libi's case. The current and former government officials who agreed to discuss the case were granted anonymity because most details surrounding Mr. Libi's case remain classified.

During his time in Egyptian custody, Mr. Libi was among a group of what American officials have described as about 150 prisoners sent by the United States from one foreign country to another since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks for the purposes of interrogation. American officials including Ms. Rice have defended the practice, saying it draws on language and cultural expertise of American allies, particularly in the Middle East, and provides an important tool for interrogation. They have said that the United States carries out the renditions only after obtaining explicit assurances from the receiving countries that the prisoners will not be tortured.

Nabil Fahmy, the Egyptian ambassador to the United States, said in a telephone interview on Thursday that he had no specific knowledge of Mr. Libi's case. Mr. Fahmy acknowledged that some prisoners had been sent to Egypt by mutual agreement between the United States and Egypt. "We do interrogations based on our understanding of the culture," Mr. Fahmy said. "We're not in the business of torturing anyone."

In statements before the war, and without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then the secretary of state, and other officials repeatedly cited the information provided by Mr. Libi as "credible" evidence that Iraq was training Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons. Among the first and most prominent assertions was one by Mr. Bush, who said in a major speech in Cincinnati in October 2002 that "we've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases."

The question of why the administration relied so heavily on the statements by Mr. Libi has long been a subject of contention. Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, made public last month unclassified passages from the February 2002 document, which said it was probable that Mr. Libi "was intentionally misleading the debriefers."

The document showed that the Defense Intelligence Agency had identified Mr. Libi as a probable fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda involving illicit weapons.

Mr. Levin has since asked the agency to declassify four other intelligence reports, three of them from February 2002, to see if they also expressed skepticism about Mr. Libi's credibility. On Thursday, a spokesman for Mr. Levin said he could not comment on the circumstances surrounding Mr. Libi's detention because the matter was classified.

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/po...rtner=homepage

even if i agreed with chilek and mojo and their line above---mojo's inparticular appears to reduce to torture as a kind of demonstration of national sovereignty, so long as there would be some way to rationalize it from within the legal system of the u.s., where chilek is simply rehearsing the gonzalez arguments of a couple years ago---torture remains a bad instrument for gathering information.

it is wholly self-defeating politically---bushworld likes to pretend that torture can be squared with a democratic project--you know, democracy american style, whci at least is geared around the protection of individual rights, and torture american style, which is about the wholesale erasure of rights. it is bad intel practice.
torture is illegal.
torture is morally wrong.
there is no justification for it.

[host]

roachboy...from your NY Times article:

.........Mr. Libi was returned to American custody in February 2003, when he was transferred to the American detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, according to the current and former government officials. He withdrew his claims about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda in January 2004, and <b>his current location is not known.</b> A C.I.A. spokesman refused Thursday to comment on Mr. Libi's case............

chapters.redcross.org/tx/corpuschristi/ICRC.htm

Questions and Answers

1. Is the American Red Cross involved with visiting the detainees?

No, the American Red Cross does not have a specific role in conducting visits to prisoners of war. This is the responsibility of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

2. Will donations to the American Red Cross be used to fund the visits to the detainees?

NO

3. What do we call the people held by the U.S. government and being taken to Guantanamo Bay - prisoners of war or terrorists?

The terms prisoners, prisoners of war (POW), detainees, terrorists and criminals have all been used when referring to these individuals. For the time being, the American Red Cross refers to the individuals being held by the U.S. government in connection with the hostilities in Afghanistan as detainees. There are complex legal issues relating to their status and the use of other terminology might convey unintended legal or political messages, incompatible with Red Cross impartiality and neutrality.

4. How does international humanitarian law apply to this situation?

The United States in engaged in an international armed conflict (war), with Afghanistan. International humanitarian law (IHL), including the Geneva Conventions, provides certain protections for persons not taking an active roll in an armed conflict. Protected persons include civilians, wounded, sick and shipwrecked combatants, and those held in connection with the hostilities, such as POWs. <b>Types of protection provided include the overall requirement of humane treatment as well as the registration of prisoners by the ICRC. Further protections for POWs are detailed in the 143 articles of the Third Geneva Convention, which address such issues as food, medical care and communications with family members.</b>

5. What is the role of the American Red Cross?

A specific role for the American Red Cross has not hyet been determined and will depend upon the needs identified. Under the Geneva Conventions, the ICRC is reponsible for visiting detainees and taking the lead to ensure that they receive treatment in accordance with those treaties. As an auxiliary in humanitarian service to the U.S. government as provided for by its Congressional Charter, the Geneva Conventions and the Statues of the Red Cross MOevement, the American REd Cross will also provide appropriate humanitarian assistance to detainees during armed conflic int he situations where the authorities call upon us for help. In keeping with the provisions of the Geneva Conventions, the American Red Cross expects to support any ICRC tracing and Red Cross message services between detainees and family members.

The fact that the NY Times reports that Mr. Libi's whereabouts are currently "unknown", along with the recent U.S. practice of extraordinary rendition, provide evidence that our leaders do not seem to be following the Geneva Convention humanitarian rules with regard to registration of detainees with the ICRC. It obviously is impossible for the ICRC to "monitor" the current condition of Mr. Libi, or the circumstances of his confinement. This also seems true of detainees on the "business end" of rendition.

If our country sets this example of lawlessness and violation of the human rights provisions of key treaties,
1.) How can we expect our citizens who are detained by other governments to be treated lawfully in the future?

2.) Aren't our elected officials required by provisions of our constitution to uphold provisions of all international treaties that our country is a party to?

3.) What principles are our troops and our civilian intelligence operatives fighting and risking life and limb for.......again?

4.) Why aren't we demanding that our elected representatives in congress investigate reports like the one about Mr. Libi, and holding chairmen of their own committees and the executive branch officials that they oversee, accountable for violations of the Geneva conventions and international law?
Why would we vote for politicians who are not committed to upholding the law and setting a positive example for the community of nations?

<b>I am growing weary from reading the glib, one sentence posts that are predominant on most of the TFP politics threads. Those who post them bring down the overall quality of the discussion, not up.</b>

[raveneye]

An interesting editorial in the London Financial Times today touched on some of the legal aspects of Condi's talking points this last week, by Phillipe Sands, law professor at University College London.

The gist is that the U.S. is in violation of the 1984 international torture convention, and in "grave breach" of the 1949 Geneva Convention.

Condi's remarks just provided more fuel to the fire, and she should watch her back when she leaves office.

"No amount of legal acrobatics is a defence to gross violations of international law."

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/6f56c004-68...0779e2340.html
(subscription required)

Financial Times (London, England)

December 9, 2005 Friday
London Edition 1

SECTION: COMMENT; Pg. 19

HEADLINE: America cannot circumvent the law on torture PHILIPPE SANDS

BYLINE: By PHILIPPE SANDS

This week Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, mounted a spirited defence of the Bush administration's policies on torture and "rendition", the cross-border transfer of terrorist suspects. "We're operating under our laws, we're operating under our international obligations," is the refrain. But these cleverly crafted words do not mean what they appear to say. The US position is premised on the claim that its actions comply with US law and, since US law complies with its international obligations, these too are being complied with. The claim is flawed.

Take the definition of torture. The definitions under the 1984 torture convention and the relevant US statute are not the same. The threshold for torture is lower under international law: acts that do not amount to torture under US law may do so under international law. "Waterboarding" - strapping a detainee to a board and dunking him under water so he believes that he might drown - plainly constitutes torture under international law, even if it may not do so under US law.

How, then, does the administration justify the claim that US law trumps? When the US joined the 1984 convention it entered an "understanding" on the definition of torture, to the effect that the international definition was to be read as being consistent with the US definition. The administration relies on the "understanding". So, when Ms Rice says the US does not do torture or render people to countries that practise torture, she does not rely on the international definition. That is wrong: the convention does not allow each country to adopt its own definition, otherwise the convention's obligations would become meaningless. That is why other governments believe the US "understanding" cannot affect US obligations under the convention. They are right.

Avoiding international law is an emblematic feature of this administration. Take another example, a little noted opinion prepared in March 2004 for Alberto Gonzales (now US attorney-general) on the question: does international law allow the US to transfer individuals out of Iraq for interrogation? The fourth Geneva convention (1949) is crystal clear: article 49 prohibits "forcible transfers" from occupied territory to any other country, regardless of motive. Yet Jack Goldsmith, then assistant attorney-general (now at Harvard Law School) perversely advised the administration that the convention allowed transfers out of Iraq "for a brief but not indefinite period, to facilitate interrogation". That is wrong.

Advice of this kind gives rise to illegal and disreputable policies on torture, transfer and rendition. They undermine co-operation with allies and diminish prospects for effective responses to terrorism. Advice such as this leads its authors and policymakers who act on it into the territory of international illegality. The 1984 torture convention prohibits not only torture but also prohibits complicity in torture.

An unlawful transfer under the Geneva convention is a "grave breach" of international law. Lending support to such acts can give rise to individual criminal liability. It justifies claims by Laurence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Colin Powell when secretary of state, that efforts by Dick Cheney, vice-president, to do away with all restrictions on the treatment of detainees could make him guilty of war crimes.

The possibility of criminal sanctions is real. In 1947 a US military tribunal in the Altstotter case convicted lawyers for complicity in international crimes, for their role in enacting and enforcing Nazi laws and decrees that permitted crimes against humanity. Participation in a government-organised system of cruelty gave rise to criminal liability.

In 1999 the UK House of Lords affirmed the obligation to prosecute or extradite torturers, ruling that even a former head of state, Chile's Augusto Pinochet, could not claim immunity. Yesterday the Lords gave an important judgment affirming the prohibition on torture (as defined by the convention) and the use of its fruit in proceedings.

These cases serve as a salutary reminder of the potential consequences of violating international laws. Ms Rice's policy statement fell short of affirming the US would apply the international definition of torture, take steps to prevent any person under its jurisdiction or control from torturing any person of any nationality anywhere in the world, and prosecute torturers. No amount of legal acrobatics is a defence to gross violations of international law. Under international law no immunities can be granted, even for the highest officials once out of office.

Philippe Sands QC is professor of law at University College London and author of Lawless World (Penguin Viking)

[boatin]

Condi recently said the following (transcription is mine from the TV, but I have Tivo and these are accurate):

"The United States does not condone torture."

"The United States does not transport, and has not transported, detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture. The United States does not use the airspace or the airports of any country for the purpose of transporting a detainee to a country where he or she will be tortured."

Somehow I hear this:

"We do it, cause we have to. Not because we condone it".

"We drive em where we want em, but only to get information. Our purpose isn't torture, for god's sake"

Am I the only one to hear: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman"

"Cause every high school kid knows a BJ isn't sexual relations..."

But my spin on Condi's comments are just speculation, right? And, of course, she isn't the President.

[roachboy]

this is a good reminder of the history of american torture....keep this bigger context in mind.....

The US has used torture for decades. All that's new is the openness about it

By ignoring past abuses, opponents of torture are in danger of pushing it back into the shadows instead of abolishing it

Naomi Klein
Saturday December 10, 2005
The Guardian


It was the "Mission Accomplished" of George Bush's second term, and an announcement of that magnitude called for a suitably dramatic location. But what was the right backdrop for the infamous "We do not torture" declaration? With characteristic audacity, the Bush team settled on downtown Panama City.

It was certainly bold. An hour and a half's drive from where Bush stood, the US military ran the notorious School of the Americas from 1946 to 1984, a sinister educational institution that, if it had a motto, might have been "We do torture". It is here in Panama, and later at the school's new location in Fort Benning, Georgia, where the roots of the current torture scandals can be found.

According to declassified training manuals, SOA students - military and police officers from across the hemisphere - were instructed in many of the same "coercive interrogation" techniques that have since gone to Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib: early morning capture to maximise shock, immediate hooding and blindfolding, forced nudity, sensory deprivation, sensory overload, sleep and food "manipulation", humiliation, extreme temperatures, isolation, stress positions - and worse. In 1996 President Clinton's Intelligence Oversight Board admitted that US-produced training materials condoned "execution of guerrillas, extortion, physical abuse, coercion and false imprisonment".

Some Panama school graduates went on to commit the continent's greatest war crimes of the past half-century: the murders of Archbishop Oscar Romero and six Jesuit priests in El Salvador; the systematic theft of babies from Argentina's "disappeared" prisoners; the massacre of 900 civilians in El Mozote in El Salvador; and military coups too numerous to list here.

Yet when covering the Bush announcement, not a single mainstream news outlet mentioned the location's sordid history. How could they? That would require something totally absent from the debate: an admission that the embrace of torture by US officials has been integral to US foreign policy since the Vietnam war.

It's a history exhaustively documented in an avalanche of books, declassified documents, CIA training manuals, court records and truth commissions. In his forthcoming book, A Question of Torture, Alfred McCoy synthesises this evidence, producing a riveting account of how monstrous CIA-funded experiments on psychiatric patients and prisoners in the 1950s turned into a template for what he calls "no-touch torture", based on sensory deprivation and self-inflicted pain. McCoy traces how these methods were field-tested by CIA agents in Vietnam as part of the Phoenix programme and then imported to Latin America and Asia under the guise of police training.

It is not only apologists for torture who ignore this history when they blame abuses on "a few bad apples". A startling number of torture's most prominent opponents keep telling us that the idea of torturing prisoners first occurred to US officials on September 11 2001, at which point the methods used in Guantánamo apparently emerged, fully formed, from the sadistic recesses of Dick Cheney's and Donald Rumsfeld's brains. Up until that moment, we are told, America fought its enemies while keeping its humanity intact.

The principal propagator of this narrative (what Garry Wills termed "original sinlessness") is Senator John McCain. Writing in Newsweek on the need to ban torture, McCain says that when he was a prisoner of war in Hanoi, he held fast to the knowledge "that we were different from our enemies ... that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or approving such mistreatment of them". It is a stunning historical distortion. By the time McCain was taken captive, the CIA had launched the Phoenix programme and, as McCoy writes, "its agents were operating 40 interrogation centres in South Vietnam that killed more than 20,000 suspects and tortured thousands more."

Does it somehow lessen today's horrors to admit that this is not the first time the US government has used torture, that it has operated secret prisons before, that it has actively supported regimes that tried to erase the left by dropping students out of airplanes? That, closer to home, photographs of lynchings were traded and sold as trophies and warnings? Many seem to think so. On November 8, Democratic Congressman Jim McDermott made the astonishing claim to the House of Representatives that "America has never had a question about its moral integrity, until now".

Other cultures deal with a legacy of torture by declaring "Never again!" Why do so many Americans insist on dealing with the current torture crisis by crying "Never before"? I suspect it stems from a sincere desire to convey the seriousness of this administration's crimes. And its open embrace of torture is indeed unprecedented.

But let's be clear about what is unprecedented: not the torture, but the openness. Past administrations kept their "black ops" secret; the crimes were sanctioned but they were committed in the shadows, officially denied and condemned. The Bush administration has broken this deal: post-9/11, it demanded the right to torture without shame, legitimised by new definitions and new laws.

Despite all the talk of outsourced torture, the real innovation has been in-sourcing, with prisoners being abused by US citizens in US-run prisons and transported to third countries in US planes. It is this departure from clandestine etiquette that has so much of the military and intelligence community up in arms: Bush has robbed everyone of plausible deniability. This shift is of huge significance. When torture is covertly practised but officially and legally repudiated, there is still hope that if atrocities are exposed, justice could prevail. When torture is pseudo-legal and those responsible deny that it is torture, what dies is what Hannah Arendt called "the juridical person in man". Soon victims no longer bother to search for justice, so sure are they of the futility, and danger, of that quest. This is a larger mirror of what happens inside the torture chamber, when prisoners are told they can scream all they want because no one can hear them and no one is going to save them.

The terrible irony of the anti-historicism of the torture debate is that in the name of eradicating future abuses, past crimes are being erased from the record. Since the US has never had truth commissions, the memory of its complicity in far-away crimes has always been fragile. Now these memories are fading further, and the disappeared are disappearing again.

This casual amnesia does a disservice not only to the victims, but also to the cause of trying to remove torture from the US policy arsenal once and for all. Already there are signs that the administration will deal with the uproar by returning to plausible deniability. The McCain amendment protects every "individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States government"; it says nothing about torture training or buying information from the exploding industry of for-profit interrogators.

And in Iraq the dirty work is already being handed over to Iraqi death squads, trained by the US and supervised by commanders like Jim Steele, who prepared for the job by setting up similar units in El Salvador. The US role in training and supervising Iraq's interior ministry was forgotten, moreover, when 173 prisoners were recently discovered in a ministry dungeon, some tortured so badly that their skin was falling off. "Look, it's a sovereign country. The Iraqi government exists," Rumsfeld said. He sounded just like the CIA's William Colby who, asked in a 1971 Congressional probe about the thousands killed under Phoenix, a programme he helped launch, replied that it was now "entirely a South Vietnamese programme".

As McCoy says, "if you don't understand the history and the depths of the institutional and public complicity, then you can't begin to undertake meaningful reforms." Lawmakers will respond to pressure by eliminating one small piece of the torture apparatus: closing a prison, shutting down a programme, even demanding the resignation of a really bad apple like Rumsfeld. But he warns, "they will preserve the prerogative to torture."

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/st...664001,00.html

another version of this article appeared in the nation--it is longer and more detailed:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051226/klein

[raveneye]

The US has used torture for decades. All that's new is the openness about it

Cue Charles Krauthammer, prominent respected neoconservative, member of the New American Century, contributing editor of the Weekly Standard, who is leading the new openness about torture by out-Bushing Bush, in his proposal to formally legalize torture ("nothing rationally related to getting accurate information would be ruled out"), during which he refers to those who advocate a torture ban as moral preeners and fools motivated by "moral vanity".

Here's his article below. I think this is a milestone in the history of the United States. We can remember Christmas 2005 as the year that the neoconservatives decided to publically, openly embrace torture as an official policy of the American government.

And by torture, Krauthammer means "nothing" would be ruled out, as long as it was effective in eliciting "information". Those who oppose this idea are "moral preeners." Take a few minutes to think that over.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Conten...rhqav.asp?pg=2

The Truth about Torture
It's time to be honest about doing terrible things.
by Charles Krauthammer
12/05/2005, Volume 011, Issue 12

DURING THE LAST FEW WEEKS in Washington the pieties about torture have lain so thick in the air that it has been impossible to have a reasoned discussion. The McCain amendment that would ban "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" treatment of any prisoner by any agent of the United States sailed through the Senate by a vote of 90-9. The Washington establishment remains stunned that nine such retrograde, morally inert persons--let alone senators--could be found in this noble capital.

Now, John McCain has great moral authority on this issue, having heroically borne torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese. McCain has made fine arguments in defense of his position. And McCain is acting out of the deep and honorable conviction that what he is proposing is not only right but is in the best interest of the United States. His position deserves respect. But that does not mean, as seems to be the assumption in Washington today, that a critical analysis of his "no torture, ever" policy is beyond the pale.

Let's begin with a few analytic distinctions. For the purpose of torture and prisoner maltreatment, there are three kinds of war prisoners:

First, there is the ordinary soldier caught on the field of battle. There is no question that he is entitled to humane treatment. Indeed, we have no right to disturb a hair on his head. His detention has but a single purpose: to keep him hors de combat. The proof of that proposition is that if there were a better way to keep him off the battlefield that did not require his detention, we would let him go. Indeed, during one year of the Civil War, the two sides did try an alternative. They mutually "paroled" captured enemy soldiers, i.e., released them to return home on the pledge that they would not take up arms again. (The experiment failed for a foreseeable reason: cheating. Grant found that some paroled Confederates had reenlisted.)

Because the only purpose of detention in these circumstances is to prevent the prisoner from becoming a combatant again, he is entitled to all the protections and dignity of an ordinary domestic prisoner--indeed, more privileges, because, unlike the domestic prisoner, he has committed no crime. He merely had the misfortune to enlist on the other side of a legitimate war. He is therefore entitled to many of the privileges enjoyed by an ordinary citizen--the right to send correspondence, to engage in athletic activity and intellectual pursuits, to receive allowances from relatives--except, of course, for the freedom to leave the prison.

Second, there is the captured terrorist. A terrorist is by profession, indeed by definition, an unlawful combatant: He lives outside the laws of war because he does not wear a uniform, he hides among civilians, and he deliberately targets innocents. He is entitled to no protections whatsoever. People seem to think that the postwar Geneva Conventions were written only to protect detainees. In fact, their deeper purpose was to provide a deterrent to the kind of barbaric treatment of civilians that had become so horribly apparent during the first half of the 20th century, and in particular, during the Second World War. The idea was to deter the abuse of civilians by promising combatants who treated noncombatants well that they themselves would be treated according to a code of dignity if captured--and, crucially, that they would be denied the protections of that code if they broke the laws of war and abused civilians themselves.

Breaking the laws of war and abusing civilians are what, to understate the matter vastly, terrorists do for a living. They are entitled, therefore, to nothing. Anyone who blows up a car bomb in a market deserves to spend the rest of his life roasting on a spit over an open fire. But we don't do that because we do not descend to the level of our enemy. We don't do that because, unlike him, we are civilized. Even though terrorists are entitled to no humane treatment, we give it to them because it is in our nature as a moral and humane people. And when on rare occasions we fail to do that, as has occurred in several of the fronts of the war on terror, we are duly disgraced.

The norm, however, is how the majority of prisoners at Guantanamo have been treated. We give them three meals a day, superior medical care, and provision to pray five times a day. Our scrupulousness extends even to providing them with their own Korans, which is the only reason alleged abuses of the Koran at Guantanamo ever became an issue. That we should have provided those who kill innocents in the name of Islam with precisely the document that inspires their barbarism is a sign of the absurd lengths to which we often go in extending undeserved humanity to terrorist prisoners.

Third, there is the terrorist with information. Here the issue of torture gets complicated and the easy pieties don't so easily apply. Let's take the textbook case. Ethics 101: A terrorist has planted a nuclear bomb in New York City. It will go off in one hour. A million people will die. You capture the terrorist. He knows where it is. He's not talking.

Question: If you have the slightest belief that hanging this man by his thumbs will get you the information to save a million people, are you permitted to do it?

Now, on most issues regarding torture, I confess tentativeness and uncertainty. But on this issue, there can be no uncertainty: Not only is it permissible to hang this miscreant by his thumbs. It is a moral duty.

Yes, you say, but that's an extreme and very hypothetical case. Well, not as hypothetical as you think. Sure, the (nuclear) scale is hypothetical, but in the age of the car-and suicide-bomber, terrorists are often captured who have just set a car bomb to go off or sent a suicide bomber out to a coffee shop, and you only have minutes to find out where the attack is to take place. This "hypothetical" is common enough that the Israelis have a term for precisely that situation: the ticking time bomb problem.

And even if the example I gave were entirely hypothetical, the conclusion--yes, in this case even torture is permissible--is telling because it establishes the principle: Torture is not always impermissible. However rare the cases, there are circumstances in which, by any rational moral calculus, torture not only would be permissible but would be required (to acquire life-saving information). And once you've established the principle, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, all that's left to haggle about is the price. In the case of torture, that means that the argument is not whether torture is ever permissible, but when--i.e., under what obviously stringent circumstances: how big, how imminent, how preventable the ticking time bomb.

That is why the McCain amendment, which by mandating "torture never" refuses even to recognize the legitimacy of any moral calculus, cannot be right. There must be exceptions. The real argument should be over what constitutes a legitimate exception.

Let's Take An Example that is far from hypothetical. You capture Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Pakistan. He not only has already killed innocents, he is deeply involved in the planning for the present and future killing of innocents. He not only was the architect of the 9/11 attack that killed nearly three thousand people in one day, most of them dying a terrible, agonizing, indeed tortured death. But as the top al Qaeda planner and logistical expert he also knows a lot about terror attacks to come. He knows plans, identities, contacts, materials, cell locations, safe houses, cased targets, etc. What do you do with him?

We have recently learned that since 9/11 the United States has maintained a series of "black sites" around the world, secret detention centers where presumably high-level terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed have been imprisoned. The world is scandalized. Black sites? Secret detention? Jimmy Carter calls this "a profound and radical change in the . . . moral values of our country." The Council of Europe demands an investigation, calling the claims "extremely worrying." Its human rights commissioner declares "such practices" to constitute "a serious human rights violation, and further proof of the crisis of values" that has engulfed the war on terror. The gnashing of teeth and rending of garments has been considerable.

I myself have not gnashed a single tooth. My garments remain entirely unrent. Indeed, I feel reassured. It would be a gross dereliction of duty for any government not to keep Khalid Sheikh Mohammed isolated, disoriented, alone, despairing, cold and sleepless, in some godforsaken hidden location in order to find out what he knew about plans for future mass murder. What are we supposed to do? Give him a nice cell in a warm Manhattan prison, complete with Miranda rights, a mellifluent lawyer, and his own website? Are not those the kinds of courtesies we extended to the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, then congratulated ourselves on how we "brought to justice" those responsible for an attack that barely failed to kill tens of thousands of Americans, only to discover a decade later that we had accomplished nothing--indeed, that some of the disclosures at the trial had helped Osama bin Laden avoid U.S. surveillance?

Have we learned nothing from 9/11? Are we prepared to go back with complete amnesia to the domestic-crime model of dealing with terrorists, which allowed us to sleepwalk through the nineties while al Qaeda incubated and grew and metastasized unmolested until on 9/11 it finished what the first World Trade Center bombers had begun?

Let's assume (and hope) that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has been kept in one of these black sites, say, a cell somewhere in Romania, held entirely incommunicado and subjected to the kind of "coercive interrogation" that I described above. McCain has been going around praising the Israelis as the model of how to deal with terrorism and prevent terrorist attacks. He does so because in 1999 the Israeli Supreme Court outlawed all torture in the course of interrogation. But in reality, the Israeli case is far more complicated. And the complications reflect precisely the dilemmas regarding all coercive interrogation, the weighing of the lesser of two evils: the undeniable inhumanity of torture versus the abdication of the duty to protect the victims of a potentially preventable mass murder.

In a summary of Israel's policies, Glenn Frankel of the Washington Post noted that the 1999 Supreme Court ruling struck down secret guidelines established 12 years earlier that allowed interrogators to use the kind of physical and psychological pressure I described in imagining how KSM might be treated in America's "black sites."

"But after the second Palestinian uprising broke out a year later, and especially after a devastating series of suicide bombings of passenger buses, cafes and other civilian targets," writes Frankel, citing human rights lawyers and detainees, "Israel's internal security service, known as the Shin Bet or the Shabak, returned to physical coercion as a standard practice." Not only do the techniques used "command widespread support from the Israeli public," but "Israeli prime ministers and justice ministers with a variety of political views," including the most conciliatory and liberal, have defended these techniques "as a last resort in preventing terrorist attacks."

Which makes McCain's position on torture incoherent. If this kind of coercive interrogation were imposed on any inmate in the American prison system, it would immediately be declared cruel and unusual, and outlawed. How can he oppose these practices, which the Israelis use, and yet hold up Israel as a model for dealing with terrorists? Or does he countenance this kind of interrogation in extreme circumstances--in which case, what is left of his categorical opposition to inhuman treatment of any kind?

But let us push further into even more unpleasant territory, the territory that lies beyond mere coercive interrogation and beyond McCain's self-contradictions. How far are we willing to go?

This "going beyond" need not be cinematic and ghoulish. (Jay Leno once suggested "duct tape" for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. See photo.) Consider, for example, injection with sodium pentathol. (Colloquially known as "truth serum," it is nothing of the sort. It is a barbiturate whose purpose is to sedate. Its effects are much like that of alcohol: disinhibiting the higher brain centers to make someone more likely to disclose information or thoughts that might otherwise be guarded.) Forcible sedation is a clear violation of bodily integrity. In a civilian context it would be considered assault. It is certainly impermissible under any prohibition of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

Let's posit that during the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, perhaps early on, we got intelligence about an imminent al Qaeda attack. And we had a very good reason to believe he knew about it. And if we knew what he knew, we could stop it. If we thought we could glean a critical piece of information by use of sodium pentathol, would we be permitted to do so?

Less hypothetically, there is waterboarding, a terrifying and deeply shocking torture technique in which the prisoner has his face exposed to water in a way that gives the feeling of drowning. According to CIA sources cited by ABC News, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed "was able to last between two and 2 1/2 minutes before begging to confess." Should we regret having done that? Should we abolish by law that practice, so that it could never be used on the next Khalid Sheikh Mohammed having thus gotten his confession?

And what if he possessed information with less imminent implications? Say we had information about a cell that he had helped found or direct, and that cell was planning some major attack and we needed information about the identity and location of its members. A rational moral calculus might not permit measures as extreme as the nuke-in-Manhattan scenario, but would surely permit measures beyond mere psychological pressure.

Such a determination would not be made with an untroubled conscience. It would be troubled because there is no denying the monstrous evil that is any form of torture. And there is no denying how corrupting it can be to the individuals and society that practice it. But elected leaders, responsible above all for the protection of their citizens, have the obligation to tolerate their own sleepless nights by doing what is necessary--and only what is necessary, nothing more--to get information that could prevent mass murder.

GIVEN THE GRAVITY OF THE DECISION, if we indeed cross the Rubicon--as we must--we need rules. The problem with the McCain amendment is that once you have gone public with a blanket ban on all forms of coercion, it is going to be very difficult to publicly carve out exceptions. The Bush administration is to be faulted for having attempted such a codification with the kind of secrecy, lack of coherence, and lack of strict enforcement that led us to the McCain reaction.

What to do at this late date? Begin, as McCain does, by banning all forms of coercion or inhuman treatment by anyone serving in the military--an absolute ban on torture by all military personnel everywhere. We do not want a private somewhere making these fine distinctions about ticking and slow-fuse time bombs. We don't even want colonels or generals making them. It would be best for the morale, discipline, and honor of the Armed Forces for the United States to maintain an absolute prohibition, both to simplify their task in making decisions and to offer them whatever reciprocal treatment they might receive from those who capture them--although I have no illusion that any anti-torture provision will soften the heart of a single jihadist holding a knife to the throat of a captured American soldier. We would impose this restriction on ourselves for our own reasons of military discipline and military honor.

Outside the military, however, I would propose, contra McCain, a ban against all forms of torture, coercive interrogation, and inhuman treatment, except in two contingencies: (1) the ticking time bomb and (2) the slower-fuse high-level terrorist (such as KSM). Each contingency would have its own set of rules. In the case of the ticking time bomb, the rules would be relatively simple: Nothing rationally related to getting accurate information would be ruled out. The case of the high-value suspect with slow-fuse information is more complicated. The principle would be that the level of inhumanity of the measures used (moral honesty is essential here--we would be using measures that are by definition inhumane) would be proportional to the need and value of the information. Interrogators would be constrained to use the least inhumane treatment necessary relative to the magnitude and imminence of the evil being prevented and the importance of the knowledge being obtained.

These exceptions to the no-torture rule would not be granted to just any nonmilitary interrogators, or anyone with CIA credentials. They would be reserved for highly specialized agents who are experts and experienced in interrogation, and who are known not to abuse it for the satisfaction of a kind of sick sadomasochism Lynndie England and her cohorts indulged in at Abu Ghraib. Nor would they be acting on their own. They would be required to obtain written permission for such interrogations from the highest political authorities in the country (cabinet level) or from a quasi-judicial body modeled on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (which permits what would ordinarily be illegal searches and seizures in the war on terror). Or, if the bomb was truly ticking and there was no time, the interrogators would be allowed to act on their own, but would require post facto authorization within, say, 24 hours of their interrogation, so that they knew that whatever they did would be subject to review by others and be justified only under the most stringent terms.

One of the purposes of these justifications would be to establish that whatever extreme measures are used are for reasons of nothing but information. Historically, the torture of prisoners has been done for a variety of reasons apart from information, most prominently reasons of justice or revenge. We do not do that. We should not do that. Ever. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, murderer of 2,973 innocents, is surely deserving of the most extreme suffering day and night for the rest of his life. But it is neither our role nor our right to be the agents of that suffering. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. His, not ours. Torture is a terrible and monstrous thing, as degrading and morally corrupting to those who practice it as any conceivable human activity including its moral twin, capital punishment.

If Khalid Sheikh Mohammed knew nothing, or if we had reached the point where his knowledge had been exhausted, I'd be perfectly prepared to throw him into a nice, comfortable Manhattan cell and give him a trial to determine what would be fit and just punishment. But as long as he had useful information, things would be different.

Very different. And it simply will not do to take refuge in the claim that all of the above discussion is superfluous because torture never works anyway. Would that this were true. Unfortunately, on its face, this is nonsense. Is one to believe that in the entire history of human warfare, no combatant has ever received useful information by the use of pressure, torture, or any other kind of inhuman treatment? It may indeed be true that torture is not a reliable tool. But that is very different from saying that it is never useful.

The monstrous thing about torture is that sometimes it does work. In 1994, 19-year-old Israeli corporal Nachshon Waxman was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists. The Israelis captured the driver of the car used in the kidnapping and tortured him in order to find where Waxman was being held. Yitzhak Rabin, prime minister and peacemaker, admitted that they tortured him in a way that went even beyond the '87 guidelines for "coercive interrogation" later struck down by the Israeli Supreme Court as too harsh. The driver talked. His information was accurate. The Israelis found Waxman. "If we'd been so careful to follow the ['87] Landau Commission [which allowed coercive interrogation]," explained Rabin, "we would never have found out where Waxman was being held."

In the Waxman case, I would have done precisely what Rabin did. (The fact that Waxman's Palestinian captors killed him during the Israeli rescue raid makes the case doubly tragic, but changes nothing of the moral calculus.) Faced with a similar choice, an American president would have a similar obligation. To do otherwise--to give up the chance to find your soldier lest you sully yourself by authorizing torture of the person who possesses potentially lifesaving information--is a deeply immoral betrayal of a soldier and countryman. Not as cosmically immoral as permitting a city of one's countrymen to perish, as in the Ethics 101 case. But it remains, nonetheless, a case of moral abdication--of a kind rather parallel to that of the principled pacifist. There is much to admire in those who refuse on principle ever to take up arms under any conditions. But that does not make pure pacifism, like no-torture absolutism, any less a form of moral foolishness, tinged with moral vanity. Not reprehensible, only deeply reproachable and supremely impracticable. People who hold such beliefs are deserving of a certain respect. But they are not to be put in positions of authority. One should be grateful for the saintly among us. And one should be vigilant that they not get to make the decisions upon which the lives of others depend.

WHICH BRINGS US to the greatest irony of all in the torture debate. I have just made what will be characterized as the pro-torture case contra McCain by proposing two major exceptions carved out of any no-torture rule: the ticking time bomb and the slow-fuse high-value terrorist. McCain supposedly is being hailed for defending all that is good and right and just in America by standing foursquare against any inhuman treatment. Or is he?

According to Newsweek, in the ticking time bomb case McCain says that the president should disobey the very law that McCain seeks to pass--under the justification that "you do what you have to do. But you take responsibility for it." But if torturing the ticking time bomb suspect is "what you have to do," then why has McCain been going around arguing that such things must never be done?

As for exception number two, the high-level terrorist with slow-fuse information, Stuart Taylor, the superb legal correspondent for National Journal, argues that with appropriate legal interpretation, the "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" standard, "though vague, is said by experts to codify . . . the commonsense principle that the toughness of interrogation techniques should be calibrated to the importance and urgency of the information likely to be obtained." That would permit "some very aggressive techniques . . . on that small percentage of detainees who seem especially likely to have potentially life-saving information." Or as Evan Thomas and Michael Hirsh put it in the Newsweek report on McCain and torture, the McCain standard would "presumably allow for a sliding scale" of torture or torture-lite or other coercive techniques, thus permitting "for a very small percentage--those High Value Targets like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed--some pretty rough treatment."

But if that is the case, then McCain embraces the same exceptions I do, but prefers to pretend he does not. If that is the case, then his much-touted and endlessly repeated absolutism on inhumane treatment is merely for show. If that is the case, then the moral preening and the phony arguments can stop now, and we can all agree that in this real world of astonishingly murderous enemies, in two very circumscribed circumstances, we must all be prepared to torture. Having established that, we can then begin to work together to codify rules of interrogation for the two very unpleasant but very real cases in which we are morally permitted--indeed morally compelled--to do terrible things.

Charles Krauthammer is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.