Please pardon the length and possible excessive use of bold font

Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
in this country at this time. Things can change but are really unlikely to do so. We have a national tendency to go too far in one direction and then to over correct and go back too far in the opposite direction -- yet we generally end up after some oscillation in getting it about right.
Let's hope so.

As for "harsh interrogation"... Maybe we should define our terms. I think waterboarding is torture - plain and simple. I think that long-time-standing, sleep deprivation, and induced hypothermia can become torture if they go on too long - 72 hours of being forced to stand in a 60 degree cell without sleep is torture in my book.

Maybe you disagree but I would hope that you at least agree that they are torture if applied to innocent men if not for combatants. A real terrorist might be psychologically able to deal with some of them but an innocent man who finds himself caught up in this world by mistake probably wont. The combined shock of being wrongly accused, detained (or kidnapped), and then having these techniques performed on him by people who ignore his protestations of innocence would be horrifying to the average man. Its one thing to be forced to stand in a freezing cell for days when you have a purpose and know why you are there and quite another to undergo the same treatment while trying to figure out how the hell your life took this radically wrong turn and why no one will listen to you when you try and tell them who you really are


Which leads to to your final paragraph. I'm not at all sure what you're trying to say? Are you implying that we have done that or is that merely a hypothetical based on some things you've seen on blogs written by people who have little real knowledge of the topic?

What I mean is this: Nearly every single person, with only a handful of exceptions, I have met or spoken to who says they support, in the case of "known terrorist", techniques like water-boarding or forcing a man to stay awake and standing for days on end in a cold cell ALSO support

1. Denying accused terrorists any meaningful legal representation or any communication with the outside world at all.
2. Admitting secret evidence that the accused can not see or respond to.
3. and, when pushed, Using these techniques on "suspected" terrorists and not just "known" terrorists.

I think these are a "perfect storm" of dangerously sloppy policies. Together they make it so that the only protection for the innocent is ... the good faith and diligence of the authorities because if an innocent man IS arrested he will have almost no chance to avoid getting this kind of harsh treatment which will probably produce a confession and thereby doom him.

The Bush administration has even used the fact that a defendant has been interrogated to oppose freeing him - or even allowing him to communicate with the outside world at all - under the argument that "he now knows our interrogation methods, which are secret, and might talk about them to others" Think about that and think about how it would work on an innocent man : their own mistake becomes a reason to keep you in prison. "Sorry we imprisoned and waterboarded you when you were completely innocent but now you have to stay in prison because, if we let you out, you might talk about what we did to you"

Frankly, I do not understand how someone who takes justice seriously can support harsh interrogation AND support related policies that mainly serve to make mistakes more likely and less correctable.

For a specific example of my worries I refer you to the story of Khalid El-Masri, a German who spent months being beaten and "harshly interrogated" in a CIA blacksite because his name is the same as that of a wanted terrorist "Khalid al-Masri" (same spelling in Arabic however) and the CIA employees didn't vet him before they had him renditioned in Jan 04. They literally appear to have ordered the rendition based solely on the spelling of his name on a flight manifest and a "gut feeling" that he was their man. For months he told them who he was, where he lived, and even where his kids went to school so they could verify his identity and they never even bothered to check any of it to see if he was telling the truth. Eventually they did realize he was the wrong Khalid el-Masri and in March 2004 they told him they knew he was innocent but STILL did not release him until April - because they were more concerned with covering their asses and hiding evidence of their mistake than letting a man they knew was innocent out of prison. When they finally did release him they didn't even send him home - they dumped him blindfolded in a hill in Albania and left him to find his own way back to Germany.

While our government will not "confirm or deny" any of this, it has largely been confirmed by an independent German investigation. Frankly, it appears as though his German citizenship is the main reason they finally released him - if he wasn't the citizen of an important ally Its unclear whether they would have let him go at all. The whole story is disgusting - it began as an easily avoidable mistake and ended in pure bad-faith behavior by officials trying to hide their own screw-ups. While I dont have proof that there are any other innocent people in similar circumstances I have no reason to believe otherwise since the people who both support and implement these policies fiercely object to the kinds of safeguards that could keep them from happening again.