The Don't Torture Memos

It is likely that this won't get much media time: the Bush administration has released a raft of memos regarding how much pressure is permissible when interrogating prisoners taken in the Terror Wars. As I wrote (twice):

Say that Secretary Rumsfeld were to ask Undersecretary Smith to write a memo justifying the use of torture just because we feel like it, Undersecretary Jones to write a memo explaining why even looking unhappy in the presence of a prisoner is unConsitutional regardless of circumstance, and other undersecretaries were asked to write intermediate position papers. Now, we don't know what policy was adopted, nor what other memos may have been written, so how can we conclude from the existence of this memo that in fact it represents ANYTHING about government policy?

Sure enough, the government has concluded that it is more damaging to our cause to have some believe that we use torture, than it is to release the details of our policy on interrogations (which allows the enemy to train to resist those techniques). So, good job, all of you who called the President or Secretary Rumsfeld monsters: you've now made it less likely that the US will be able to obtain useful information from captured enemies. I don't think that was the intent of most of you (some I'm not so sure), but it was the effect.

I hope that at some point we can all move past the assumption that our domestic political opponents must be murderers and drug runners (of which Clinton was accused) or monsters who demand we torture prisoners and who rob the country blind (of which Bush is accused). I'm really, really sick of a political atmosphere that believes such horrible slanders, and a media which propagates them as plausible.

Posted by Jeff at June 23, 2004 09:40 AM | Link Cosmos