McCain Amendment on Torture

I've been reading a bit on the topic lately. Up front, I think this is a poor idea. I linked to a VDH article on the topic, which is very realistic on the topic. The crux of the discussion comes to this:

So we might as well admit that by foreswearing the use of torture, we will probably be at a disadvantage in obtaining key information and perhaps endanger American lives here at home. (And, ironically, those who now allege that we are too rough will no doubt decry "faulty intelligence" and "incompetence" should there be another terrorist attack on an American city.) Our restraint will not ensure any better treatment for our own captured soldiers. Nor will our allies or the United Nations appreciate American forbearance. The terrorists themselves will probably treat our magnanimity with disdain, as if we were weak rather than good.

But all that is precisely the risk we must take in supporting the McCain amendment -— because it is a public reaffirmation of our country's ideals. The United States can win this global war without employing torture. That we will not resort to what comes so naturally to Islamic terrorists also defines the nobility of our cause, reminding us that we need not and will not become anything like our enemies.

I'm not very fond of the argument, "accept the deaths of citizens for noble virtue." It's an easy thing to say when it's not your throat being slit. I find it unwise to just drop a tool that has provided correct information in the past. Of course, McCain has stated that in the case of an imminent large scale death threat, the president should, "do what is needed." That doesn't get the president or those that use the torture off the legal hook though.

Then there are articles like this:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in Europe last week engaging in torture diplomacy, an awkwardly timed mission coming, as it did, in the middle of the Christmas season. While Rice was reassuring European leaders that the United States "does not authorize or condone torture," back in Washington, President Bush and Vice President Cheney were making a mockery of the secretary's words. The administration wants to continue doing what it insists it is not doing, which is subjecting foreign detainees to the kind of abusive treatment that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., wants to ban.

Unlike Bush and Cheney, McCain has some moral authority on the issue. He is a former Vietnam prisoner of war who experienced torture firsthand. The McCain amendment, attached to the annual defense spending bill, would prohibit U.S. personnel from engaging in "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of detainees anywhere in the world.

Note that same worn and flawed logic that is so often used when convinient. "McCain has moral authority because he has been tortured himself." Doesn't follow. In fact I'd say that disqualifies him from being capable of a unbiased judgement. If you follow that moral authority argument, the vast majority of the government would be disqualified from making any stand. This is the same type of argument that we heard during the Bush/Kerry races where Kerry was deemed more qualified to command the military than Bush because he had been in a war.

Then there is the amusing piece on the Army altering the Army Feild Manual. Seems that some people are upset about this. I'll give the whole thing unaltered.

With Congress on the verge of passing the sweeping McCain amendment, the Bush administration has taken its drive to permit torture to new depths.

The basis of the McCain amendment is establishing the Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation as the uniform standard for interrogation. That manual explicitly prohibits the use of so-called "“coercive interrogation techniques."” As former Army interrogator Peter Bauer has written, "“the standard interrogation techniques found in the US Army Field Manual 34-52 were far more effective than such abusive behavior as stress positions, sensory deprivation, and humiliation. We obtained more information -– and more reliable information - with our basic skills than we did with even days of harsh treatment."

Realizing this, the Pentagon has one-upped McCain, and simply rewritten the manual:

The Army has approved a new, classified set of interrogation methods that may complicate negotiations over legislation proposed by Senator John McCain to bar cruel and inhumane treatment of detainees in American custody, military officials said Tuesday.

The techniques are included in a 10-page classified addendum to a new Army field manual that was forwarded this week to Stephen A. Cambone, the under secretary of defense for intelligence policy, for final approval, they said.

The addendum provides dozens of examples and goes into exacting detail on what procedures may or may not be used, and in what circumstances. Army interrogators have never had a set of such specific guidelines that would help teach them how to walk right up to the line between legal and illegal interrogations.

The political fall-out from this move is sure to be significant. The New York Times notes that McCain will likely be "“furious"” with the changes, and an unnamed Pentagon official is quoted, "“This is a stick in McCain'’s eye. It goes right up to the edge. HeÂ’s not going to be comfortable with this."

The idea that we have a "“Vice President for Torture" now appears quaint. What we really have is an entire administration, openly and unapologetically for torture.

Why is it an issue to "teach them how to walk right up to the line between legal and illegal interrogations?" Wouldn't this be prudent? Showing them the line definitively should ensure that the line will not be crossed. Wouldn't this ensure that torture wasn't being used?

I also find it hard to see how McCain should be upset over this. His amendment is sufficiently vague as to force the definitions onto the Field Manual. Did he expect that that document would be an unchanging document?

The other side of this? I personally believe that torture will go into the methods that were historically used. Here is Hanson's description:

Contrary to popular belief, throughout history torture has brought results — either to gain critical, sometimes lifesaving intelligence or more gratuitously to obtain embarrassing confessions from terrified captives.

The question, then, for a liberal democracy is not whether torture in certain cases is effective, but whether its value is worth the negative publicity and demoralizing effect on a consensual society that believes its cause and methods must enjoy a moral high ground far above the enemy's.

Nor can opponents of torture say that it is entirely foreign to the U.S. military experience, at least from what we know of it even in so-called good wars like World War II. There were American soldiers — sometimes in furor over the loss of comrades, sometimes to obtain critical information — who executed or tortured captured Japanese and German prisoners. Those who did so operated on a de facto "don't ask, don't tell" understanding, occasionally found it effective and were rarely punished by commanding officers. Even so, G.I.s never descended to the levels of depravity common in the Wehrmacht or the Soviet and Imperial Japanese armies.

The "don't ask, don't tell" method with the McCain Amendment, will ensure that fewer cases of torture will come to light, and the most egregious of the true abuses will never see justice.

The worst of the Amendment is the terminology for "degrading."

(d) Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment Defined.--In this section, the term "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment'' means the cruel, unusual, and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as defined in the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment done at New York, December 10, 1984.

What exactly would be outside of the scope of degrading? Some of the GITMO detainees objected to female guards because it was degrading. Would that make the presence of women in the prison a violation of the torture amendment? If they don't like the food, is that degrading and a violation? Could you force them to wear handcuff? As far as I can tell a detainee would have to be treated better than a king not to be questioned by this vaguery.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at the completely incompetent writing of the amendment. Considering that it's from the same person who wrote the McCain-Feingold supression of political speech act.