Comments on: More on Mukasey

By: sara

sara — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 23:22:05 +0000

i just had to say i laughed out loud at jeremy’s “water goes in, intelligence flows out”

By: jeremy

jeremy — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 16:37:18 +0000

I agree with you. I would really like to live in a democracy.

Also, if you need a reader on the paper…

By: brie

brie — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 07:59:28 +0000

Good. Let’s do all of that.

I just think ‘the stand’ that the Dems are taking on this issue has more to do with slapping the Admin than concern about making things better. Instead of two negatives (no AG and yay more torture) - maybe this will encourage the Democrats to be more proactive about lawmaking.

But likely not. My paper on the media in 2004 reads like a demon’s manual. What we’re calling democracy these days bears little resemblance to anything like it.

By: jeremy

jeremy — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 01:22:14 +0000

While I appreciate the idea of Congress simply passing a law that explicitly outlaws certain practices rather than grilling AG candidates (who will probably never live up to expectations), I don’t think outlawing waterboarding would be an effective tactic. I think that waterboarding gets a lot of attention because it is a physical, and therefore tangible, practice that Americans are likely to recognize as torture. It is arguably not, however, the worst of the tactics at the disposal of interrogators. The psychological techniques of sensory and sleep deprivation, environmental manipulation, stress positions, etc are as, if not more, harmful and unfortunately less tangible than waterboarding.

I think that, to truly outlaw torture and place these techniques beyond any legal maneuvering, Congress would need to pass a law stating that the only acceptable practice for interrogation are those techniques which fall under the category of ‘rapport-building.’ This would effectively outlaw waterboarding and all other tactics that are coercive and make a detainee’s (or whatever we are calling them these days–dudes who were in the wrong place at the wrong time) treatment conditional on his willingness to provide information.

Oh, and the new Army Field Manual no longer refers to ‘interrogators’ they are now (euphemistically) called ‘Human Intelligence Collectors.’ Water goes in, Intelligence flows out.