I'd be interested to hear what the Yargbian gang, and our small but intrepid collection of commenters, thinks about the CIA holding Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons.
My initial reaction (which surely deserves at least some level of reconsideration if only momentarily) is that outta sight, outta mind, and outta earshot from their tortured wails (or more likely ideological harangues) is fine by me.
14 comments:
I would like to have confidence that the CIA isn't putting these folks on the rack or pulling out their nails like progressive regimes do. Since such things are likely to surface in the safety of secrecy this is the best argument I can make against the practice. So... What purpose is served by secret prisons that couldn't be served by ordinary prisons? Do we need to run the risk of abuse? Is the CIA keeping folks out of sight in order to get away with stuff?
Hmmm... I think the risks outweigh the benefits. Even now I can't make a judgement on what is actually going on because, well, because it is secret. So I can only judge it on the well known tendency of such programs to expand and exceed their original scope. Who is to say that American citizens overseas might not just "disappear". No, I think we need to judge this as an institution likely to get out of hand and lead to abuse. Especially if Gingrich is right and this is a long war to fought philosophically as well as militarily. So I think we should dismantle the prisons.
The real question here is who leaked this classified information, and when a prosocuter will be appointed to investigate it.
I look forward to all those on the left joining me in calling for this matter to be fully investigated, since the leaking of classified information damages our national security.
chuck is right: I'm agin it.
Chuck,
There is no allegation of torture pertaining to these sites within the article. There are allegations by released prisoners to "torture" at other sites and at an earlier time but nothing concerning these detainees.
There are very justifiable 'black' detentions of terrorists. Not knowing whether someone is dead or alive disrupts plans that were known to or dependent upon the terrorist in custody. I have no problem with these detentions nor would I have a problem with the terrorists being tried by military tribunals and hanged if found guilty.
Flenser,
This stinks of a tie in to the Fitzgerlad indictments - which I believe were to have included Rove. There is also some sort of article pending concerning the forged Niger docs that has come apart in the past week. La Repubblica has a couple of crackpot journos of the Sydney Blumenthal nature that are almost in tears over the Italian government's total destruction of their fantasy. Berlusconi specifically denied their allegations Monday. Josh Marshal has been touting the "coming attraction" in his usual breathless way.
This is also (IMO) tied to Dirty Harry's snit in the Senate yesterday. It was all supposed to come together in one big week long dirt and stink bomb that would kick off the '06 campaign for the dimwitted Dems.
The more I look at the past month, the more I believe that we've just seen a truly great Lucy and the football play by Rove & c. Mrs. Miers has my sincere gratitude for her part in this.
There is no allegation of torture pertaining to these sites within the article.
I realize that, Rick. But there will be, allegations that is. And if the facilities remain black long enough it is a question of when, not if, torture occurs. It is just human nature and we Americans are not above it. When I look at the Bill of Rights I am always amazed at the ability of the articles to pinpoint areas of potential abuse. Truly prescient, they were, but then they were in reaction to the long schooling of history in the ways of the tyranny, of which secrecy has always been one of the main props. That is why the CIA is so hedged about with congressional oversight. The CIA is arguably necessary, but we should be as alive to potential abuses as the Virginians were. And again, I ask if these facilities serve a purpose that could not be served as well by more public facilities. The risk to morale -- American morale -- just isn't worth it in my book.
Looking over what I have written, I ask: *is* the CIA necessary? Military intelligence serves for the battlefield, the NSA for signals intelligence, the FBI domestically. Is the CIA so generally incompetent and leak ridden that it should simply be abolished and replaced by a smaller and leaner branch of the National Security Council?
How do we even know if this is true?
More and more I doubt these leaks.
I can see situationa in which there might be a desire or even a need to keep a capture secret for awhile...but I am not sure that the potential for real or imagined abuse outweighs the need for secrecy.
Surely there is some way to maintain classified facilities that are open to oversight.
I hope there is not some silliness coming about the forgeries, I am serious when I say I don't believe half this stuff anymore. I don't believe Josh Marshal or people like him..I mean what do any of these people really know about anything?
Chuck,
I have a higher opinion of operators than to think that they will give in to the temptation to torture. Torture is (as Knuck notes) rather ineffective in gathering quality intelligence from well trained opponents. Physical coercion up to the level used in the SERES training of our own forces is often quite effective in gaining tactical information from untrained (in resistance) opponents immediately after capture. I do not believe that we even do that as a practice. Michael Yon was very clear in a couple of his dispatches that the units that he was with were not given to using physical stress during interrogation. The Iraqi forces and police are another matter.
I hope that the prisoners being held at the "secret" prisons could be tried at those facilities prior to being moved. It would probably save a bit on transport costs and future expenses in caring for them.
This is just dessert for what has become Fizzlemas dinner. A simple declaration from the WH that the proper disposition of illegal combatants will occurr within a year of capture should solve the political problem. Short trials, short appeals and a short rope all work for me.
Knuck:
Yes you are probably right. Once such facilities are known about they are not particularly useful and in fact could be a burden.
I did hear that most of the detainees at Gitmo will be out of there in a year. But I can not remember where I heard it.
But all of this needs to be resolved so that it does not continue to be a distraction.
Rick,
Physical coercion up to the level used in the SERES training of our own forces is often quite effective in gaining tactical information
I don't doubt it. And in a battlefield situation I would be loath to judge. I recall a story recounted by James Jones where American soldiers captured three Germans and wanted intelligence; their lives depended on it. The Germans wouldn't talk, so they shot one and the other two became very cooperative. The fellow telling the story said that the Germans didn't seem to think anything unusually bad had gone down. Anyway, in a situation like that, I don't feel in a position to judge. It it long term internment in secret prisons that worries me.
But let's see what comes out. The information now is spotty at best.
Well, this policy is troubling because it could lead in a bad direction. Then again, there are reasons to imp[lement it.
The problem is that this conflict is so different from a convetional war and our adversaries certainly aren't bound by our conventions. The rules have not been written for it yet. Missteps are inevitable as things get sorted out.
I honestly don't know which side of this issueI stand on. Count me as ambivelent and glad the ball isn't in my court.
Ambi,
The main thing for me is that we don't handcuff ourselves with stupid rules. If we catch someone with a vial of biotoxin then I really don't want to know what happens to him. I just want to know that the source and destination are correctly identified.
The Constitution is not a suicide pact nor do all rules hold at every moment. It is fine to say that torture is bad policy and I agree with that concept wholeheartedly. I simply am unwillingly to bind the hands of the people to whom my grandchildren's safety is entrusted.
Peter,
It is not as if the problem of exterminating vermin is something new in the world. What is new is the pretense that there are no vermin. The headwhackers are sand pirates. Wrapping their base nature in religion does not elevate them in the least.
The British Navy drove pirates and slavers from the Mediterranean and Carribean with measures that dealt with the crews and masters not as men deserving of honorable treatment but as the vermin that they were. Drumhead courts, a brisk hanging and over the side. We are extremely foolish not to offer only dishonorable death to the terrorists.
The thought that exterminating them with a dishonorable death will raise the probability of even more terrorists being created is ridiculous. Their 'martyrdom' operations glorify death. We should be working to take the glory out of it.
Our guys know that real torture isn't effective. Threat of torture, however, can be.
Now, thankfully, the bad guys know we have places to send them where they will be...tortured!!!
And do they actually know anyone who has come out of one of those places alive to tell a tale?
Nope.
Perhaps this is all disinformation.
Back in the 1940s when we took wars seriously we did not tolerate leaks and treachery. Critical programs, such as the Manhatten project, the breaking of Japanese and German codes, and the plans for Normandy had to be kept secret and they were. Traitors were hung or shot.
It's time to return to that mindset, to be as ruthless as our enemy, and we could start with the leakers that riddle the CIA, the State Department and the DOD.
As for terrorists in secret custody; may they give up all they know and rot in hell. If it means frying them in pig fat, so be it.
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