Torture Among Friends II: Electric Testicle Clamp Boogaloo
Glen Greenwald has a devastating takedown on the Obama administration’s position shift on US interrogation tactics and state secrecy.
Weirdly, though, and much to my own suprise, I find myself shifting to…if not sympathy for the Bush/Obama position on this, at least an understanding of it. It is, after all, not necessarily the case that the US is obligated to share intelligence information with other nations, and to the extent that those nations utilize that information in ways the US deems harmful, well, they can hardly expect such sharing to continue, can they? It’s not to be seen as a punitive measure, but as a mechanism for ensuring mutual protection within the sharing arrangement.
Perhaps the wiser way to resolve the issue is to acknowledge that interrogation techniques that put two close allies into this sort of a difficult bind are unwise for that reason, as well as for others.
Or, on the other hand, you could take this stance:
By this explanation, an explicitly stated renewal a direct threat against the government of an ally, for the explicit purpose of controlling that nation’s court procedures, is a “non-decision”. Oddly enough, the Britons seems to see things differently, in which respect they share those unrealistic expectations which Sullivan sees fit to condemn. Gosh darn those Londoners, with their inside-the-beltway mentality!
Look: as I mentioned above, I do see a case, of sorts, for the Bush/Obama policy here. But this is not that case. Not when the Obama campaign chose to make the secrecy of the Bush administration, and their intentions to reverse said practices, a campaign issue. Not when both the VP and many of Obama’s central Senate supporters are on record supporting legislation that would make immediately illegal the review process which his administration suddenly deems necessary (h/t Greenwald op. cit.).
The defendant in question is reportedly on the brink of death from a hunger strike. I think he understands “the fierce urgency of now”, even if the President no longer prizes urgency quite so highly.
Comment by Rojas — 2/10/2009 @ 11:30 pm