I am not clear on what interrogation techniques have been used on whom, and I am completely sure the harshest critics aren't either. I would agree you don't just round people up and torture them hoping information will magically appear. The French tried that in Algeria, the Germans in France, and the Japanese in China and most of the time was a make-work project for unstable personalities, an instrument of terror against a civilian populations and was reasonably useless.

As a general rule, the prisoners at Gitmo aren't worth interrogating, but they may very well be worth detaining. There are people who very much need to be interrogated right up to and including anything that threatens their life. Khalid Sheik Mohammed was a good example. I'm sure there are others in custody now whose capture has never been acknowledged.

For that very very small group I really don't care about rights, sensitivities or mortality. I feel great compassion for the interrogators as harsh interrogations techniques dehumanize the interrogator and scar them in horrible ways. I think waterboarding is barbaric but it is effective and lo-tech. I would think that by now chemically enhanced interrogation would be pretty advanced. Thirty years ago large doses of scapolamine followed by a benzadrine "wake up call" could make people chatty. But anybody who would use that kind of stuff needs to make a very tough moral call and I certainly wouldn't want it done by MPs and the kind of vicious clowns that were running Abu Ghraib. And I wouldn't want it done by anybody who wanted to do it.

Torturing anyone to "prove" their own guilt is pointless, criminal and morally reprehensible. It can only be justified to stop an immanent threat to innocent life.

>The problem as I see it goes beyone barbarism. It's the reversal of "innocent until proven guilty". Here we have a situation of "guilty, and we can prove it by torturing you until you admit it."
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>I agree with you that closing Gitmo is purely symbolic. Gitmo itself is just a prison. What goes on there can either be changed or not, but closing the prison means very little in terms of how one behaves toward detainees.
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>>I think I may be just getting old and cynical or maybe I'm too much the product of things that made an impression on me in my 20s and 30s.
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>>I understand the concern about barbarism, and especially about giving people a license for barbarism in the name of our society. I really do. I also understand that very very difficult choices have to be made under circumstances most people could not or would not want to imagine. I am very concerned about who makes those choices and what information they have when they make them.
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>>It is like rules of engagement - I want good ROE, I want them followed 99.99% of the time and certainly followed by anyone who cannot imagine why you wouldn't - and I want to believe that in the other .01% the person with responsibility has the courage to risk his career, his reputation and even his life if his best judgment is that something must be done outside the rules.
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>>"Policies" don't generally fit all circumstances. The Geneva Convention - to my mind - has nothing to do with asymetrical warfare against ideological zealots with a very different view of mortality. More troubling is the idea that these people are somehow entitled to judicial review equal to that of a domestic criminal. If you had the authority to kill him when he was in your sights (and his trying to kill you pretty much gives you that authority), it would seem that once you capture him his status is more ... tenuous.
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>>I don't agree with you about impeaching Bush over wiretapping, with which I don't really have a problem ( of course the focus of the surveillance and the use to which they put the take could change that for me) I would be more interest in impeaching a President who erred in the other direction when it cam to protecting the country. Clinton appointing Deutch to CIA would have qualified.
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>>I'm glad most people feel as they do about all this. I'm also glad a few people do what they must. I think the world is a much scarier place than I want my family to know about.
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>>I am very glad Obama sat in that church as long as he did with a straight face. I detect a hint of ruthless pragmatism, coupled with a gift for telling people what they want to hear. Good for him. It may be just the thing he needs over the next 4 years.
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>>>I agree. Having been in interrogation camps, IMHO, I think if it is not a war and a local recognized judicial system exists, then when a suspect is captured in Iraq, they should be held in Iraq and investigated and prosecuted there. If it is a war, but they are not involved in military action (the other side), then if we have to set up a military court system there in order to prosecute legally then so be it. That is done when the host nation where the war is occurring does not have a judicial system in place due to occupation or the effects of the war itself. If they are committing crimes and not involved in a military action, then they should be prosecuted by the local judicial system (if one exists). I think the problem has always been the lack of 'status' of those at Guantanamo. That needs to be resolved so a fair and judicial system can be implemented. After all, if they are not criminals but pows, they would be held by us in a pow camp, treated in accordance with the Geneva conventions, and released at the end of the war. Regardless, anyone captured by the military is supposed to be treated in accordance with the Geneva conventions and if that is not done, then investigations need to be done and it needs to be rectified. If prisoners (of any status) are not treated in accordance with the Geneva conventions then there is a problem somwhere from the top of the ladder to the bottom and needs to be fixed and fixed fast.
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>>>I wrote that even though this situation was not 'new' to President Bush, but rather first made widely aware to the public under his term.
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>>>>You can change the orders, the personnel or whatever. Closing Guantanamo is symbolic. Policy change is fine and may be exactly the right thing to do, but the location is not in itself abusive. If the prisoners were moved to someplac else and tortured Guantanamo would be closed. If the prisoners were left at Guantanamo and not tortured there would be something substantive.
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>>>>I'm just weary of emotional and PR reactions to solving policy problems. "Closing Guantanamo" is not the issue one way or another.
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>>>>>It's hardly cosmetic to reaffirm our commitment to the Geneva Conventions and human rights. Coming the first week of the Obama administration, the repudiation of Bush administration policies in this area and the signal to the rest of the world could not be more clear. Not quite sure how you can consider this just political and cosmetic.
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>>>>>>Since the purpose of the exercise is political and cosmetic it would seem anywhere it gets off the lefty blog radar would serve the purpose and make everyone feel good about themselves.
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>>>>>>>Maybe Said Ali al-Shihri, can tell us:
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>>>>>>>http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/23/mideast/detainee.1-414168.php?page=1
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>>>>>>>Somehow the thought of a Saudi terrorist rehabilitation center just doesn't promote images of 'rehabilitation.' They still claim %100 success. Now the U.S. is considering opening one up in Yemen? How likely is it that it will be an improvement on Guatamano? I guess that means they won't be moved into the U.S....