Former CIA general counsel Jeffrey H. Smith on why the Bush administration's proposals to exempt the CIA from the McCain anti-torture amendment should be rejected:

... Cheney and Porter Goss, director of the CIA, have proposed a modification of the McCain amendment that would permit the president to exempt the CIA from its strictures. McCain wisely rejected that proposal. So should the conferees.

If the administration's proposal passed, what would be the consequences? Why should we adhere to the Geneva Conventions when our terrorist enemies do not?

The answers are simple. First, we have long championed the Geneva Conventions because we want our citizens treated humanely when they are captured. Second, morally it is the right thing to do. If this amendment passes, what weight will our complaints have when other governments use their intelligence services to torture Americans?

There are also practical considerations that argue against the administration's proposal. It would sow even further confusion in the field, where decisions must be made by young officers who act under enormous stress and often in fear for their lives. Those officers demand, and we must provide, clear guidance with respect to what they may and may not do. The CIA and the military operate cheek-by-jowl, often in small teams far from command structures and lawyers. If those teams operate with two sets of rules, confusion will reign and abuses will occur. ...

If the vice president's proposal is adopted, the CIA will presumably be free to bolster democracy by torturing anyone who does not embrace it with sufficient enthusiasm. Some democracy.

Indeed. Smith is no left wing radical. He was the top lawyer for the CIA for heavens sake. When will the Bush White House concede that its position on torture is a failure in every way, practically, morally, public relations wise, domestically and internationally? The torture issue is on the radar now and whatever Bush and Cheney and their aides call it, the vast majority of Americans reject it. It's not going away until they climb down or are decisively defeated. Check out the McClellan press conference today, highlights below. I actually don't think this is a partisan issue, more like a struggle between the forces of civilization broadly arrayed vs. some pathology coming from Cheney's office. I was in a cab yesterday when the Al Franken show featured a radio skit with a Gitmo prisoner being tortured until he said what his torturers wanted -- hardly too far from the reality, and the Ethiopian cab driver was laughing truly hysterically. It was hideous. What country are we in? Enough is enough.

Update: I was in a torture chamber once, in the basement of a police station in Kosovo days after it was abandoned by Serb forces defeated by Nato. It was hideous as you would imagine. The British soldiers who were with me were equally shocked. A lot of the instruments and interrogation drugs I saw there also suggest they were not designed to cause organ failure or death in their victims, just pain and terror, as Mr. Cheney and his office mates suggest is what they are going for in terms of legal wiggle room. And like Mr. Cheney and his office mates, Mr. Milosevic and his Serb troops didn't seem to overly concern themselves with the Geneva conventions, until it was a bit late. Having laid my eyes on what such a scene looks like, I just associate such activities with the forces of not only the pathological and depraved, but those who are headed for defeat. If you've seen it, you realize in a way that's hard to explain, it's the tactics of the losers. If Cheney and his office mates haven't had the experience, perhaps they should. And I really don't think it's inconceivable that the remote possibility of the Hague may lie in some of their futures. Things change fast when they do, as history shows, and they could find their current willing protectors eventually chucked from office, and a whole new climate at home and abroad.

Posted by Laura at November 8, 2005 11:03 PM