AG Eric Holder has released a letter to a group of Senators wanting an explanation for, among other things, the decision to Mirandize the Christmas Day bomber. I’ve read it quickly and guess I’d describe it as doubling down on the administration’s actions, rather than walking them back. Holder takes responsibility for the decision:
I made the decision to charge Mr. Abdulmutallab with federal crimes, and to seek his detention in connection with those charges, with the knowledge of, and with no objection from, all other relevant departments of the government ...
The letter goes on to offer a defense of the criminal justice process as being a form of national security, and defends the idea that law enforcement questioning can produce important intelligence. It ends with a statement that the United States is at war, and then re-states the core argument. That core argument is that since the country is at war, the tools of law enforcement and criminal justice — including those for questioning suspects, including those that have been Mirandized — are part of the arsenal of tools available. Not to use them, or to take them off the table, would be as much a mistake as not availing ourselves of the weapons of war.
I haven’t quoted directly, as I’m having trouble making the fonts work correctly, but anyway, it’s at the last section of the letter linked above. I can’t say as this is going to mollify critics; it certainly doesn’t convince me.
The section on the presumably great ways in which questioning of suspects has provided such great intelligence fails to address a couple of obvious questions. The point of offering suspects the Miranda warning and associated rights is not in order to persuade them to talk, but in order to make sure they know they don’t have to and, if they have much in the way of brains, won’t.
As Abdulmutallab didn’t, once advised of his rights. That he is supposedly talking now is, well, a little late, and one wonders, among many other things, whether anyone has suggested to him that he might want to do so, if he doesn’t want to be converted into a Guantanamo detainee (perhaps not; the suggestion might violate some ethical thing, I don’t know). One wonders how the lawyer negotiations get conducted at that initial point when the lawyer first arrives on the scene, and there is this super-immediate concern about national security. If I’m his lawyer, I presumably say to the Feds, well, you know, it is possible — I don’t know for sure, of course — that my client might know something important, maybe really, really important, I don’t know of course, but I need to know what you’re going to offer.
Do we think that maybe using the model of ordinary criminal justice questioning and plea bargaining and lawyer negotiation is such a smart idea at a moment in which we have to wonder whether, yes indeed, maybe this guy really does know something crucial? Talk about maximum hold-up value ...
I’m all in favor of such criminal justice rights for our ordinary criminals — and am not silly enough to believe that people like me want them because they will cause people to talk. It’s in order that in our ordinary criminal justice system, people will know they don’t have to and, frankly, won’t without advice from an attorney. I like that for ordinary criminal suspects, but that’s because it’s a limitation. AG Holder makes it sound as though it’s a great way to get them to talk. If it were, I’d think there was something wrong with our existing criminal justice system. It’s a feature of our ordinary criminal justice system; a bug if we think it’s supposed to produce actionable intelligence quickly. DOJ seems to think it’s a feature all the way around; this is unlikely at best.
We Mirandized him ... because otherwise we’d be depriving ourselves of an important tool for gaining actionable intelligence? By urging him not to talk? Really? That appears to be the AG’s argument, on this as on the general point about using the criminal justice system. If we don’t use a tool that is mostly, by comparison to our other possibilities, about limiting our access to him, we are somehow hurting ourselves by not using our full repertoire.
Well, it’s an argument, I suppose. An admirable example, I also suppose, of how to make a legal silk purse from a sow’s ear. I sure hope whoever got stuck writing it at DOJ doesn’t take it too seriously. The whole letter sounds as though it were cut and pasted from some human rights advocacy report, I’m afraid.
Jardinero1 says:
It is true that we make war on other hapless nations but we are not at war. The warmongers need to get a life if they really think this a war. To say we are at war really diminishes, in the public mind, what war really is. That’s really bad for the public, because it makes it easier for the warmongers to march the same public to a real war.
To the warmongers I would also ask, why was the criminal justice system adequate for Tim McVeigh and the Unabomber.
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February 3, 2010, 6:25 pmChris says:
Your statement that Abdulmutallab stopped talking once advised of his rights is misleading. News reports suggest that he was only Mirandized after he stopped talking. And now, after being Mirandized, he has, for whatever reason, started talking again. So what exactly did Mirandizing him lose us?
And as to the decision to try him in federal court, please provide links to all your condemnations of the prior administration for trying terrorists in federal courrt. Otherwise, you’re just a partisan political hack
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February 3, 2010, 6:26 pmWayne says:
There are reports the guy is now talking freely,and is likely to plead guilty. I don’t see any problems with the administration’s approach here. At least it looks like they actually thought it out, whether you agree with the end result or not. That’s an improvement.
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February 3, 2010, 6:29 pmShelbyC says:
Please provide links to all your requests for links from critics of the Bush administration criticizing him for doing something similar to something Clinton did.
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February 3, 2010, 6:39 pmSteve says:
I’m not sure this sort of back-seat driving based upon rumor and innuendo about what actually happened is likely to improve the process any.
Early on, we heard from critics of the decision to Mirandize the bomber that “reportedly” he had clammed up after being read his rights. More recently, we learned that “reportedly” he was only read his rights after it was clear he wasn’t going to volunteer any more information. To put it bluntly, none of us knows jack about what actually happened, nor would I really expect that such information would be made public while interrogation/intelligence-gathering efforts are still underway.
This reminds me of the torture debates, where one of the arguments for torture was that “reportedly” a certain terrorist had given up valuable information after just a few minutes of waterboarding, conclusively proving that we would be foolish to abandon that technique. Well, that rumor didn’t really inform the debate, and years later we found out that it was completely false, but hey. Why admit that there’s a lot we don’t know, when we can cite whichever anonymous sources happen to bolster our preexisting point of view and pretend like those sources are offering the gospel truth?
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February 3, 2010, 6:40 pmJoe T. Guest says:
Jardinero — Just because it’s assymetric, doesn’t mean it’s not warfare. What do you think it is — some form of mass psychosis leading a distinct religious/political group to routinely attempt or cause mass murder in roughly 20 countries around the world?
I agree with Holder to the extent that you use all the tools in the arsenal. I worry that we will privilege the law enforcement too much, however.
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February 3, 2010, 6:41 pmDave N. says:
Jardinero,
Last I looked, it was Bin Ladin who sent his suicide bombers out on 9–11. We are fighting al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan for that reason.
As for why civilian courts were OK for both the Unabomber and for Timothy McVeigh, NEITHER one had cohorts in foreign countries planning similar deadly attacks. And yes, I do see a distinction, even if you are too partisanly blind to see one.
So call me a “warmonger” if you want, if I can call you a “pathetic fool” in return.
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February 3, 2010, 6:55 pmOtherSteve says:
Sorry if my comment is uninformed; I have no training in law. My understanding is that if someone in the US is to be held and questioned about a crime that they are ‘read their rights’ because in this country they are innocent until proven guilty. Right? I mean isn’t this something that we have as one of our core values? Or is it when we are at war with terrorists everything goes out the window? Isn’t that what terrorists want — the US to change how it behaves? The ends suddenly justify the means? And when, exactly, will there be no terrorists to wage war on? Will we, from now on, be in a constant state of conflict with terrorists ( internal and external) to justify our slowly eroding civil liberties?
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February 3, 2010, 7:00 pmMark N. says:
I think opponents of this decision might be underestimating the positive propaganda value for the U.S. of dealing with it through the criminal justice system. It seems much more demoralizing to would-be mimickers if he’s simply ground through the regular criminal-justice system, failing even to make the U.S. miss a beat.
If, on the contrary, he succeeds in causing some hysterical reaction, we can’t figure out how to deal with him except through some sort of special-case tribunal under an ad-hoc emergency arrangement, and we do our best to play up just how terrified we are and how certain we are that the next time just might work (as Republicans have been doing), that seems like we’re basically sending out a motivational message to would-be followers. We’re telling them: hey he might not have succeeded entirely, but don’t get too down about it, because he really got to us, and he was so close to succeeding that who knows, if you follow in his footsteps you might just win!
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February 3, 2010, 7:01 pmbyomtov says:
So as far as we know, the methods used here worked just fine, and have worked in the past. But Prof. Anderson disapproves because he doesn’t think they should have worked? Is that it?
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February 3, 2010, 7:01 pmJardinero1 says:
Dave,
You will live longer if you worry more about buckling your seatbelt and driving carefully than worrying about whether the Taliban or Al-qaeda will hurt you. You are more likely to die from a fall down the stairs or choking on your meal than from a terrorist attack. Terrorist attacks are statistical non-events. They are not a meaningful threat to life or limb for anyone in the USA. The war on terror is a farce.
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February 3, 2010, 7:05 pmAnonsters says:
Pretty much, yes. It doesn’t fit with the position he’s taken in writing. Therefore, it’s wrong. He should write a paper.
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February 3, 2010, 7:06 pmOren says:
No, reading their rights has nothing to do with the presumption of innocence but rather with the 5th amendment right against self-incrimination. Read Miranda v. Arizona.
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February 3, 2010, 7:12 pmJardinero1 says:
I second Mark N’s analysis.
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February 3, 2010, 7:12 pmConstantin says:
As many have noted on the Webs today, Holder’s position directly contradicts Obama’s mocking dismissal, on 60 Minutes last spring, of reading Miranda rights to terrorists:
Who’s running the place, Barack?
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February 3, 2010, 7:16 pmDjDiverDan says:
Hey, I’m no fan of Obama, but I don’t have any problem with treating a criminal (even if foreign and affiliated with Al Qaeda) as a crimminal. It’s a HUGE step forward from other Democratic Administrations during war time, like say FDR, who had tens of thousands of American Citizens deprived of their property without compensation and locked up with no trial, not even any criminal charges, simply because they were of Japanese ancestry.
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February 3, 2010, 7:17 pmJohn A. Fleming says:
The problem is, military style interrogation tries to get actionable intel that can be used right now. Now that Abdultoast is singing a month later, the information is interesting, but it doesn’t help us put a bomb down our enemies chimneys. Abdul was supposed to take his intel to the grave. As soon as our enemies knew he was alive and talking, they scattered, in case a Reaper was coming their way. A grievous lost opportunity to strike a serious blow against our enemies.
Second, it seems that Holder is saying that the Justice Dept is now the first among equals when it comes to the disposition of prisoners of war. Sec’y Gates said as much today in Senate testimony, when he said that he deferred to Holder on how to best handle prisoners of war.
This seems to be a case of bureaucracy glory-seeking, where on important government actions, each department desperately wants to participate meaningfully (otherwise known as horndogging in). It is shortsighted, since Gates doesn’t want the messy and politically fractious job of prisoner of war handling, but he is diluting his responsibility and authority to defend the US against foreign adversaries.
Read between the lines of the careful bureaucratese: We decided, and nobobdy raised objections. Translation: we’re in charge here, they know it, it’s pointless to second-guess, we have the President’s ear.
We may not be at war against Al Qaida, but Al Qaida is at war against us. We may not want war, but sometimes war wants us. And in matters of war, it should be the Department of Defense that is pre-eminent, and defers to no one but the President. So is Holder saying that BHO has implicitly taken away at least some of the responsibility for the conduct of this war from Defense, and transferred it to Justice? I think our academician President has made the mistake of taking Clemenceau too literally, substituting aphorisms for serious knowledge: “War is too important a matter to be left to Generals”.
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February 3, 2010, 7:20 pmIdahonian says:
I would say it’s a bit more complicated than that. U.S. citizens detained in the U.S. on suspicion of a crime are read their rights because the Supreme Court has held that the Fifth Amendment (which prohibits a citizen from being compelled to testify against himself in a criminal case, among other things)requires law enforcement to do so.
As to whether that is a core value...as an objective matter, I’m not sure whether that is correct. The decision requiring suspects to be read their rights came down in 1966; before that, it was not required. Being innocent until proven guilty can probably be considered a “core value.”
But, I think the whole issue here is your classification of this act as a “crime.” Some, like Professor Anderson, think that Abdul.‘s action is not a “crime” but rather an act of war. Therefore, the rules governing ordinary crimes should not be used, but rather that another set of rules should govern. For example, Italian or German prisoners held in the U.S. during WWII weren’t handled through the normal criminal system.
In other words, the whole question is whether we should treat non-citizen (or citizen) terrorism suspects as normal citizens, or whether we should create a system whereby they are treated differently.
Whether the terrorists win if we treat terrorism suspects differently? I suppose that’s debatable, but I think it is pretty clear that we could come up with SOME system that respects suspect’s dignity yet doesn’t afford them the entire rights of the current U.S. criminal system. I certainly don’t think that would mean the terrorists win...
Hope that’s helpful!
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February 3, 2010, 7:25 pmArthurKirkland says:
Adults, for the first time in years. Adults who are neither panicked nor pandering.
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February 3, 2010, 7:31 pmSwan Trumpet says:
I’ve seen about 5 hours worth of two Homeland Security hearings chaired by Sen. Lieberman on the subject, and the facts are gradually being revealed. In the summer of 2009, Obama announced he had abandoned all of the Bush era detainee interrogation policies and was instituting a special team for high value interrogations to be supervised by FBI Dir Mueller and the White House. This alone was startling as it cuts out three major intelligence groups: the CIA, the DNI, and the DoD branch.
The Christmas day panty bomber was interviewed in the local Detroit Hospital by local FBI agents with no knowledge of any intelligence information held by our agencies. They questioned the bomber about the possibility of other explosive devices that might be hidden in the plane and received information leading them to believe there may be other bombers headed into the US. They alerted the FAA who failed to follow procedures and only issued warnings to some aircraft. The bomber was clearly in pain and taken into surgery within the hour.
The following day AG Eric Holder ordered him mirandized and placed in the criminal justice system. Although the bomber is from a wealthy family, he was given an appointed attorney at taxpayer expense and advised not to talk.
Following a barrage of criticism, FBI agents — after discussions with the atty — went to Nigeria and paid taxpayer money to have suspect’s entire family flown to the US. Approx. 1 week ago, some deal was reached, leading FBI dir Mueller to state at yesterday’s hearing (but not the one prior) that suspect was now answering questions and will likely change his plea to guilty. Clearly, the enticement was a plea bargain sufficiently attractive to permit suspect’s atty to advise suspect to cooperate.
Also revealed was that the High Value Interrogation Group (HIG) that Obama announced would replace Bush’s procedures last summer was not yet operational. At yesterday’s hearing DNI Blair and FBI Mueller claimed they had corrected that issue, however Charles Krauthammer claims their response was deceiving as the group has yet to find office space.
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February 3, 2010, 7:34 pmlgm says:
I’ve read lots of conservative bloggers wishing this or that “terrorist” would be tortured. It’s clear from their tone that they view torture as a punishment rather than a source of information.
Do you condone torture? Do you believe torture produces more reliable information than other questioning methods? Do you believe that torture helps recruit terrorists who hate America?
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February 3, 2010, 7:37 pmOren says:
Let’s see, American casualties to terrorists during Jan 2001 through Jan 2009 (per annum) versus American casualties to terrorists Jan 2009-present.
I think the ‘academician’ is doing a fair bit better than the ‘cowboy’ (from Yale). Of course, past results are no guarantee of future performance, but things are pretty promising.
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February 3, 2010, 7:39 pmDel E. says:
If the Bush/Cheney administration decided that Abdulmutallab should go through the criminal-justice system, we’d not even be having this conversation.
Instead, we be talking about how the Bush/Cheney administration respects the Constitution and how they struck at the jugular of the terrorist groups by showing that America can beat them using American values.
Sort of like when the Shoe-Bomber was tried in federal court.
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February 3, 2010, 7:45 pmArthurKirkland says:
Uh-oh. I can report, from experience, that some people dislike this comparison.
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February 3, 2010, 7:45 pmRPT says:
It is an article of faith for some that whatever was done or not done by Holder and/or Obama was wrong. No facts are required to reach this conclusion because it is a given. To second AK, adults interested in real results are apparently in charge now, instead of the Addington-Cheney incompetents of the prior administration, who had absolutely zero real world experience. Next we’ll hear from John Kirakuo (sp?) as to how he personally witnessed the “ineffective” handling of this guy.
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February 3, 2010, 7:47 pmJohn A. Fleming says:
Casualties under BHO’s watch: 0.
That it is not 185, is due only to our outrageous good fortune (otherwise known as unearned dumb luck), since the only thing that prevented a disastrous outcome was Abdultoast’s impatience. If he’d waited ten more minutes for a proper mixing of the chemicals, the explosion would have been successful.
The enemy completely penetrated all our defenses and was allowed to prime and detonate his weapon with impunity. This time, it was a dud. Depending on this kind of luck is a fool’s game.
And a gotcha. You missed my trap on Clemenceau. Another of his sayings was “My domestic policy: war. My foreign policy: war.” That is to say, he was committed to victory, and a vigorous prosecution of the war, and it was necessary for him to be so in order to overcome the inbred caution of his Generals.
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February 3, 2010, 7:54 pmSwan Trumpet says:
You’re misinformed. A recent Rasmussen poll found that 58% of US voters believe that waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques should be used to obtain intelligence information from the Christmas day bomber. Since waterboarding is part of the NAVY SEAL training and was performed on all CIA interrogators involved in the procedure, it’s clear that waterboarding is not uniformly understood to be torture.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/december_2009/58_favor_waterboarding_of_plane_terrorist_to_get_information
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February 3, 2010, 8:04 pmCrazyTrain says:
And Holder also took unequivocal responsibility for his actions — again, something we never saw from the last administration that was constantly passing the buck or pretending not to remember things.
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February 3, 2010, 8:11 pmCrazyTrain says:
The point of offering suspects the Miranda warning and associated rights is not in order to persuade them to talk, but in order to make sure they know they don’t have to and, if they have much in the way of brains, won’t.
Do you know anyone in law enforcement? Because I know a lot of them, and they all say that Miranda has helped them with questioning of suspects, not hurt them.
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February 3, 2010, 8:13 pmCrazyTrain says:
Again, Professor, you are nuts if you actually hope that most Mirandized suspects “won’t talk.” If that were the case, there would be countless crimes for which we could not get convictions. There are a huge number of people convicted every year based solely on their confessions — and those confessions were made after being Mirandized. If, in fact, most Mirandized persons did not talk, there would be a lot more criminals on the street. Miranda acts a somewhat of a check on aggressive police activity, but that’s it. It certainly does not stop confessions. That is a fact that people with a cursory familiarity with criminal procedure know. Clearly, you don’t know much about this subject.
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February 3, 2010, 8:17 pmIdahonian says:
I agree that taking responsibility is better than pretending to forget about things.
But, I think some (reasonably) see Holder’s taking full responsibility for various decisions, such as this one, moving KSM’s trial to New York, etc. as a ploy to keep the heat off the President for political reasons...when, really, the buck stops with Obama.
Not a comparison to GWB’s administration, just another possible narrative as to what’s going on with Holder taking responsibility for controversial decisions...
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February 3, 2010, 8:17 pmSwan Trumpet says:
It’s sad to note that even the fire could have had disastrous results. Unfortunately, the flight attendants ran away screaming and the American passengers were of no help. It was a Dutch passenger (I think a cartoonist) who managed to leap over multiple seats to put the fire out and restrain the terrorist. One comedian joked that we’d be better off getting rid of the flight marshals and hiring Dutch cartoonists to ride aboard all our flights.
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February 3, 2010, 8:21 pmRicardo says:
Say what? Waterboarding is certainly part of SERE training in order to prepare people for what they might face when captured by various authoritarian or totalitarian regimes with abysmal human rights records. The tactics taught at SERE tend to come from the experience of actual American troops captured and tortured by these regimes. How you go from there to saying it “is not uniformly understood to be torture,” I don’t know.
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February 3, 2010, 8:25 pmRicardo says:
The context of that quote was that it was regarding Guantanamo detainees who Obama, at the time anyway, wanted to eventually put through the criminal justice system. The key fact about the Guanatanamo detainees is that all are foreign citizens apprehended outside the territory of the U.S. You may not think that is an important distinction but this quote is not really the gotcha you imagine it to be.
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February 3, 2010, 8:29 pmAnonsters says:
Look, ma, a red herring!
It was established, quite a while ago now, that CIA’s use of waterboarding on prisoners goes well beyond what is done in SERE training. How was that established? You know, by actually reading the OLC memos, rather than consulting the contents of your fantasies.
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February 3, 2010, 8:31 pmAnonsters says:
By the way, just for clarification of my 7:06 pm snarcomment, I didn’t actually intend to accuse KA of anything. I was obliquely referring to Orin’s post from the other day about law review articles.
I don’t actually know what KA thinks, but I know I disagree with him.
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February 3, 2010, 8:36 pmJust Dropping By says:
Although the bomber is from a wealthy family, he was given an appointed attorney at taxpayer expense
Even Bill Gates is entitled to a public defender if he’s charged with a crime.
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February 3, 2010, 8:37 pmMark N. says:
The “should we treat them like a common shoplifter” argument seems kind of weird. If that’s the standard, lots of domestic criminals shouldn’t get Miranda rights or civilian trials either. I mean, we shouldn’t treat Charles Manson or multiple-rapists like the shoplifters down the street, either, should we?
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February 3, 2010, 8:44 pmAllan Walstad says:
Jardinero1 said it right, said it first. ‘Nuff said.
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February 3, 2010, 8:47 pmOren says:
That is simply not true. Many States have asset limits above which you must pay your own way.
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February 3, 2010, 8:58 pmpublic_defender says:
As to public defender eligibility, only assets you can actually spend count. Frozen assets don’t count. Bill Gates would not be entitled to a public defender unless all his assets were frozen. Also, your family’s money doesn’t count, only your money does. This can create a real problem in college towns. Almost all juveniles are legally indigent regardless of their parents’ money (although parents can sometimes be billed, which creates a conflict of interest when parents try to waive their kids’ right to counsel and push an early plea deal). If Bill Gates’ kid didn’t have his or her own money, the kid would be entitled to a PD.
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February 3, 2010, 8:58 pmConstantin says:
When will these non-pandering adults be holding KSM’s trial in NYC, then?
Your clueless Prince is so panic-stricken it’s beginning to show on his face.
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February 3, 2010, 9:15 pmPerseus says:
I’m not a blogger, but I’ll answer LGM’s queries.
Yes, under certain circumstances, as do roughly half of Americans. And as a political theorist, please spare me the sanctimonious posturing that’s so common when this issue comes up.
The issue is also one of extracting information and doing so quickly, among other things.
Quite possibly, but one must consider the overall costs and benefits, and the costs can be reduced if it’s done properly.
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February 3, 2010, 9:28 pmKenneth Anderson says:
Anonsters: Shouldn’t you be studying? :)
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February 3, 2010, 9:33 pmNunzio says:
It’s nice that the government has finally taken the suspect’s family seriously.
When are the Brits going to crack down on the radicalization of youth in their county?
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February 3, 2010, 9:44 pmAnonsters says:
Touche, my good professor.
I actually should be. Ugh. :/
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February 3, 2010, 10:02 pmRicardo says:
Torture is prohibited by the Army Field Manual as well as by statutory law. If you don’t like the law, work to change it. With a supposed majority of Americans supporting your position, it shouldn’t be difficult at all. Somehow we wound up with two anti-torture candidates in the 2008 Presidential election, though, and even Bush felt the need to define “enhanced interrogation tactics” as a category separate from torture.
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February 3, 2010, 10:04 pmArthurKirkland says:
You may have your characters confused. Isn’t Prince the discredited mercenary who kills for Jesus?
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February 3, 2010, 10:07 pmSwan Trumpet says:
The argument that waterboarding is torture and therefore, inconsistent with our values (whatever the speaker means by that is unclear,) is the common refrain against enhanced interrogation that includes waterboarding. Yet if waterboarding is indeed torture, how is it permissable to torture our servicemen, regardless of the rationale you supplied?
The distinction you make is preposterous and illogical. In Obamaland, it’s permissable to “torture” our own servicemen as training exercises, but offends our values when the identical technique is used to obtain valuable intelligence information from enemy combatants for the purpose of saving American lives.
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February 3, 2010, 10:11 pmNunzio says:
Listening to rap music is torture
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February 3, 2010, 10:12 pmAnonsters says:
See here.
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February 3, 2010, 10:16 pmAnonsters says:
See this.
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February 3, 2010, 10:20 pmMark Field says:
This is my favorite blog comment ever.
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February 3, 2010, 10:21 pmHoward Gilbert says:
The purpose of the Miranda warning is to ensure that “No person ... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself”. However, if nothing the person says and no evidence discovered based on information he discloses is entered into evidence, then there is no requirement to give someone his Miranda warning. If the justice department is prepared to question someone with FBI agents who will keep whatever they learn confidential (particularly from anyone involved in the prosecution) there is no need to Mirandize.
There is a reflex action to “read someone their rights” to avoid any issues later, but that is simply because without specially trained agents in place who would know how to manage un-Mirandized interrogation and properly segregate the information it is better to be safe and stupid than unsafe and stupid.
Therefore, the question is not whether the FBI is now getting some useful information despite giving the Miranda warning, but whether there was anything that they learned after reading the warning that is useful to the prosecution. Given that the guy had explosives and tried to set them off, and there are dozens of witnesses, and the explosives were removed from him and are available as evidence, I can think of no possible need for any additional information we could possibly get from questioning him. If the FBI agents plugged their ears and never asked any questions at all, this prosecution should still be rock solid. So, what was the extra evidence they got as a result of Mirandizing and then questioning that they would not have if they simply threw this guy in a sound proof room so they were absolutely sure to get nothing from him at all.
If they did not need any answers from questioning, or if they did not get any answers (until giving this guy a plea deal) then the decision to Mirandize him simply reflects institutional incompetence. They failed to have available a team of properly trained interrogators who could operate without Miranda warnings and keep the information gathered entirely confidential from anyone on the prosecution team. No matter how this particular case turned out in the end, such a team should have been available and on call. Local agents should have been told to wait for them.
If you do not have fire extinguishers where they are supposed to be, or if the ones available are empty, then it is reasonable to say that you are an incompetent moron. We don’t have to wait for there to be a fire. We don’t have to ask whether this particular fire was put out fast enough, or if the firemen got here fast enough that the empty fire extinguishers didn’t matter. Not taking the obvious steps that everyone agreed you were supposed to take in advance of any emergency shows that you do not know how to do your job. The fact that no proper interrogation team was available shows that the administration screwed up big time no matter how the case eventually turns out. Fix it before the next fire happens.
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February 3, 2010, 10:40 pmRicardo says:
First, the Army Field Manual itself lists waterboarding as a prohibited interrogation method so your real complaint is against the Defense Department for being supposedly inconsistent, not me.
Second, the few public demonstrations there have been of waterboarding (like that involving Christopher Hitchens) involve giving the volunteer both a codeword as well as a physical signal to “tap out” and immediately end the waterboarding session. So a crucial difference is that the people undergoing it are given a way to easily end the session and know that their interrogators are not trying to injure or kill them (which is a real risk — that’s why a physician always has to be present during a waterboarding session).
Waterboarding involves a mix of physical discomfort (the feeling of drowning along with the involuntary gag reflex that comes from being deprived of oxygen) and psychological terror. The psychological terror element is gone in the training sessions for reasons explained.
Some torture involves pure psychological terror. For instance, the American Embassy personnel in Tehran were subjected to mock executions where they would be taken into a room by one of the hostage takers, have a gun pointed at their temples and then the hostage taker would pull the trigger knowing there was no round chambered. According to you, that’s not torture. Something tells me those Americans would take issue with your opinion.
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February 3, 2010, 10:58 pmSwan Trumpet says:
Everyone in the world has read the memos since Obama had them released. The net effect has been a greater public support for the use of waterboarding. The latest Rasmussen poll found 58% of American voters favor the use of waterboarding on enemy combatants.
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February 3, 2010, 11:02 pmAnderson says:
that he is supposedly talking now is, well, a little late
And Prof. Anderson knows this ... how?
It’s truly remarkable, the national-security leaks to right-wing bloggers, who know everything about everything.
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February 3, 2010, 11:11 pmJohn A. Fleming says:
Jardinero1:
I must take issue with this as shortsighted. An example. It is certainly within the capabilities of a good many non-state actors even now to prepare a dirty bomb and a “cruise missile”, a wave-skimming general aviation plane, launch it over international waters, and detonate it over one of our fair cities. See this from a few years ago. As technology advances, their capabilities will only become more lethal. It is not credible to pretend otherwise.
What they lack is the in-depth organization to get the plane close enough to our shores. They don’t have this organization because we are relentlessly pursuing them from one rat hole to the next. Now also consider that because we relentlessly pursue Al Qaida, they are unable to make any alliances of convenience with state actors who do have the serious resources to help manufacture and transport nation-disruptive weapons.
If the War on Terror is a farce, then we should just give up, let Al Qaida be, go home and trust in our wide oceans to defend us. And trust that other nations will not ally with them, to disrupt us. And why would a nation in secret ally themselves with Al Qaida against us? Because then that nation’s security service has penetrated Al Qaida more completely than any network of spies can. And so they would have high confidence that Al Qaida would not be turning against them. And of course you can see that Al Qaida delivering a nation-disruptor to the good ol’ USA is most definitely in the interest of other nations who would be able to take advantage of the chaos and our distraction. As Rahmbo says, never let a crisis go to waste.
I am most certainly glad that people who adhere to jardinero1’s sentiments are not (I hope) in charge of our nation’s security. May there always be Orwells’ rough men ready to do violence on our behalf, and may we always be deserving of them.
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February 3, 2010, 11:13 pmAnderson says:
Yet if waterboarding is indeed torture, how is it permissible to torture our servicemen
In 2010, people are STILL trotting this out? Sweet Jesus.
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February 3, 2010, 11:13 pmAnonsters says:
So, let’s recap the argument.
You: U.S. military personnel who undergo SERE training are waterboarded. We don’t/wouldn’t torture our own soldiers. Therefore, waterboarding isn’t torture.
Me: Except that the CIA’s use of waterboarding goes well beyond what U.S. military personnel are subjected to in SERE training, as demonstrated by the OLC memos. Therefore, you can’t invoke SERE training as a defense of waterboarding conducted by CIA interrogators.
You: Everyone has read the memos, and some poll says a majority of Americans support the use of waterboarding on enemy combatants.
Non sequitur much?
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February 3, 2010, 11:13 pmAnderson says:
This is my favorite blog comment ever.
Well, he does like Stendhal, I’ll give him that.
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February 3, 2010, 11:14 pmAnderson says:
Non sequitur much?
Oh, they’re like one of those web programs where every time you refresh the page, there’s a new quotation/talking-point up.
Eventually they start to repeat.
The point is not to persuade; it’s to oppose. You don’t have to make sense to do that.
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February 3, 2010, 11:17 pmArthurKirkland says:
I agree. Most rap, most country (Hank, Waylon, Willie and a few others excepted), anything involving Kenny G.
But why dwell on that stuff when the Who is playing the Super Bowl? Twelve minutes, five songs, several windmills, one swinging mic.
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February 3, 2010, 11:27 pmAnonsters says:
Well, it does begin to make some sense.
I hereby present to you a report of my conversation with CleverBot, where I am “User.” And I have a screen shot, so it happened:
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February 3, 2010, 11:31 pmMark Field says:
Yeah, but how many nipples?
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February 3, 2010, 11:34 pmLarry says:
A quick question...
We are now told that the FBI got the panty bomber to start talking again by bringing members of his family to the US to provide the “stability” to help him open up. This is a brilliant strategy I suppose, but...
At the time he was Mirandized (after 50 minutes of questioning) he was, according to Obama’s later commentary, acting alone.
Question: At the time he was Mirandized, how could the FBI or anyone else know that anyone in his family would co-operate with US authorities in questioning him?
Just curious.
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February 3, 2010, 11:36 pmAndrew J. Lazarus says:
Swan Trumpet, I notice we still train our troops to use gas masks. By your argument about waterboarding, I would have to conclude that gas warfare is legal. Of course, your argument is foolish.
I notice that the detainee’s family has helped convince him to tell all he knows about Al Qaeda. Now, there is the school that says we could have gotten intel from him faster under torture, but somehow the people who say that always sound like their looking for a national security cover for their extreme-BDSM fetishes.
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February 3, 2010, 11:37 pmAndrew J. Lazarus says:
Remember his dad tried to get him on the watch list even before? That seems like a clue.
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February 3, 2010, 11:38 pmMilwaukee says:
Just because we aren’t acting like we are at war, doesn’t mean somebody else isn’t at war with us. Radical Muslims want to destroy Western Culture, and perceive us as being the main target. We need to act like we are at war in our own self-interest. If the Christmas Day bomber was acting like an illegal enemy combatant, he should be treated as such.
I do use my seat belt regularly: the point of terror acts is to instill terror. By instilling terror and disrupting our normal lives they are attempting to help destroy our country. Heck, one reason attributed for the financial disaster is that in the wake of the September 11 bombings the Fed instituted easy credit to keep the economy going. The easy credit contributed to the eventual financial melt down.
The shoe bomber wasn’t put in an military tribunal because they hadn’t been set up at that point. In World War II, German spies came ashore from submarines. They were wearing civilian clothes, and so were illegal enemy combatants. They were tried in front of a military tribunal and shot. Soldiers in uniform have rights, when captured, as agreed to by the Geneva Conventions. I would bet that if our soldiers were captured in Iran or Afghanistan, they would not be treated to their rights under those conventions.
If we don’t believe in torture, why did President Karzai have to have Senator Kerry talk to him for 20 hours to persuade him to change voting plans in Afghanistan. Were Karzai’s plans for voting awful that he deserved that? End torture now, keep Senator Kerry at home! (Perhaps that is why Health Care negotiations weren’t televised: that would have constituted torturing Americans.)
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February 3, 2010, 11:42 pmNickM says:
2 apiece, barring some serious plastic surgery.
Nick
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February 3, 2010, 11:58 pmrpt says:
Roger Daltry when he was younger?
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February 4, 2010, 12:02 ammemomachine says:
Hmmmm.
1. @ Liberal sock-puppets: *LAUGH*
2. A “crime”? Good luck with that.
3. Soooooo. We’re at war. And the best tool to fight this war is to .... try them in a civilian court? And this will achieve what? Make some guy who thinks that killing Americans is better than living to old age ... think maybe these Americans are ok?
Liberals.
...
A mindset unworthy of the name.
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February 4, 2010, 12:07 amcharles says:
8.OtherSteve says:
“Sorry if my comment is uninformed; I have no training in law. My understanding is that if someone in the US is to be held and questioned about a crime that they are ‘read their rights’ because in this country they are innocent until proven guilty. Right? I mean isn’t this something that we have as one of our core values? Or is it when we are at war with terrorists everything goes out the window? Isn’t that what terrorists want — the US to change how it behaves? The ends suddenly justify the means? And when, exactly, will there be no terrorists to wage war on? Will we, from now on, be in a constant state of conflict with terrorists ( internal and external) to justify our slowly eroding civil liberties?”
I have yet to see anyone acknowledge that those Miranda rights are guaranteed to American citizens. McVeigh and The Unabomber both were American citizens who were not determined to be providing aid or comfort to a foreign enemy (like Padilla). John Yoo pointed out is his interview with John Stewart that most of these types of issues were new for us to deal with. I think the Bush administration was pretty diligent in making sure what they were doing was legal. I think the current president is starting to figure out that the previous administration thought through and set up the means of dealing with these situations pretty well (see military tribunals set up by congress). Not perfectly, but pretty well considering that they didn’t have the benefit of hindsught as the current administration does. It would be very hard for President Obama to admit that the idiot Bush and his evil minions actually did a decent job of dealing with these issues after campaigning against them the way he did. The current administration has some precedents to look to and are still screwing up. See trying to close Guantanamo and the backlash against KSM being tried in NY. Watch the circus of trying to “ensure that American style of justice comes shining through” while simultaneously trying to assure the public that “this guy is gonna fry”.
President Obama lucked out that this plot didn’t work. We hopefully will never know how President Obama would respond or react to a 9/11 type situation. He had a small scale attempt to do something similar (that failed) and is doing a so-so job at best to this point.
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February 4, 2010, 12:09 amPerseus says:
Condone as a legal matter is quite distinct from condone as a moral matter. I took it in latter sense. Of course, as a legal matter, whether EIT=torture, whether the executive power includes the prerogative to violate a statutory law, etc. are all hotly contested issues. And one can just as easily turn matters around and say that the Constitution vests Congress (unlike voters) with a plethora of powers to deal directly with a president that it believes has been derelict in his duty to faithfully execute the laws.
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February 4, 2010, 12:09 ammemomachine says:
Hmmmm.
*LAUGH*
The Obama Interrogation Protocol:
“Just you wait until your father gets here!”
*LAUGH*
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February 4, 2010, 12:10 amAnonsters says:
Hopefully convictions.
Happy to clear that up for you.
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February 4, 2010, 12:12 ammemomachine says:
Hmmmmm.
Sooooo. Obama doesn’t torture?
Then why has he continued, and perhaps even expanded, the practice of Extraordinary Rendition?
You know. The policy created by Bill Clinton. The policy of abducting terrorists, or people we –think– are terrorists ... depending of course on the competence of the Obama crowd, flying them to third party countries where torture isn’t such a big deal and then ... well having them tortured for information.
So I guess you Liberal Democrats are pretty used to pulling people’s fingernails out eh?
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February 4, 2010, 12:15 amRicardo says:
Irrelevant. Jose Padilla was held in a military brig without charge and he was an American citizen. According to the Bush Administration, that was perfectly legal. Under its own standards, Bush decided to treat Richard Reid as a criminal suspect rather than an enemy combatant. This despite reports that he visited an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan and seemed to have regular contact with someone in Peshawar, Pakistan while living in Europe. Add to this the fact that a loser like Reid can’t exactly buy PETN off the street or make it himself.
Face it, there was no significant difference between Bush’s decision to try Reid in civilian courts and Obama’s decision to try Abdulmutallab in civilian courts.
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February 4, 2010, 12:16 ammemomachine says:
Hmmmm.
@ Amonsters
“Hopefully convictions.”
And if KSM is acquitted? Then they ... what? Walk free? Get picked back up and thrown into prison? If KSM walks free than congrats! You turned a mass-murderer loose. If you pick him up and ignore the acquittal then ... what was the point of the trial in the first place?
And let’s consider something else. The tainting of the civilian justice system. If that happens to KSM, he is acquitted and yet still indefinitely held, then doesn’t that get enshrined in the law as precedence? Wouldn’t the appeals court rule to prevent it? Wouldn’t the Supreme Court? And if they do then KSM again walks free.
And if they don’t?
Then there is the precedence of a criminal defendant being acquitted by a jury trial being held *legally* by the government based on –no criminal charges whatsoever-.
...
And so what if he is found guilty? You think people around the world won’t shake their heads and consider it a foregone conclusion? After Obama, Reid, Gibbs, Biden and the janitorial staff at the White House have all pronounced KSM a dead man walking?
Trying terrorists at war with the USA in civilian courts is idiotic. But then again so far Obama hasn’t shown himself to be all that bright.
Par for the course so far.
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February 4, 2010, 12:22 ammemomachine says:
Hmmmm.
“Face it, there was no significant difference between Bush’s decision to try Reid in civilian courts and Obama’s decision to try Abdulmutallab in civilian courts.”
Correct!
They are both completely and utterly idiotic.
Now Bush is supposed to be the dumb one. I guess he’s not sitting in that chair alone eh?
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February 4, 2010, 12:24 amJohn Oh says:
I think the crucial information sought at the 50 minute mark was not all that he knew about AQ, but if there were any other agents in the air or ready to board to carry out the same action. Suppose he had been one of many? On 9/11 there were four teams. Not a unreasonable question.
That’s why proper interrogation was required. As Fleming points out above, it wasn’t policy that saved us, but luck.
Whatever he says now really doesn’t matter. It’s far too late to use any intelligence about AQ, and the case against him as pointed out above requires no further evidence.
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February 4, 2010, 12:26 amRicardo says:
Fair enough. The Obama Administration seems to have indicated that it does indeed consider EIT torture and that it will enforce the torture statute against Americans. As a practical matter, if you don’t disagree with the Obama Administration’s stand (which is probably quite similar to what McCain’s stand would have been) there isn’t too much to debate.
You’re right that the moral issue is different, but having witnessed a fair number of debates among moral philosophers, theologians and other thinkers, I can’t say it’s the norm in these debates to warn the other party against “sanctimonious posturing” (which is an ad hominem) or to appeal to opinion polls to support one’s own position.
As a pragmatist, I’ll gladly focus on the real world of policy, though.
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February 4, 2010, 12:26 amJohn Oh says:
Ricardo . . . the real world of policy . . . ?
The real world of policy?
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February 4, 2010, 12:38 amrpt says:
Memomachine is rookie of the week, expressing views never before presented here.
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February 4, 2010, 12:42 amrpt says:
What this track needs is more liberal bashing!
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February 4, 2010, 12:51 amsteve s says:
1) Stop assuming the jihadists are stupid. The minute it went on the air that he had not brought down the plane, it was too late to get immediately useful intel. AQ et al. have net connections. You seriously think they were going to wait a few days to move?
2) We need a coordinated long term approach if you really think this is a war. We have consistently lost the information war. When we live our values, it makes it more difficult for AQ to radicalize more young Muslims. It brings in the moderates on our side. Try reading primary Arab sources to see how they feel about our routinely ignoring basic legal rights. If we had hauled this guy off somewhere and tortured him, what is the probability of families turning in other suspects?
3) the goal should be to win, not engage in posturing. To win, we need solid intel (that from torture is more often unreliable), we need to not alienate potential allies among moderates, we need to offer a clear alternative to Muslims who are unsure about us. We torture because they torture does not work to our advantage.
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February 4, 2010, 1:16 amw says:
You forgot Fort Hood and Little Rock.
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February 4, 2010, 1:19 amLaura Victoria says:
I think the best thing about this Holder letter is the focus on those terrorists captured in the US. We should use this as fodder to insist tht those captured abroad, on the battlefield, should not be tried in civilian courts.
What the heck is the rationale for trying KSM in a civilian court. This is not only not a shoplifter, he is not a Charles Manson. He allegedly is the mastermind behind a guerilla warfare attack on the country–an attack planned abroad where he was apprehended.
The case of scum captured here is debatable, but I don’t think it’s debatable about those captured abroad. Blair could not even answer the question about whether Bin Laden would be tried as a civilian and mirandized (not that I think Miranda warnings would make any difference with OBL).
Then again, if you differentiate on where someone is caught, as opposed to whether the are civilian criminals or enemy combatants, don’t you create perverse incentives for terrorists to attack here, so that if they fail they’ll get civilian show trials as the second best terrorist attack technique?
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February 4, 2010, 1:22 amPerseus says:
My attack was directed at those who seek simply to ostracize rather to debate the opposing side on this issue (which doesn’t seem like an especially effective strategy when half of the public holds that view). And you must have found some excellent debates since those of us political and moral philosophers, theologians, etc. are quite prone to sanctimoniousness.
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February 4, 2010, 1:30 amStrict says:
Constantin: “As many have noted on the Webs today, Holder’s position directly contradicts Obama’s mocking dismissal, on 60 Minutes last spring, of reading Miranda rights to terrorists:”
There is no contradiction. You omit that Obama then said there should be “due process.” And you completely omit the context: Obama was talking about Guantanamo detainees. You know, Chinese nationals who were captured by military forces in Afghanistan and imprisoned at a military base in Cuba (and others who were captured abroad, possibly committed crimes abroad, and are being detained abroad).
Their situation is completely different than a guy who committed a crime in the United States and was arrested in the United States and is being detained in the United States.
Do you really not understand the difference between an arrest within the United States by federal agents and local Detroit police and a capture by the military on a foreign battlefield and subsequent detainment on a military base in a foreign country?
In this respect Obama is not inconsistent or hypocritical, nor is he being undermined by his Attorney General. Nice try criticizing your Commander In Chief, you good patriot you.
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February 4, 2010, 1:32 amWinston says:
The letter in which Eric Holder doubles down on stupid. Bush was confronted with an asymmetrical war of a sort where EVERY combatant on the other side was an illegal one. Reid and at least one other whose name escapes me at this late hour had to be tried in the civilian courts because we didn’t have any other means of handling things at the time. Nor was the nature of the threat evident at first. Bush oversaw the creation of a very good military tribunal system despite the best propaganda efforts of our enemies and their enablers. Not perfect but better than anything seen during WWII for instance.
Obama is a very shallow thinker compared to Bush in these matters. His solution is to trash what has been handed to him and instead send KSM to stand trial with the proviso that he will not be let free if found innocent. This is what the brilliant Obama came up with after deep, deep thought and soul searching... a show trial. He can’t explicate the legal principle upon which we will decide whether to try someone in the civilian court as opposed to keeping them in Gitmo. The closest he has come is saying that where a conviction is assured there will be a trial — which of course makes even more of a mockery of the whole process. No one in the administration can even give a straight answer as to whether Osama will have to be read his rights if we find him or how they justify killing Americans and foreigners within the framework of a law enforcement model. Nor can they tell you how to gather evidence on the battlefield. Obama has made a complete hash of this whole issue just like he has everything else he has ever touched in his life.
The laws of war are a much better fit because we are at war. Whether we acknowledge it or not the other side certainly does. Only a fool would think and act otherwise. And we certainly have such a fool in the White House these days.
Were Obama merely a fool it might be alright. But unfortunately neither Obama nor Holder have any moral authority on the terrorist issue either. Holder has already sold pardons to terrorists in a previous administration and Obama thought nothing of his association with known domestic terrorists who shared his values and goals so it is not surprising that their actions would be unprincipled and thoughtless ones.
Everyone likes to pat Obama on the head and tell him how intelligent he is. What would be nice for a change would to be to see some evidence of it. I predict he will continue to beat his head against the wall until he is forced to give up on a KSM civilian trial in the US and he will live out the remaining 3 years of his term none the wiser as to why. If he does force it through there will precedents set that no one wants to see since they will apply to civilians as well as combatants. Judges will not want to willingly enter into the murky fantasy land that Obama inhabits so it will be interesting to see the damage that is done as they try to pick up after him.
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February 4, 2010, 1:41 amAndrew J. Lazarus says:
Who cares if it works; torture stories are the right’s version of Vi@gra.
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February 4, 2010, 1:47 amzuch says:
And just what is it about military trials that would “cure” any of the supposed problems you intimate above might be had with trials?
Cheers,
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February 4, 2010, 1:56 amStrict says:
“German spies came ashore from submarines. They were wearing civilian clothes, and so were illegal enemy combatants. They were tried in front of a military tribunal and shot.”
That’s fine. Military trials are better than no trials at all. So are civilian trials.
What is distasteful is the practice of indefinite detention. We don’t like it when the government can hold a person forever without charge and without a trial.
It used to be that the government could simply declare any person to be an enemy combatant, and that person loses all rights to habeas corpus and due process. Hamdi required a judicial hearing on enemy combatant status. The MCA 2006 stripped non-citizens of that right, but I think Americans still have it. There is a new bill (HR 64) which would allow non-citizens habeas rights — it’ll probably die in committee.
Even if Obama’s military commissions under MCA 2009 are still somewhat defective, they are better than Bush’s commissions under MCA 2006, and they are better than no trial at all.
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February 4, 2010, 2:08 amAnonsters says:
I can honestly say that I don’t think I’ve ever heard that proposition expressed before.
Really? You want to give all the people our military detains full Geneva Conventions protections? Sign me up.
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February 4, 2010, 2:12 amStrict says:
“This is what the brilliant Obama came up with after deep, deep thought and soul searching... a show trial.”
There is nothing wrong with a show trial (a very publicized trial where everyone knows the defendant will lose), as long as the law is followed, judges and prosecutors don’t do unethical things, and the defendant is not coerced into confessing or tortured.
The criticism seems to be that “Obama only wants to try the slam-dunk cases! What’s the point if we know the defendant will lose? It’s all for show!” There’s nothing wrong with trying slam-dunk cases, or “going through the motions” even if the outcome is basically pre-determined. The motions are what it’s all about. It’s called due process.
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February 4, 2010, 2:17 amStrict says:
Winston: “Everyone likes to pat Obama on the head and tell him how intelligent he is. What would be nice for a change would to be to see some evidence of it.”
The evidence is Obama’s Military Commissions Act of 2009 versus Bush’s Military Commissions Act of 2006.
It’s clearer, better, and as far as I know, no part of it has been declared unconstitutional (unlike Bush’s Act). I’d be surprised if it wasn’t more effective, considering how very ineffective prosecutions under Bush’s Act were.
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February 4, 2010, 2:28 amKirk Parker says:
“the Who is playing the Super Bowl... Yeah, but how many nipples?”
Ali McGraw! My eyes!!!!!!
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February 4, 2010, 3:03 ambrilliant logic says:
Death from nuclear warfare is a statistical non-event. They are not a meaningful threat to life or limb for anyone in the USA. Nuclear non-proliferation efforts are a farce!
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February 4, 2010, 6:19 amimpeccable logic says:
You are more likely to die from driving an automobile or being struck by lightning. Air crashes are a statistical non-event. They are not a meaningful threat to life or limb for anyone in the USA. Airline security and safety measures are a farce!
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February 4, 2010, 6:25 amRich says:
Gawd, Shakespeare was right–kill all the lawyers. Talk about a bunch of blathering blowhards.
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February 4, 2010, 7:02 ambigalways50 says:
All very nice to equate non-US Citizens to our rights, and lots of arguments and reasoning about how we somehow need to be the paragon of fairness, except when it is your father, mother, wife, husband, child or relative that gets brutally murdered things suddenly take on a different shade of grey. Lawyers (who get their fee either way) cannot empathize with victims. Their goal is to get the most for their clients, and to get the most for themselves. No concern for what is ultimately right or fair to the victim (who is usually dead by that time and can’t defend their own rights). I lump college “legal professionals and instructors” into that list as well since they are not only kool-aid drinkers but they also purvey it to others.
When are we going to focus on THAT aspect of this dialog?
If there are no consequences how can you police?
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February 4, 2010, 7:17 amSancho says:
The paragon of fairness thing is not working out. They want to look good, and use the trial as propaganda, but the very fact that it’s propaganda means it doesn’t look good. So we just have to squint or just close our eyes and say that it’s more than PR and it’s totally above board and not a sham or a farce. And then he’s put to death and we congratulate ourselves in a speech for showing the TV viewers in Egypt and Pakistan that America is an example for them.
It’s for show. And the show must go on. Suspend your disbelief. Pay no attention to the man pulling the strings. It’s a court-room drama on TV but if we pretend that it’s real, it becomes real, and it succeeds, and the terrorists all go away.
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February 4, 2010, 7:27 amMike Foster says:
I thought that this was a blog for intelligent people? Most of you sound like idiots in this thread:
Jardinerol: failing to admit to a distinction between American citizens vs. un-uniformed foreign spies committing acts of war... this starts the ball rolling. You are glib, but without any of the (arguably) positive connotations usually attendant upon the term.
Then, a bunch of appeals to authority and random douchebaggery. Really, if you read this thread from top-to-bottom it is a disgraceful exercise in wasted time and effort. I think DailyKos has more intelligent and interesting nuggets throughout their comments...
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February 4, 2010, 7:58 amdavod says:
“I think opponents of this decision might be underestimating the positive propaganda value for the U.S. of dealing with it through the criminal justice system.”
This “positive” propaganda is offset by the President and the Attorney General of the US stating that KSM, and others, will be found guilty in a civilian court.
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February 4, 2010, 9:52 amnovaculus says:
I must agree with Mr. Foster. Many of the comments here reflect degrees of ignorance of both the facts and the law and an ideological rigidity that serves as an veritable intellectual straitjacket.
First, as to the mind-numbing stupidity that would define away the current war against organized Islamist terrorists, on the apparent assumption that only state actors can engage in warfare, I remind them of the events of September 11, 2001. You may not believe that a state of war exists, but the murderous Islamist terrorists of al Qaeda believe otherwise. The world has become much smaller in the last hundred years, and modern adherents of 7th century evil can strike us from their caves in the furthest backwaters of the planet, murdering our mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, and friends and neighbors. They have slaughtered thousands of innocents in a single day, and in their latest effort came within a hair’s breadth of slaughtering hundreds more on Christmas Day. Those who cannot (or will not, in their ideological straitjackets) differentiate between thieves, drug dealers, and other common criminals, and those who intend to slaughter our people by the thousands are so intellectually handicapped that I wonder how they can muster the brain power required to move their bowels.
Second, for those who refer to earlier criminal prosecutions of those accused of acts of terror, how many of those examples came before the establishment of the current military tribunal system? How many were unconnected to the Islamist terrorists of al Qaeda and its affiliates?
Third, the system of military tribunals currently in place provides procedural due process within a system that takes into account the exigencies posed by the threat of organized terrorists engaged in open warfare against us, including the necessity of protecting our intelligence apparatus and agents, and the special circumstances that attend asymmetric warfare.
Fourth, and perhaps most damning, is the failure to recognize the crassly political motivations of those responsible for the decisions which would release known terrorists back onto the battlefield, and bring their brethren onto US soil to afford them the rights of common criminal defendants. The current administration began by announcing that it would close the state of the art facility at Guantanamo for purely political reasons. Obama did not argue that it was illegal to establish that facility and hold terrorists there, but that it was improvident. Then Obama decided to undercut the CIA (and all of our other intelligence-gathering agents and agencies) by raising again the specter of criminal prosecution of agents for acts which had already been fully investigated, and in at least one instance, criminal charges filed. The ideological and political agendas being served could not be more clear.
Do not trouble me with the claim that Holder is responsible for these decisions. That despicable political hand tool earned his bona fides prostituting the DOJ during his earlier stint there in the Clinton administration. Remember the FALN terrorists? Marc Rich? It is no great leap to realize that he would happily grab power for himself and the DOJ at the expense of our national security, and provide political cover to his boss Obama. His main qualification for the job of Attorney General was his proven willingness to do whatever served the interests of his political masters. He does nothing without the express consent, if not the direct orders, of Barack Obama.
And let us not forget the benefits that will accrue to his former associates in private practice, who have exploited the detainees cases already, some of whom now serve with him in the DOJ. Holder has refused to provide information regarding the connections that attorneys who previously represented accused terrorists now have to their prosecutions. Holder is ignoring the obvious conflicts of interest and stonewalling the Congress, in service of personal and political agendas. Combined with his other overtly political abuses such as the dismissal of the Black Panther voter intimidation cases, and his apparent gross incompetence generally, he may well be remembered as the worst and most corrupt Attorney General in the history of the country.
Every day Obama is in charge, his ideological idiocy and moronic policies threaten our national security. I am grateful that a majority of our citizens recognize that dangerous idiocy for what it is. It seems very likely that in 2012 we will deliver ourselves from this fool and his band of charlatans. I hope it will not be, by then, too late for some of us.
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February 4, 2010, 10:05 amRichard Aubrey says:
novaculus.
Even if I disagreed with you, I would have to say it is a well-constructed piece.
Very clear. Unambiguous.
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February 4, 2010, 10:10 amMark Field says:
Not quite what I was thinking of.
I believe Miranda warnings are given to just about anyone arrested in the US.
These are not hotly contested by anyone who can read.
Do you have any evidence for this?
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February 4, 2010, 10:17 amAndrew J. Lazarus says:
This was indeed hotly contested—in 1688.
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February 4, 2010, 10:33 amgeokstr says:
Really? I thought the Miranda Warning went something like this:
So you’re saying that if Bill Gates refused to pay for his own attorney, we’d still have to give him a free one anyway?
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February 4, 2010, 10:39 amBohemond says:
If Gitmo is a great tool for the bad guys to recruit more bad guys, it means the place must be upsetting enough to turn men toward jihad. Translation: the very idea of it ruins their day. Gitmo represents treating terrorists like enemies, using every tool to extract information from them, and using that info to destroy their cause. So it’s not waterboarding that pisses them off, but the fact that we’re trying to beat them. Is anyone here such a rube as to believe that Al-Qaeda and the Taliban have a moral objection to torture or cruelty? Should I repost the Nick Berg beheading, or video from Taliban-occupied Swat, or the AQI torture manual?
Let’s try to separate this ongoing catfight into its three components: the legal, the moral, and the pragmatic.
Legally there is no argument. Foreign francs-tireurs have no inherent right of access to Article III civilian courts: that is well-settled law. It is equally clear that we have the indefeasable right to detain Al-Qaeda jihadists, like all enemy combatants, until the conclusion of hostilities. (Some here are actually making the preposterous assertion that only nation-states can be parties to a war: I invite them to re-read Geneva Common Article 3 and Protocol II).
What Captain Underpants’ defenders are arguing is what purports to be a “moral” point– but only for those whose version of morality as been stunted by childhood exposure to the liberal “fairness” toxin. As Smith said, Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. If we really were to use morality as our guiding principle, then we should be torturing these guys not to extract information, but because moral justice demands it. Strict morality would oblige us to start at Page 1 of the Spanish Inquisition Handbook and work straight through to the back cover– and then start writing 21st Century appendices. There can be no greater crime against humanity than these Dark Age savages’ war for the destruction of civilization.
Straight from the horse’s ass, bin-Laden:
The remaining question, the *only* question, is the pragmatic one: is the defeat of this hideous enemy and the expungement of its odious ideology better served by a hard policy or a soft one? The answer, of course, is both, depending on the immediate context. It’s very much worthwhile to re-read Machiavelli; and I would be much happier with a President who kept The Prince by his bedside.
What some are trying to call a “recruitment tool” is just a pretext– and there is no end to pretexts. The enemy will kill over cartoons, over girls attending school, over archeological excavations, over the possession of a Celine Dion CD. The excuses will never run out. The PLO was well-taught by their North Vietnamese and Cuban trainers in how to play the victim card, which involves the endless generation of ‘grievances’ to excuse their pursuit of genocidal goals.
The Muslim world is an honor-shame, strength-weakness culture. The assumptions of Western guilt-virtue cultures simply don’t apply (although they know well how to exploit them). In late 2008, as the Iraq surge wound down to its largely successful conclusion, a reporter interviewed a former insurgent, now a “Son of Iraq.” He asked him why he changed sides. The ex-guerilla nodded toward a passing US patrol and answered simply, “The Amriki are the strongest tribe.”
Anyone who thinks the enemy or their latent supporters will be impressed by policies of softness and weakness is deluded.
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February 4, 2010, 11:18 amRPT says:
$5 if you have ever read the context or have a clue as to the point of this usually mis-cited reference.
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February 4, 2010, 11:39 amRichard Aubrey says:
Bohemund.
Agreed with your last.
Problem is, how will the deluded react?
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February 4, 2010, 11:41 amAndrew J. Lazarus says:
And Bohemond and his film crew volunteer for the task!
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February 4, 2010, 11:50 amRPT says:
And for more recorded evidence that torture does not generate useful and reliable evidence or information.
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February 4, 2010, 12:01 pmStrict says:
“Every day Obama is in charge, his ideological idiocy and moronic policies threaten our national security.”
You just say this, without explaining exactly how his policies (as opposed to his predecessor’s) threaten our national security.
You just say that his policies might “bring [accused terrorists] onto US soil,” which does sound scary, but you omit the context: they will be brought here in chains, not as free men capable of causing harm.
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February 4, 2010, 12:15 pmStrict says:
“In late 2008, as the Iraq surge wound down to its largely successful conclusion, a reporter interviewed a former insurgent, now a “Son of Iraq.” He asked him why he changed sides. The ex-guerilla nodded toward a passing US patrol and answered simply, “The Amriki are the strongest tribe.””
This raises the question: what happens when the US leaves Iraq or reduces its forces so that it is no longer the dominant military presence there?
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February 4, 2010, 12:18 pmSwan Trumpet says:
Shoe Bomber Richard Reid was taken into US custody just 3 months after 9/11 and a good 6 months before the US had prepared and staffed our facility at Gitmo. The Reid capture also took place in an environment before the 2003 capture of KSM and the use of the (just) 3 waterboardings which provided our government with the most thorough picture of Al Qaeda’s operations, structure, funding, training, communications, and techniques.
Regarding the OLC memos, no one has mentioned the fact that Obama and Holder heavily redacted the memos, leaving out all the valuable information obtained that enabled us to thwart multiple other attacks. Still other memos listing numbers and types of attacks averted due to enhanced interrogation were never even considered for public release by Mr. Obama. The Obama administration has never explained why this “spirit of openness” applies only to information damaging to our national security and hides from the public the specific examples of how they benefitted from the techniques. As someone who has consistently distorted the truth, Mr. Obama lacks the moral authority to lecture anyone about values.
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February 4, 2010, 12:50 pmKirk Parker says:
I think it depends on part if the message is “We’re leaving and we won’t be back” vs “We’re leaving enough people here to keep an eye on you”.
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February 4, 2010, 1:01 pmKevin C. says:
How about a quote from Justice Robert Jackson, whom AG Holder chose as one of the four predecessors whose portraits grace his conference room:
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February 4, 2010, 1:08 pmRPT says:
Swan:
You say:
“Regarding the OLC memos, no one has mentioned the fact that Obama and Holder heavily redacted the memos, leaving out all the valuable information obtained that enabled us to thwart multiple other attacks.”
Have you read the unredacted memos and the information obtained? Can you tell us about that information?
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February 4, 2010, 1:12 pmAlec Rawls says:
Holder is lying. Other agencies DID NOT know he was about to Mirandize the panty bomber. They never had a CHANCE to object:
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February 4, 2010, 1:40 pmGoggins says:
Bohemond: well done, sir. In the middle ages, one method of execution was to suspend the condemned party upside-down by his legs, and then start cutting him in two lengthwise with a big two-handled saw. The advantage was that, with blood rushing to the head, death was delayed and agony extended. I’ve always thought this would be a fit end for KSM. Afterwards he could be chopped up, and sent in a package to OBL, with the message, “Allah be praised.” Okay, just kidding, but still this wouldn’t be much different than what justice would require.
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February 4, 2010, 2:09 pmSwan Trumpet says:
The source of my information regarding the OLC memos and the Obama/Holder deceptions via redactions and withholding other pertinent memos is former Vice President Richard Cheney. You can read the full text of his speech to the American Enterprise Institute here: http://www.aei.org/speech/100050
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February 4, 2010, 3:21 pmsfalphageek says:
“Geneva Conventions protections?” You keep using that word. I do not think that it means what you think it means . . .
Heck, sign me up too. I’d be happy to apply the Geneva and Hague conventions to the current situation, but if you think that MCA 2006 was bad — wow. Absent Protocol One (to which the US is not a signatory), you just get three officers together, bring the detainee in front of them, and answer a few questions: Did the detainee “carry arms openly?” Did he have “a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance?” Did he fight according to the “laws and customs of war?” Was commanded by someone “responsible for his actions?” If all the answers are not yes (and, after the first few months following the initial invasions, I’m not aware of a single situation in Afghanistan or in Iraq where they would have been yes), declare him an unlawful combatant, and he’s no longer entitled to POW status (which is what I think you mean by full Geneva Conventions protections.)
At that point, all he’s entitled to is humane treatment (which does not bar a “humane” execution) and “the rights of fair and regular trial,” which can be a field court martial. Appoint an officer (not necessarily a lawyer) as defense counsel, appoint a few more as the board, and, if over the next 15 minutes or so, he’s found by the court martial to have engaged, directly or indirectly, in attacks against US forces while not a protected person, drag him out and shoot him. No access to civilian courts, no process of appeals, no delay in execution of sentence. The traditional law of land warfare is pretty hard on franc tireurs, partisans and guerillas.
Is that really what you’re signing up for?
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February 4, 2010, 3:38 pmsfalphageek says:
Said by the man who has obviously never gone through SERE C . . .
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February 4, 2010, 3:48 pmJohn A. Fleming says:
For those of you above who were scoffing about the value of any timely actionable intel we could obtain from an Abdultoast military-style interrogation, on the theory that the Al Qaida bad guys skedaddled the moment they heard the bomb was a dud, Robert Mueller, FBI Director, disagrees with you. He was over-ruled by the DOJ higher orders who leaked the info that Abdulburntnads was singing. Apparently, once the cave-dwellers heard that Abdul was Mirandized and clammed up, they felt safe enough to continue with their jihad preparations.
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February 4, 2010, 4:32 pmRPT says:
The last several posts rely upon Dick Cheney and Dana Perino, two of the most untrustworthy and unreliable sources there could be. Neither have access to current information. Re the latter Perino/Mueller point, if administration critics are disseminating false information re lack of cooperation in order to score political points, should Gibbs or others keep silent? I can see an argument for that, but isn’t it more likely that the R’s are complaining because they have been effectively called out on their false criticisms?
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February 4, 2010, 5:10 pmPerseus says:
I can read and write tolerably well, so it seems to me that these issues are not contested only if you read things written by persons in your own hermeneutically sealed bubble.
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February 4, 2010, 5:27 pmJohn A. Fleming says:
RPT:
The source is Senator Chris Bond.
.
You may believe that Perino is a dishonest partisan (project much re: Gibbs?), are you prepared to say the same about Bond?
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February 4, 2010, 5:29 pmBohemond says:
RPT:
And your basis for this assertion, beyond “They’re Evil Republicans and I hate them”?
Especially coming from somebody who thinks Eric Holder is trustworthy.
Incidentally, the plot thickens. FBI Director Mueller said today that he strenuously objected to revealing that Fruit of Kaboom was talking (for obvious reasons)- but Holder (without informing him) leaked the info anyway. In other words, our terrorist-assisting racist AG is playing politics with national security.
I’ll take Darth Cheney any day.
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February 4, 2010, 5:35 pmSteve C. says:
In the US military Summary and Special courts martial do not have jurisdiction over capital offenses. Only a General court martial can assess the death penalty. IAW the Geneva Convention detainees may be tried for crimes against the law of war under the same rules that apply to the detaining powers own soldiers.
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February 4, 2010, 5:59 pmRPT says:
Can you try to stay snark-free for a while?
1. My basis for that evaluation is living in the USA and following events 2001–2009. The examples are legion, and Cheney’s legacy disastrous. He rarely speaks the truth on anything significant.
2. I have not said anything about Holder’s “trustworthiness” in the abstract. I see no basis to disagree with his assertions in the McConnell letter. If you do, please address them, rather than raising general credibility questions. By the way, Scooter Libby’s client Marc Rich was not a terrorist, except in the financial sense.
3. Kit Bond does have some pretty serious false statements in his past, although not to the degree of Cheney. E.g.: “During the January 22 edition of MSNBC’s Hardball, Sen. Kit Bond’s (R-MO) claimed that “we know already that more than 60 of the people who have been released have been killing our troops, our Americans and civilians on the battlefield.”
4. As I said, if the critics are disseminating false statements, what should the administration’s response be?
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February 4, 2010, 6:07 pmSwan Trumpet says:
Stephen Hayes has an article in yesterday’s Weekly Standard on all the contradictions and lies regarding the handling of the panty-bomber. He wrote:
“For days the Obama administration has tried to convince reporters that the Abdulmutallab stopped talking before he was Mirandized. Accounts in both the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post in recent days carried that claim. Three sources familiar with the interrogations told TWS that those claims were incorrect. And yesterday FBI Robert Mueller acknowledged that that Abdulmutallab stopped talking “after he was given” Miranda warnings.
Last week, the White House argued that the FBI had gotten everything they could out of Abdulmutallab in their 50-minutes of interrogation. Today, the same White House is boasting about the valuable intelligence they are getting from him.
DNI Blair told Congress that an elite interrogation team should have questioned Abdulmutallab — only to amend his remarks hours later to acknowledge that the new unit does not exist.”
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February 4, 2010, 6:23 pmSarcastro says:
When I only look at sources who agree with me politically, the facts are clear: I am right!
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February 4, 2010, 6:30 pmRPT says:
Stephen Hayes is partisan? Dana Perino doesn’t even recognize your avatar! She thought the Cuban missile crisis was a problem for the Mavericks’ owner.
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February 4, 2010, 6:34 pmBohemond says:
“The examples are legion, and Cheney’s legacy disastrous. He rarely speaks the truth on anything significant. ”
Empty handwaving devoid of content. “Cheney’s legacy disastrous” is nothing more than “He’s an Evil Republican and I hate him”
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February 4, 2010, 6:47 pmdavod says:
RPT — February 4, 2010, 5:10 pm.“The last several posts rely upon Dick Cheney and Dana Perino, two of the most untrustworthy and unreliable sources there could be. Neither have access to current information.”
Marc A. Thiessen’s (the author of Courting Disaster)January 18, 2010, NRO article Meet the Real Jack Bauers describes in part his discussions with CIA interrogators. I recommend reading the full article as the small sample included here does not really do it justice:
“Sitting across the table from me were several CIA officials, including two men I will call Harry and Sam (not their real names), I didn’t know anything about the individuals before me except that they were with the CIA and knowledgeable about the interrogation program.”
“They explained, for example, that there is a difference between “interrogation” and “de-briefing.” Interrogation is not how we got information from the terrorists; it is the process by which we overcome the terrorists’ resistance and secure their cooperation — sometimes with the help of enhanced interrogation techniques.
Once the terrorist agreed to cooperate, I was told, the interrogation stopped and “de-briefing” began, as the terrorists were questioned by CIA analysts, using non-aggressive techniques to extract information that could help disrupt attacks.”
“As they described the information the CIA had gotten from KSM and others, I slowly realized that these men were not simply describing what others in the agency had done; I was sitting face to face with the individuals who had actually questioned terrorists at the CIA’s black sites and gotten the information they were describing to me themselves.
Harry, it turned out, had interrogated KSM. He explained that interrogations involved strict oversight. There was no freelancing allowed — every technique had to be approved in advance by headquarters, and any deviation from the meticulously developed interrogation plan would lead to the immediate removal of the interrogator.”
“For example, information from detainees in CIA custody led to the arrest of an al-Qaeda terrorist named Jose Padilla, who was sent to America on a mission to blow up high-rise apartment buildings in the United States.
Information from detainees in CIA custody led to the capture of a cell of Southeast Asian terrorists which had been tasked by KSM to hijack a passenger jet and fly it into the Library Tower in Los Angeles.
Information from detainees in CIA custody led to the capture of Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, KSM’s right-hand-man in the 9/11 attacks, just as he was finalizing plans for a plot to hijack airplanes in Europe and fly them into Heathrow airport and buildings in downtown London.
Information from detainees in CIA custody led to the capture of Ammar al-Baluchi and Walid bin Attash, just as they were completing plans to replicate the destruction of our embassies in East Africa by blowing up the U.S. consulate and Western residences in Karachi, Pakistan.
Information from detainees in CIA custody led to the disruption of an al-Qaeda plot to blow up the U.S. Marine camp in Djibouti, in an attack that could have rivaled the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut.
Information from detainees in CIA custody helped break up an al-Qaeda cell that was developing anthrax for terrorist attacks inside the United States.
In addition to helping break up these specific terrorist cells and plots, CIA questioning provided our intelligence community with an unparalleled body of information about al-Qaeda — giving U.S. officials a picture of the terrorist organization as seen from the inside, at a time when we knew almost nothing about the enemy who had attacked us on 9/11.
In addition, CIA detainees helped identify some 86 individuals whom al-Qaeda deemed suitable for Western operations — most of whom we had never heard of before. According to the intelligence community, about half of these individuals were subsequently tracked down and taken off the battlefield. Without CIA questioning, many of these terrorists could still be unknown to us and at large — and may well have carried out attacks against the West by now.”
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February 4, 2010, 6:54 pmRPT says:
Well this is a stalemate. The problem is finding sources who are not known partisans. If I cite Keith Olberman or Jon Stewart to rebut Thiessen’s anonymous sources, Perino, NRO, Weekly Standard, etc. you will never be convinced. If you think Cheney’s regime was successful in preventing terrorist attacks and resulting damages then we will not reach agreement. Any suggestions? Are there any nonpartisan sources that everyone can trust?
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February 4, 2010, 7:20 pmsfalphageek says:
That provision only applies to prisoners of war, not all detainees. An unlawful combatant is not a prisoner of war, and is not entitled to that level of protection under the convention.
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February 4, 2010, 7:43 pmdavod says:
RPT:
Read the article.
I have not seen any rational criticism of “Courting Disaster” which was the basis for the article.
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February 4, 2010, 7:59 pmFred Conblode says:
This is right on. I am not sure what the Bush did it to argument is supposed to prove in making Obama look good. Especially when Liberals see Bush as an Fing twit.
Just because Bush did it doesn’t mean everyone agrees with it even if you were a Bush supporter.
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February 4, 2010, 8:09 pmdavod says:
Fred:
Others have explained this earlier. Bush used what was available at the time. Reid arrived before the Military Commissions Act of 2008 was enacted.
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February 4, 2010, 8:21 pmSally Snell says:
Your english is atrocious! But, I get your point. The main argument here is that Bush did it so stop putting down Obama. But the fact is, just because Bush did it doesn’t mean I agreed with it then! No one who is not a US Citizen should benefit from our legal system for such a heinous act. Which I see as an act of war. Send him to Gitmo.
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February 4, 2010, 8:22 pmjr565 says:
Anonster wrote:
Ah, so then the issue is not the waterboarding per se, but rather what was done well beyond what is done in SERE training. Is it your argument that if we had stuck to waterboarding, that was identical to the waterboarding we use in SERE training that you and countless others calling waterboarding torture would not be calling it torture?
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February 4, 2010, 8:44 pmRicardo says:
True, my reference point is filmed waterboarding of Christopher Hitchens who volunteered to be waterboarded by a couple of military/intelligence community guys. Let’s put it this way: waterboarding in the SERE program has to be at least an order of a magnitude less terrifying than being waterboarded by, say, North Korean agents.
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February 4, 2010, 9:00 pmSwan Trumpet says:
Had you done your homework and READ the OLC memos, you’d know that they don’t ever mention the Naval training of SEALS, and therefore, your claim is either ill-informed, imaginary, or simply prevarication.
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February 4, 2010, 10:04 pmrpt says:
I have read the article but not the book. Why should I do so? The article is well written, but how can one challenge its factual assertions? Where is the corroboration? MT is a former Bush speech writer tasked in mid-2006, right as the election approached, to write a speech supporting Bush policies. The key sources/witnesses are anonymous. The book is published by Regnery, a publisher with a troubled history of vanity books? “How Barack Obama is inviting the next terror attack?” How can you call this a nonpartisan authority?
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February 4, 2010, 10:24 pmAndrew J. Lazarus says:
How many times were the detainees waterboarded? How many times are SEALs waterboarded. Even leaving out the many other differences, that’s a showstopper.
There is strong reason to believe that the plots torture saved us from are as fictional as the plots KGB and Gestapo victims confessed to, in similar circumstances.
After you clean up your pants, try to understand how torturers always discover retroactive justification. Otherwise, how would they look in the mirror.
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February 4, 2010, 10:34 pmBohemond says:
Vanity Fair, oooooh. Now there’s an authoritative source.
“reportedly hung for hours on end from his wrists, beaten, and subjected to other agonies for weeks”
Reportedly? By whom? Where is this mystery witness? Or is this just more of the crap Code Pink pulls out of its ass?
“Otherwise, how would they look in the mirror.”
By reflecting on their service to humanity in inflicting on that subhuman filth even a fraction of the suffering he deserves. They should feel no more guilt than the Army hangman who despatched the top Nazis at Nuremberg.
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February 4, 2010, 10:52 pmAndrew J. Lazarus says:
Actually, the top Nazis were executed by a British civilian. But why let the facts get in the way? This brings an interesting question to mind: why shouldn’t he be ashamed of not torturing the Nazis first. I mean, now that we know that torture is the moral thing to do? Is it that the juxtaposition of torture and Nazis makes it obvious how immoral your ideas are?
I don’t think someone whose “evidence” comes from the torturers themselves should be criticizing others’ sources. Unless you really believe all of the Communist show trial confessions, which I expect you don’t.
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February 4, 2010, 11:17 pmBohemond says:
Andrew J. Lazarus:
Sorry, the 10* executions from the first Nuremberg trial (the IMT, the big guns: Ribbentrop, Jodl, Keitel, Frank etc) were carried out by US Army Master Sergeant John C. Woods.
Pierrepont was only involved in the concentration-camp cases tried under British jurisdiction (including the “Bitch of Belsen” among others).
*12 death sentences, but Bormann was condemned in absentia and Goering committed suicide.
By the way– if military tribunals were good enough for the Nazis, why aren’t they good enough for al-Qaeda?
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February 4, 2010, 11:56 pmAndrew J. Lazarus says:
Mea culpa, you are right about the hangings.
The problem has not been with military tribunals, one can make a case for them. When they are conducted as they were in the past. The Bush/Cheney clowns came up with alternatives that looked like military tribunals but were just kangaroo courts. (Remember the one where the detainee’s representative was bound to report admissions and confessions to the court?)
News reports today say that Abdulmutallab has turned on the radical cleric who recruited him. It all looks like a successful investigation to me. If you want anti-terrorism results. If you want to hear the agonized shrieks of bad people, not so much.
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February 5, 2010, 12:19 amRicardo says:
Fred, my statement was not premised on the argument “Bush did it so that means it’s OK.” It was a response to the multiple defenders of George W. Bush’s decision to try Reid in civilian courts who are commenting in this thread. These same Bush defenders and apologists are attacking Obama and Holder for their decisions surrounding Abdulmutallab. I’m glad you agree that is an inconsistent position and that they must choose one position or the other — either both decisions were OK or neither were.
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February 5, 2010, 12:27 amgrey areas says:
So this assumes that there are different degrees of waterboarding — SERE-style waterboarding is not torture, but what goes well beyond that is.
If that is the case, then the argument that “it’s torture because we once prosecuted the Japanese for waterboarding” loses its force since the waterboarding used by the CIA is nowhere near as severe as the waterboarding used by the Japanese in WWII.
If KSM’s waterboarding is somewhere in between SERE-style waterboarding (not torture) and Japanese-style waterboarding (torture) in the continuum of severity, then it’s not clear that it crosses the line. In which case it’s plausible that some forms of waterboarding aren’t torture — including that practiced by the CIA.
Nuance. You gotta love it.
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February 5, 2010, 12:54 amMichele says:
I loved the article. A lot of these comments are idiotic. Not sure what report you are reading but he shut up after only 45 minutes of interrogation after he was read his rights. He is not an American citizen and does not deserve these rights. The shoe bomber was not done in military court because it was only 3 months after 9–11 and military tribunals were not set up yet. The other trial had started before 9–11. The one comment about how the war on terror is fake maybe should talk to the relatives of 9/11 victims. Smarten up we are going to be attacked again and this man could have been a source of information. Like he’s really saying much 1 month later with a lawyer in tow
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February 5, 2010, 3:26 amSarcastro says:
I also loved the article, and don’t believe anything anyone I disagree with says! I have deduced the secret truth to what that guys said!
Also, 9/11 had victims, which means cost-benefit analysis is irrelevant!
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February 5, 2010, 6:47 amneurodoc says:
You should try reading Will himself rather than relying on the Cliff Notes version. If you did, you would see that he put those words in the mouth of a scoundrel, who understandably wanted to see all the lawyers killed.
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February 5, 2010, 8:03 amneurodoc says:
May I suggest you add, “Some of my best friends are lawyers.”
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February 5, 2010, 9:15 amneurodoc says:
And you think that would cause others to have a lower opinion of you?
(Are you aware that just as some people are so impecunious or otherwise unreachable as to be judgment proof, some people are effectively incapable of being libeled/slandered because nothing can be said of them true or false that could further damage them in the eyes of the world? I trust you are neither judgment proof, nor possessed of a reputation so terrible that nothing could possibly cause it to be sullied further.)
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February 5, 2010, 12:58 pmSarcastro says:
This just in, Ryan Waxx comes out in favor of Don’t Ask, Don’t tell!
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February 5, 2010, 10:15 pmAndrew says:
This article misrepresents AG Holder’s letter. The letter did not claim that Miranda by itself was a way to make people talk, it said that the criminal justice system, of which Miranda is an integral part, is a critical tool in the fight against Al Qaeda.
Also, the decision to read someone their Miranda rights does not actually give them any special rights, as you should know. It reminds them of or acquaints them with rights that they already have.
An important part of the fight against Al Qaeda is our ability to maintain a legitimate system for trying and detaining suspected terrorists. The criminal justice system is the only legitimate way of doing so, and Miranda is the only way to keep the criminal justice system legitimate.
My full thoughts: http://source4politics.blogspot.com/2010/02/criminal-justice-helps-us-fight-terror.html
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February 7, 2010, 5:34 pmBohemond says:
“our ability to maintain a legitimate system for trying and detaining suspected terrorists. The criminal justice system is the only legitimate way of doing so”
NO. Not the “only legitimate” avenue. We can with equal legitimacy use the Hague-Geneva mechanism, and ought to.
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February 7, 2010, 5:58 pmGuy says:
I don’t see how Bush providing the bare minimum level of process and law that the Supreme Court said he had to should be evidence that he was careful in balancing military needs against personal rights and the potential for abuse. If the decision had been entirely up to Bush, there wouldn’t have been any sort of tribunals in the first place.
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February 7, 2010, 6:11 pmRoss Wolf says:
Free Speech A Terrorist Act?
U.S. Attorney General Holder recently suggested that government be allowed to postpone giving terrorist suspects Miranda warnings.
The problem with Holder’s Miranda proposal is that government could arbitrary manipulate the timing of “Miranda warnings” to heavily favor the government to ensure certain statements made by a terrorist suspect, could be used in their prosecution. It should be noted that Attorney General Holder’s proposal to postpone Miranda warnings is all-inclusive; Holder has failed to distinguish between non-violent terrorist acts from violent terrorist acts—as a condition precedent to postponing Miranda Warnings. For example, non-violent terrorist acts” are covered in the Patriot Act to prosecute Persons that support “coercion to influence a government or intimidation to affect a civilian population.” Now consider how Holder’s proposed postponing of Miranda warnings could be used in conjunction with other laws, for example Sen. McCain’s recent introduced March 4, 2010, S.3081: The “Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010.”
S.3081 is so broadly written innocent anti-war protesters and Tea Party Groups might be arrested and detained just for attending demonstrations; Government would need only charge everyone attending a demonstration “materially supported hostilities” against U.S. Government or a civilian population to indefinitely detain unlawful demonstrators in military custody. Passage of S.3081 would permit U.S. Government to use “mere suspicion” to curtail an individual’s Constitutional Protections against unlawful arrest, detention and interrogation without benefit of legal counsel and trial. Under both Attorney General Holder’s proposal and Sen. McCain’s S.3081, Government would not be required to provide interrogated individuals Miranda Warnings or even an attorney: Your political opinions and statements made against U.S. Government could be used by Authorities to deem you either a terrorist or a “hostile” “Enemy Belligerent” to cause your arrest and indefinite detention.
It is important that Americans not allow Attorney General Holder to jam his new Miranda proposal though Congress before U.S. Citizens have had an opportunity to examine the potential ramifications of Holder’s proposal.
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May 11, 2010, 5:34 pmBohemond says:
Ross wolf:
I think that’s a little paranoid. After all, the Miranda question only arises once an arrest has been made on a substantive charge.
“Materially supported hostilities” is a well-defined term and does not include mere speech, now any more than in the Vietnam era when Viet Cong and PRV flags were so prominent in demonstrations. “Material support” requires actual assistance in the form of money, arms, documents, intelligence data or the like. (This would apply to Code Pink’s fundraising on behalf of al-Qaeda in Iraq.) Words alone, even an open endorsement of the enemy cause, are not enough.
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May 12, 2010, 10:45 am