Former Vice President Cheney -- Wrong Again

Check out the Director of the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, Allen Keller, writing at Huffington Post about just how wrong the former Vice President's facts were in his torture-defending speech last Thursday. Key point:

Torture is neither reliable in eliciting accurate information nor in promoting national security. It is a violation of domestic and international law. Our use of torture has undermined our security and credibility including our capacity to speak out against despot regimes who routinely torture innocent civilians. An honest and full accounting of what happened is a crucial step in making this world a safer place.

Waterboarding Does Not Work

Check out HRF's David Danzig writing at The Huffington Post about today's Senate hearing on torture and how professional interrogators agree that torture and abuse do not produce actionable intelligence.

Are You More Truth-Seeking Than A 4th Grader?

In her first appearance in Washington since leaving government, Condoleezza Rice faced some tough questions on the Bush Administration’s interrogation policies from an unusual source: a fourth grade class.

After a few innocuous questions, fourth grader Misha Lerner asked Condi about torture policies developed when he was still a baby: What did Rice think about the things President Obama's administration was saying about the methods the Bush administration had used to get information from detainees?

Her answer was not really an answer at all, but a description of fear: “I hope you understand that it was a very difficult time. We were all so terrified of another attack on the country. September 11 was the worst day of my life in government, watching 3,000 Americans die…”

The fear that permeated Washington in the heady days post 9-11, should provide historical context – not rationalization – for the choices that were made. Long ago, this sense of fear should have given way to reasoned analysis. Instead, policies created without sober reflection, policies that left the door open to torture, made our soldiers and our country less safe.

Condi’s answer seemed designed to avoid the tough question of a fourth grader, a blanket denial of wrongdoing squeezed between descriptions of fear and protestations that it was all for the good of the country: “Even under those most difficult circumstances, the president was not prepared to do something illegal, and I hope people understand that we were trying to protect the country.”

In the wake of recent disclosures of torture memos and President Obama's comments showing he is open to a review of those policies and practices, a national debate is raging. Growing louder in this din are voices calling for a full reckoning on the United States' use of torture.

Human Rights First is calling on President Obama to establish an independent, non-partisan commission to examine and report publicly on torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees in the period since 9/11. The commission should look into the facts and circumstances of such abuses, report on lessons learned, and recommend measures that would prevent any future abuses.

As we contemplate the abuses of the last eight years, children who have never known anything other than these policies are figuring out who they are, what this country stands for, and what it will mean to grow up an American in the 21st century. The report issued by the commission will not only strengthen U.S. national security, but it will provide a clear record to Misha Lerner and his fourth grade classmates, describing these troubling policies in context, and demonstrating our country’s commitment to preventing future abuses, to being a nation who never condones torture under any circumstances. Tell President Obama we won’t take no for an answer.

ICRC Reports on U.S. Torture

Mark Danner has excerpts from the report in yesterday's New York Times.

Federal Courts Are the Best Venue for Terrorism Trials

In a letter to the editor in response to a news story in the Washington Post, our colleague Gabor Rona argues emphatically against reconstituting military commissions in any form. It is not okay to flout constitutional standards to convict people who might be found not guilty in fair trials where secret evidence and coerced confessions are excluded. Instead, as we have documented in our report In Pursuit of Justice: Prosecuting Terrorism Cases in the Federal Courts, our normal federal courts are up to the task:

The true road to effective counterterrorism passes through our normal federal courts, where the delivery of justice is sometimes complicated, expensive and time-consuming. That's a small price to pay for an improved national security strategy that also restores our souls and our international legitimacy.

Experienced Interrogators Speak Out

An op-ed in today’s New York Times offers some advice from two seasoned interrogators to the panel established by President Obama’s executive order to investigate America’s interrogation methods. Matthew Alexander worked as an interrogator in the military, and wrote a book last year, “How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq.” Steven Kleinman has been an intelligence officer and an interrogator in the Air Force for 25 years and is a colonel in the Air Force Reserve. He also signed on to a series of principles last year at a meeting of 15 interrogators and intelligence experts convened by Human Rights First.

These principles are based on the interrogators and intelligence officials’ experiences of what works and what does not in the field: interrogation techniques that do not resort to torture yield more complete and accurate intelligence. They also call for the creation of a well-defined single standard of conduct in interrogation and detention practices across all U.S. agencies. At stake is the loss of critical intelligence and time, as well as the United States’ reputation abroad and its credibility in demanding the humane treatment of captured Americans.

In today’s op-ed piece, Alexander and Kleinman expand on these principles, calling for this new panel established by President Obama to include experienced interrogators who will recognize the need to examine longstanding interrogation methods objectively, and should consider creating a research center so that our country can take a more scientific approach to intelligence-gathering:

The panel should consider creating a research center devoted to gathering and
analyzing the valuable lessons that interrogators have learned in the course of
our current conflicts, establishing a clear and stringent standard of conduct
and ethics and building a cadre of skilled interrogators. Researchers at such a
center could also evaluate all strategies now used in questioning and identify
other methods that are both effective and consistent with our legal and moral
traditions.

Admiral Gunn on Truth Inquiry: "We have to find out what happened... to provide clear, unambiguous guidance on the front line."

Yesterday Admiral Lee Gunn, a member of HRF's coalition of military leaders, testified at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on a commission of inquiry. Here is his testimony:

Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be a part of this esteemed panel and to have an opportunity to talk about this important issue.

In addition to the other things you mentioned that I'm involved in, I've been a member for the last three-plus years of a group of 49 retired flag and general officers who have spoken extensively on the issue of detainee treatment and its importance both to the men and women in the military and for the men and women in their execution of their duties.

I'd like to talk a little bit about that and, in doing that, elaborate on the written testimony that I have submitted.

I'd like to say at the outset that my views are those of a sailor, conveying concerns about the serious problems created for servicemen and women by choices made in Washington over the last seven years. So what are those problems?

Strained alliances comes first in my list. And in this day and age, the American military operates by itself almost never in the world. And the importance of being able to work with our allies and our friends cannot be overstressed.

Confusion about detainee treatment, number two on my list, means to me that we have provided unclear guidance. That is, choices made in Washington have resulted in guidance that was not clear, that was in many cases ambiguous, and in some cases was flat wrong about the requirement to treat detainees humanely and in accordance with international conventions and the Geneva Convention, in particular, and also
with American law.

Third on my list is exposure to greater risk of abuse if those soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen are captured. Now, no one is going to -- we're not kidding ourselves that our opponents, our enemy will be inclined to treat our people humanely if they fall into enemy hands. On the other hand, it's important that we be able to mobilize international opinion in support of people taken by our enemy and the treatment of them in a humane way.

We have, as Ambassador Pickering mentioned, furnished extremists with recruiting materials extensively. And that is a consequence that we should have envisioned when we made many of the choices about how we were going to -- to act and how we were going to talk about how we acted.

And, finally, in the problems list is that we further damage the reputations of Americans who are working in this new realm of winning hearts and minds and trying to convince people that America has ideals and ideas to which they should subscribe. And we have disadvantaged our military people who've been involved in that, and I would argue that we've similarly disadvantaged the other members of the American administration, other public servants in that regard, as well.

We're not done.

And that's why I think that we need a serious inquiry into the way we've behaved for the last seven years and the kind of orders we've given and decisions we've made.

The enemy is still the enemy. The stress on our people in uniform and out who are charged with dealing with this enemy will continue. The pressure on our country and her leaders will remain. And we need to understand the circumstances under which choices were made by leaders in the past in order that we can anticipate those same circumstances or others in the future and avoid making what we consider to be mistakes.

So the question is, to me, what's happened to us? What did we do wrong? What did we do right? And I'd like to mention that the military examines itself often and in depth. We do that with after-action reviews and hot wash-ups following exercises and operations. We do it with in-depth studies when those are called for. We conduct Uniform Code of Military Justice investigations, as I know you're well aware, Mr. Chairman. And we conduct aviation safety investigations and examinations, as well.

The last one is kind of an interesting case in which the testimony, seeking the truth and having lives depend on finding the truth, in which the testimony is generally fire-walled completely from legal proceedings that may eventuate from these investigations. But whatever the appropriate means, the services together have to find out what happened and be in a better position in the future to provide the kind of clear, unambiguous guidance that is necessary on the pressure-filled front line and in the detainee treatment arena.

The outcome is that soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen, Coast Guardsmen deserve and require that kind of guidance and those orders. Structure is essential to you when you're under pressure, particularly in combat and also in the elevated tension of taking care of detainees.

American values have to be our test with regard to the application of those orders and that guidance. We have failed American servicemen and women over the last seven years, and we have to stop doing that. We need to do better, and we need to get on with it.