In my quick read through your linked earlier comment, Legal Policy for a Twilight War, I find this:

"Brilliant lawyers worked hard on how they could then construe the limits of vague, untested laws. They were operating so close to the frontiers of our law that, within only a couple of years, the Department of Justice eventually felt obliged to offer a second legal opinion, rewriting their original views of the subject."

This seems all too generous to the lawyers involved, given that you were privy to the memos at the time you wrote that piece. Consider, for example, Scott Horton's observation that the 2002 memo's declaration that "there are no cases construing this statute" was deliberate obtuseness on the part of the authors.

How can your description above be a fair one in light of your own analysis as described in this post?

of you to raise the matter 4 years after the fact, when at the time you were in a position to perhaps have changed the proposed policy.

I think this article is quite brilliant and wonderful. But I'm wondering if Philip, based on his extensive experience, believes that this type of treatment does, or does not, yield critical information to safeguard America which, absent this type of treatment, would not be given.
In essence: Is this the only way to get real and useable information from these terrorists?
Cheney says yes, others in that Administration say yes; many say no.
But what does Philip say?
Thanks, Ken Adelman

Trying to balance morally correct actions against the pull of strong emotions in the midst of conflict is extremely difficult and may require more personal courage, honesty, and integrity than could reasonably be mustered by most decision-makers.

But by accepting the role of a decision-maker in government one is called to exhibit the self-discipline to intellectually examine a potential decision and corresponding action through the lens of a well-formed conscience. That time spent in reflection upon the discrimination, proportionality, and military necessity (jus in bello) of the intended actions' effects should result in opportunity to temper the duration and scope of, if not prevent entirely, excursions from the norms of conduct that may be justified by lawyers but remain an affront to morality, human dignity, and our common values.

Were Bush Administration officials and CIA officers prosecuting their duties in a good faith effort to act in accordance to these guidelines for reasoning and judging? I hope they had true, justified belief in the credibility of the information they used to build their case for applying the interrogation programs and methods they chose and for the period of time they engaged in them. For if they did have that knowledge and a reasonable hope that proportional, discriminating acts of interrogation were necessary and sufficient to lead to actionable intelligence, I believe they acted in good faith and correspondingly, in his decisions regarding these cases, President Obama then acted in good faith as well.

I have no problem with the torture used against slimeballs like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Muhammed Hussein abu Zubaida. The information we got resulted in successfully thwarting innurmerable attacks.
Some of Khalid's accomplishments include: planning the 9-11 attacks that killed 3,000 in New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania, the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, the Operation Bojinka plot, an aborted 2002 attack on Los Angeles’ U.S. Bank Tower, the Bali nightclub bombings, the failed bombing of American Airlines Flight 63, the Millennium Plot, and the murder of Daniel Pearl.
I can’t seem to muster up a whole lot of angst over the CIA’s dunking of those slimy SOBs.

Until they were caught, they were in the process of killing as many infidels as possible for “Allah”.
I don’t give a damn if they have to force feed a terrorist an ocean full of water to get information.
The tactic works. It saves American lives.

Obama won’t prosecute anyone, because he can’t.
Several members of the Democratic Party knew about the interrogation methods, and Obama knows that if he allows prosecution he will have to release the classified information gleaned from the interrogations, which will prove they were successful. The whole attempt to blame Bush and denounce what turned out to be productive interrogations, will blow up in his face. An investigation would reveal just how many plots and attacks were prevented in this country, alone. Instead, he’ll try to politicize the intelligence because the truth would be inconvenient. Even a dunce like him can figure that out.

I hope the Bushies take the blame for when we get into a real war with a country that can defend itself and take prisoners, when that country decides to torture GIs to prevent attacks on their country.

Will the Bushies be supporting it then?

Will they go crying to the United Nations about Treaty violations instead?

Somehow, I think the Bushies feel this is a one-way street, and that only America has a justification to use torture to prevent attacks.

I feel sorry for the poor grunts that are going to be tortured in the future, with the rest of the world laughing at any mention of Treaty non-compliance because America did.

Fail to prosecute those responsible, and the end result is this.

Republicans have no morals, and their lack of morals (on any and every issue) has left America with zero moral standing in the world, and has provided the factual propaganda tools for the enemy.

did you forcefully advise her of your view of the legal opnions being used to justify these methods, and threaten to resign if she did not mount a sufficiently vigorous public and internal effort to change the policy? If not I don't see how we can conclude that you served her or us sufficiently.

A separate question: did you have a comparable position in Ms. Rice's staff when she was National Security Adviser to the one you had at State? Could you post your titles held in government and years held? Thank you.

Several times in my life, I have done something that was an essential and necessary part of my life. I traveled abroad when I was 11 and afterwards, I held two positions with the U.S. government, and through all of these events I swore an oath to uphold and protect the U.S. Constitution. How is it that the same individuals who worked for the same governmental office that I did, namely the U.S. Department of Justice, albeit not for 20 years as I did, took this same oath and held positions in the Office of Legal Counsel, CIA, FBI and NSA and either never took this oath or forgot it as soon as they lowered their right hand? If for no other reason they should be held legally accountable as the taking of this oath is a sworn statement made under U.S. law.

Furthermore, the assumption made that the torture of high-value detainees somehow yields information that "keeps Americans safe" is crap. Enough studies have shown that anyone being tortured provides what they believe their handler wants to hear, whether it is true or not, to stop the torture. If the U.S. can torture someone to obtain "valuable" information then by all means it is legal and well-past the time to waterboard Bush, et. al., and find out what exactly they were doing for the past eight years. If it is a legally permissible act--according to John Yee and the DOJ--then what is good for a detainee should be legal for a former sitting President and his cabinet aides.

Reverting to torture, it's frequently thought to believe the person in custody is known to have valuable information, and this information has to be forced out, since his possession of the information is proof of his guilt? My problem is that unless you have excellent intelligence to begin with, you will likely become engaged in developing baseline intelligence, and the person you are torturing may well know nothing at all.

The problem I have with torture is the information extracted still must be vetted to be useful at best, in extraordinary situations. That's why I believe the interrogators had a pretty good idea what their subject knew, but just wanted some fill in details and were being pushed for ever more.

At that point other traditional and proven techniques could have been used. These people didn't know when to back-off.

When you don’t know what you need to know, you round up more than just "the usual suspects." Throw in torture as a collection tool, it becomes indiscriminate as well. As an intell analyst you're prepared to follow many false leads, and when your methodology includes torture, you'll be torturing people with little to tell you, or they've told you all they have, and start inventing stories to satisfy you.

Additionally, torture applied by anyone other than well trained, experienced personnel (who are in exceptionally short supply it would seem) will only compound these problems, and make the practice less productive.

On the scale of human cruelty I've witnessed in my life, these techniques don't rise to the top. But all the same, they weren't necessary after a certain time frame - if they ever were to begin with.

Frankly, accept with reservation the reports of scared men.

Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah was subjected to waterboarding 83 times in August 2002. Khalid Sheikh Mohamed was subjected to waterboarding 183 times in March 2003.

Momentarily ignoring my own opinions on the practice of torture, and ignoring my harsh opinions on these two men, if waterboarding is effective, why did it need to be done 266 times? If it needs to be done that many times, it doesn't seem to be as effective as the administration at the time claims it to be. That being said, I understand that waterboarding is just one aspect of the 'intelligence gathering program'.

Indeed, having now released the Beast from it's cell - imprisoned there with so much effort and anguish - how can we return it and make it harmless? Maybe it never really was so, but good people expected their leaders to do honor to the notion.

Now all of us are in peril. Who can refuse the authorities demands now? To do so is to imperial one's own life - and perhaps those of family and friends as well.

Far fetched? I wish it were...

OT