<< Terror Around the Globe | Main | Terrorists Win, Freedom Loses >>


Interrogation and the Law

| 0 Comments
Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey has this op-ed in the WSJ:

Considering that the now-abolished Central Intelligence Agency interrogation program adopted in the wake of 9/11 was intended to protect the U.S. from another deadly attack, it is stunning to hear those now criticizing the program issue the solemn reminder that "we are a nation of laws"--while devoting little attention to what was actually in those laws. Odder still, among the critics those who wrote the laws seem to devote the least attention to them.

Take, for example, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the prime mover behind last week's release of a more than 500-page " Executive Summary " of the report by Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. She attaches her own six-page foreword, beginning with the dutiful assurance on the first page that the "horror" of the television footage of the 9/11 attacks "will remain with me for the rest of my life." Thus credentialed, Sen. Feinstein proceeds to the task at hand: CIA personnel "decided to initiate a program" of "brutal interrogation techniques in violation of U.S. law, treaty obligations, and our values." Setting aside for a moment the reference to "our values," that statement is demonstrably false.
The statement is false, he goes on to demonstrate, because the enhanced interrogation techniques used were not torture as defined in the law.

Leave a comment

Monthly Archives