CIA Can Still Get Tough on Detainees.
Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times:
New U.S. policies on the treatment and interrogation of terrorism suspects outlined this week by the Bush administration mean that the military no longer will resort to harsh or extreme methods to obtain information — but that the CIA could.
The new administration approach, first presented by President Bush in a speech Wednesday and detailed later by administration and military officials, followed an internal administration debate over the question of how best to extract intelligence from the most notorious suspects apprehended in the war on terrorism.
But by assigning the CIA to use tough, undefined methods on some detainees, the policy outlined by Bush may raise new questions about U.S. procedures and invite more criticism from human rights advocates and allies.
For the five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the administration's top leaders and senior policymakers have supported the use of harsh methods to obtain information that could head off future attacks and save lives. But military officers have insisted that such interrogation tactics are unproductive — and inevitably lead to abuse.
On Wednesday, after years of internal debates, the administration outlined a compromise meant to reconcile the position of hard-liners and military traditionalists.
The Army, morally and culturally averse to using unorthodox interrogation methods, will get out of the business of using tough tactics against detainees under the compromise. The new Army field manual authorizes only 19 interrogation techniques and bans the most controversial tactics that critics said amounted to torture — hooding prisoners, conducting mock executions, and strapping detainees to boards and using water to simulate drowning.
But the CIA will reserve the right to use the tougher tactics. Bush said such methods had been effective in getting some of the 14 top Al Qaeda suspects held by the agency to talk. Administration officials said the CIA tactics would be legal and fall well short of torture and abuse. But the president and others have pointedly refused to say what those tougher methods might be.
The compromise may satisfy the military, which can now say its soldiers will always comply with international treaties and steer well clear of torture. But it is not certain whether the new policy will satisfy those who have raised questions about American interrogation practices, including human rights advocates and members of Congress.
