Like Michael Froomkin, I’ve often wondered why Congress hasn’t done more to place legal limits on American torture policies. Now we know, however, that Congress was prepared to do more, but ran into opposition from the pro-torture crowd at the Bush White House.
At the urging of the White House, Congressional leaders scrapped a legislative measure last month that would have imposed new restrictions on the use of extreme interrogation measures by American intelligence officers, Congressional officials say.
The defeat of the proposal affects one of the most obscure arenas of the war on terrorism, involving the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret detention and interrogation of top terror leaders like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and about three dozen other senior members of Al Qaeda and its offshoots.
The Senate had approved the new restrictions, by a 96-to-2 vote, as part of the intelligence reform legislation. They would have explicitly extended to intelligence officers a prohibition against torture or inhumane treatment, and would have required the C.I.A. as well as the Pentagon to report to Congress about the methods they were using.
But in intense closed-door negotiations, Congressional officials said, four senior members from the House and Senate deleted the restrictions from the final bill after the White House expressed opposition.
All things being equal, I’m pleasantly surprised only two lawmakers voted against new restrictions on torture.
Regardless, is there any chance we can get a sense of Alberto Gonzales’ role in this lobbying effort before he’s confirmed as the attorney general?
For what it’s worth, the public is clearly not on board with the administration’s approach.
Americans strongly disapprove of harsh interrogation tactics the U.S. government has used to try to extract information about possible terrorist attacks from detainees held in Afghanistan, Iraq and Cuba, a new USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll says.
The poll, conducted Friday-Sunday, found that sizable majorities of Americans disagree with tactics ranging from leaving prisoners naked and chained in uncomfortable positions for hours, to trying to make a prisoner think he was being drowned.
Most Americans surveyed also said they believe the abuse and sexual humiliation of Iraqi detainees by U.S. Army reservists at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison have damaged the USA’s reputation as a protector of civil liberties — and made it more likely that U.S. soldiers captured by America’s enemies will be tortured.
Specifically, only 16% of Americans approve of a tactic like “waterboarding” (which makes the abused believe he’s drowning), which the administration continues to defend.
I guess Sen. Inhofe’s (R-Okla.) argument about being “outraged by the outrage” never really caught on with the public.