Tortured Questions

I expect my government to be truthful, but I've got constructive knowledge that government can lie or spin.

Constructive knowledge is defined by lawyer Steve at Binjo Ditch as, "the type of knowledge that one using reasonable care or diligence should have, and therefore is attributed by law to a given person." I've lived through the Clinton years and the Nixon years, so I have constructive knowledge that even the U.S. government can lie.

That hardly makes me a wild conspiracy theorist. I certainly have given the Bush admin the benefit of the doubt, for a number of reasons. First, my own constructive knowledge tells me that the left has exaggerated, trumped up and outright fabricated criticisms against Bush and the war. Most of these accusations of lying are easily disproved, as is the case with "Bush lied, people died" on WMDs. So constructive knowledge reassures me that many of those making the claims are hardly credible; they're ranters, negative beings, BDR sufferers. Here's a good case in point. And finally, Bush just always struck me as an admirable, Christian man who wouldn't put up with lying. Call me naive; it's just been my impression.

Constructive knowledge also tells me that members of al-Qaeda and other jihadists will lie, and indeed are encouraged to lie, about being tortured while being held captive by American forces. They're trained to do it and the Koran encourages them to do it, and it's important to keep that in mind as we proceed.

So, who's lying in this case:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Medical examinations of former terrorism suspects held by the U.S. military at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, found evidence of torture and other abuse that resulted in serious injuries and mental disorders, according to a human rights group.

The story from last week -- which of course I can't risk clipping more from, given AP's recent strict enforcement of its copyrights -- goes on to describe what was found in medical examinations of 11 former Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib detainees. Most shocking are allegations (supported, according to the report, by evidence of burns on thumbs) of electric shock, and of sodomization. (The latter charge was not substantiated, as the accuser would not allow an inspection of his private parts.)

Is my country lying to me, to us, about its policies on torture? Or is the human rights group? Or are the former detainees?

Arguing for the latter two is the timing of the release of the report, just as the (Dem-dominated) Senate Armed Services Committee began looking into warnings from military lawyers to the Pentagon regarding the possible illegality of some interrogation measures. Timing like this is often a sign that a study's been trumped up.

Arguing that interrogation techniques went beyond what we were told and what I personally would accept are the wear and tear caused by the endless stream of reports, and these latest reports, and my cognitive knowledge that the reported incidents at Abu Ghraib were, in fact, abominable.

Arguing against that is the nebulous qualities of the human rights group's report. Some of these detainees have been out of our control for a number of years, and all of them were living lives before they were detained. There's no way of knowing if their injuries occurred while under US control -- if they occurred at all. And that guy wouldn't pull down his pants to allow an examination.

Also on point is the fact that some of the alleged "tortures" are mere miscomforts suitable for the interrogation of enemy: sleep deprivation, stress positions, cold, heat, hunger. Sorry, but this is not about redefining torture; it's about whether torture -- being shocked or sodomized, for example -- occurred.

Arguing for concern that it might just be true is the committee's report on the lawyer's findings. Binjo Ditch summarizes the whole deal:

When military lawyers warn the Pentagon that interrogation techniques they are looking into may be illegal, then the DOD should know that they need to tread carefully, and to look into the legality of the issue, rather than dive in with reckless disregard for the law.

To which Lindsey Graham replied (paraphrasing here for AP's sake), "Bunk! It was just an irresponsible and shortsighted job by the lawyers!" I would normally say we have a he said/she said here, and that I'm biased to trust the government over the accusers, but Graham made an odd choice of words that's troubling. Had he used "wrong and deliberate," he would have communicated one thing (like the most recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran), but he chose "irresponsible and shortsighted," which communicates something entirely different.

In the end, we must look for known facts, and that causes us to dismiss the human rights group's report because it is just too unsubstantiated. That leaves the Pentagon lawyers, the interrogators and those being interrogated.

Without knowing the Pentagon lawyers, my constructive knowledge tells me staff at State and the CIA have gone out of their way to throw up challenges and embarrassments to the administration, so I can't reasonably say the Pentagon staff would be any different. Their warnings appear to me to be part good and part reliant on a BDS definition of torture.

As for the interrogators, we rightfully don't know much. If their techniques were common knowledge, the enemy could train themselves to deal with them. But we do know this: Every interrogator knows the rules; they're clearly written. And every interrogator does not want to be the next Lynndie England, exposed, shamed and convicted.

That leaves the detainees, who constructive knowledge tells us have been trained to allege torture. In the end, this is the only rock-solid piece of evidence in the entire story. All we can say for certain out of all of this is that despite what the Pentagon lawyers said, despite what the interrogators have said, the only provable fact out of the whole pile is that detainees lie.

So, uncomfortable as this entire matter made me about what my country's up to, it must remain just that: a discomfort, a confusing addition to my constructive knowledge. In the end, it changes nothing.

Yoo Interrogation Memo Paranoia

Marty Lederman, writing at the blog Balkanization, has his hands on, as he so objectively calls it, "The Big Kahuna: The Torture Memo that Makes the August 2002 Memo Look Like Objective and Thoughtful Legal Analysis."

This is the "notorious" memo ... well, allow me to let Lederman describe it:

On Friday, March 13, 2003, Jay Bybee resigned from his Office as the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, to become a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The very next day -- a Saturday, mind you -- John Yoo, merely a Deputy AAG in the Office, issued his notorious memo to the Pentagon, on behalf of OLC, which effectively gave the Pentagon the green light to disregard statutory limits on torture, cruelty and maltreatment in the treatment of detainees.

The paranoid implication here is that Bybee read the memo, wouldn't sign it, was forced out, and Yoo issued it. There may be some level of truth there; there may not. But the override here is that Bybee left not because of a tiff over a memo, but to become a U.S. Court of Appeals judge, a position that doesn't exactly open up over night. He was not forced out; his departure date was known long in advance.

And the 81-page memo is hardly something that could be whipped up overnight. (I know that's not part of the passing hysteria here, but Lefties quick to conspiracy theories will take it there, trust me.)

Lederman goes on to say,

Needless to say, the classification of these memos all these years was ridiculously unjustified. There's no reason at all that this roll out could not have occurred in 2004.

Needless to say? Really? You've read all 81 pages and can say that with certainty? You can't see any scenario whatsoever that would allow the classification of a document that discusses at length what may and may not be legal when interrogating enemy combatants? Nothing at all that might not give the enemy combatants a wee edge against our forces?

To the American Left, conspiracy is a one-way street: America is capable of all the evil in the world; our opponents and enemies are capable of none of it.

Lederman also calls the memo "the blueprint that led to Abu Ghraib," hyperbole on a par with Obama's endless incorrect parsing of McCain's "100 years in Iraq" statement. We all know that Abu Ghraib's perps followed no blueprint and were summarily punished for their renegade actions, and Lederman's insistence at blaming Bush for what happened there befouls every other argument he makes.

As for the memo itself, it is thorough and comprehensive, the work of a government trying hard to figure out the legal limits of working with stateless terrorists bound by no legal limits.

Here's just a taste of that thoroughness, from the introduction:

In Part I, we conclude that the Fifth and Eighth Amendments, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, do not extend to alien enemy combatants held abroad. In Part II, we examine federal criminal law. We explain that several canons of construction apply here. Those canons of construction indicate that federal criminal laws of general applicability do not apply to properly~authorized interrogations of enemy combatants, undertaken by military personnel in the course of an armed conflict. Such criminal statutes, if they were misconstrued to apply to the interrogation of enemy combatants, would conflict with the Constitution's grant of the Commander in Chief power solely to the President.

Although we do not believe that these laws would apply to authorized military interrogations, we outline the various federal crimes that apply in the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States: assault, 18 U.S.C. § 113 (2000); maiming, 18 U.S.C. § 114 (2000); and interstate' stalking, 18 U.S.C. § 2261A(2000). In Part II.C., we address relevant criminal prohibitions that apply to conduct outside the jurisdiction of the United States: war crimes, 18 U.S.C. § 2441 (2000); and torture, 18' U.S.C. § 2340A (2000 & West Supp. 2002).

In Part III, we examine the international law applicable to the conduct of interrogations. First, we examine the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Apr. 18, 1988,1465 D.N.T.S. 113 ("CAT") and conclude that U.S. reservations, understandings, and declarations ensure that our international obligations mirror the standards of 18 U.S.C. § 2340A. Second, we address the U.S. obligation under CAT to undertake to prevent the commission of "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment." We conclude that based on its reservation, the United States' obligation extends only to conduct that is "cruel and unusual" within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment or otherwise "shocks the conscience" under the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.

Third, we examine the applicability of customary international law. We conclude that as an expression of state practice, customary international law cannot impose a standard that differs from U.S. obligations under CAT, a recent multilateral treaty on the same sUbject. In any event, our previous opinions make clear that customary international law is not federal law and that the President is free to override it at his discretion.

In Part IV, we discuss defenses to an allegation that an interrogation method might violate any of the various criminal prohibitions discussed in Part ll. We believe that necessity or self~defense could provide defenses to a prosecution.

This is not the work of an administration, as portrayed by the braying donkeys on the Left, that is riding roughshod over human rights. It is, rather, the work of an administration that is rigorously seeking appropriate guidance in a thick forest of often conflicting laws, regulations, treaties and court decisions.

It is also the work of an administration that knows it has to deal with enemies besides the ones who bow to Mecca daily -- it is an administration that anticipates and plans for attacks from the ACLU; various Soros-funded activist groups; Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer and a Congress-full of other anti-Bush, agenda-driven electeds; activist judges, and paranoid bloggers.

Of course, unaddressed by Lederman or his colleagues is anything about the nature of the enemy, anything about the nature of the interrogation procedures that actually have been used, or any analysis of benefits vs. cost of the administration's policy on the interrogation of foreign enemies intent on killing us.

But then, being a leftist has never required being rational.

Bush Wields A Necessary Veto

As President Bush vetoes legislation that would ban waterboarding and other "harsh" interrogation techniques -- a veto Congress will have trouble overturning, news reports reveal that the usual suspects are lined up against him:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Bush often warns against ignoring the advice of U.S. commanders on the ground in Iraq. Yet the president has rejected the Army Field Manual, which recognizes that harsh interrogation tactics elicit unreliable information, said Reid, D-Nev.

"Democrats will continue working to reverse the damage President Bush has caused to our standing in the world," Reid said.

Just like al-Qaida is working to damage our standing in the world?

And we can always count on Human Rights Watch for a lucid view of world events and foreign affairs:

Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch [oxymoron, anyone?], said Bush "will go down in history as the torture president" for defying Congress and allowing the CIA to use interrogation techniques "that any reasonable observer would call torture." [There they go, calling me unreasonable again!]

"The Bush administration continues to insist that CIA and other nonmilitary interrogators are not bound by the military rules and has reportedly given CIA interrogators the green light to use a range of so-called 'enhanced' interrogation techniques, including prolonged sleep deprivation, painful stress positions, and exposure to extreme cold," Daskal said. [The horror of it all!] "Although waterboarding is not currently approved for use by the CIA, Attorney General Michael Mukasey has refused to take it off the table for the future."

The Dems and Soros-funded Human Rights Watch would restrict all interrogations to those allowed in the Army Field Manual -- but what does that mean?

It’s easy to find what interrogation techniques are banned by in the new Army Field Manual. Obviously, it bans all the stuff we all used to think of as torture: anything that could cause death or physical injury. Think Jack Bauer.

Then, “based on lessons learned since the United States began taking prisoners in the war on terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, (AP, via NPR), the manual banned a bunch of other stuff: forced nakedness, hooding, sexual humiliation, threatening them with dogs, mock executions. Think Abu Ghraib.

Also included in this bunch of banned stuff attributed to the war on terror, according to the AP report: being beaten, shocking prisoners with electricity, burning them, causing other pain, and waterboarding. With the exception of waterboarding – which reportedly has been very limited in its use and very successful in its results – I know of no reports of American forces using any of the other techniques during the war on terror. AP didn't bother to attribute its charge -- so did they just make it up?

Who knows?

So what are the 16 interrogation techniques the Army Field Manual allows? That, my friends, is much harder to find out by reading the general media. My browser has been whirring, and it appears the MSM are much more interested in what's not allowed instead of what is allowed.

Three techniques were added “in response to the war on terror,” and are not unlike what you might experience if you were being interrogated by your local cops:

• Playing good cop/bad cop
• The American interrogator not identifying himself as such
• Separating those being interrogated, so they can’t collaborate on stories. POWs can’t be separated, but enemy combatants can be.

And all the old allowed techniques? Hard to find in the MSM, so let's turn to the Army Manual's section FM2.22.2, Human Intelligence Collection Operations, 384 pages of detailed, comprehensive instructions. The US Army is the best, longest-writing Army in the world!

The section on the human intelligence collection process begins with six pages on screening potential HUMINT sources, then goes into 14 pages on planning and preparing for an interrogation. There then are multiple-page sections on approaching the HUMINT and building rapport -- which does not include the MCs "softening them up," which is not allowed.

While Saddam's guys were innovating with electric chords and raping wives in front of husbands and kids, our guys are reading on "incentive approach" and even "emotional love" approach:

Love in its many forms (friendship, comradeship, patriotism, love of family) is a dominant emotion for most people. The HUMINT collector focuses on the anxiety felt by the source about the circumstances in which he finds himself, his isolation from those he loves, and his feelings of helplessness. The HUMINT collector directs the love the source feels toward the appropriate object: family, homeland, or comrades. If the HUMINT collector can show the source what the source himself can do to alter or improve his situation or the situation of the object of his emotion, the approach has a chance of success.

Attila the Hun this ain't ... although there are sections on emotional fear and emotional hate. Before Human Rights Watch gets all a-tizzy, let's repeat: emotional fear, emotional hate. In short, all of the 16 techniques detailed in the Army Field Manual are verbal techniques, and we all know that sticks and stone can break bones, but words will never hurt us.

Can we conceive of no situation where the nature of the detainee and the timeframe we're working in would require something far short of Jack Bauer but more than Maybury PD?

For our safety's sake, for the sake of the reputation of our country, and out of respect for the intelligence personnel tasked with working with foreign agents, we need more than the law Bush is vetoing. We need clear instructions for the use of limited, enhanced techniques -- and the Dems should be as interested in defining them and their use as anyone else.

Harry Reid image: Hidden Dragon Politics

Think McCain Will Miss This Vote?

Today, President Bush said he would veto legislation that would limit the CIA to using only the Army Field Manual's interrogation techniques -- no waterboarding, no sensory deprivation.

"The bill would take away one of the most valuable tools on the war on terror, the CIA program to detain and question key terrorist leaders and operatives," deputy White House press secretary Tony Fratto said Friday. (AP)

Here's a veto override vote John McCain would just as soon avoid. Since he's "Senator Straight-Shooter," he doesn't have the option of going back on his previous opposition to waterboarding -- which is so heartfelt because of his POW experience there's not going back, anyway. But an override vote would hurt him, since most Republicans and Independents don't share the Left/Dem/McCain abhorrence over the selected, limited use of these techniques, which impose no physical harm and hardly meet the classic definitions of torture.

And even though it's a garbled message at best, count on the Dems to accuse him of not really being for the war because he's on their side on torture.

My guess: McCain will find a very important campaign event he simply must attend on the day the veto comes up for an override vote.

Mukasey Makes It Clear (Sort Of) On Waterboarding

In a letter quoted in today's NYTimes, AG Michael Mukasey wrote top Lib Sen Patrick Leahy on the subject of whether waterboarding is torture:

“If this were an easy question, I would not be reluctant to offer my views.

"But with respect, I believe it is not an easy question. There are some circumstances where current law would appear clearly to prohibit the use of waterboarding. Other circumstances would present a far closer question.”

That's hardly a sterling endorsement of the legality of the procedure, but Dems took the occasion to rail against the Bush Admin nonetheless.

Leahy, who's firing up an oversight hearing of his Senate Judiciary Committee, said the letter does not answer "the critical questions we have been asking about [waterboarding's] legality.” He promised tough questions.

He didn't promise to not look like an apologist for terrorists or a political opportunist. But if we strip our interrogators of the ability to carefully and selectively chose from procedures that do not break the bones, cut the skin or trim the toenails of top terrorist operatives, aren't we being apologists for terrorist? And if we can't admit that these tough questions were never asked of Dem administrations, aren't we being political opportunists?

As for the NYT coverage, it rumbles through 11 paragraphs before getting around to sharing this with its readers:

[Mukasey] said [in the letter to Leahy] that only “a limited set of methods is currently authorized for use in that program,” and added: “I have been authorized to disclose publicly that waterboarding is not among those methods. Accordingly, waterboarding is not, and may not, be used in the current program.” (emphasis added)

The headline on this story is, "Mukasey offers views on waterboarding," which, in fact, he didn't.

Why isn't the headline, "Mukasey confirms administration does not use waterboarding?" Might that have clarified matters a bit more? Might that have made readers feel a bit more positive about the Bush Administration?

Oh ... I get it ... never mind.

Photo: AFP/Getty, from NY Magazine

Waterboarding Not Tough Enough?

For all the canned outrage about waterboarding and the CIA's destruction of interrogation tapes, it should come as no surprise that some of the grandstanders had foreknowledge.

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange. (WaPo)

In all, WaPo says, 30 members of Congress got briefings.

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

Yes, some of those people are now grandstanding. Surprised?

Here's the most telling paragraph in the entire piece:

"In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to Sept. 11 and people were still in a panic," said one U.S. official present during the early briefings. "But there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The attitude was, 'We don't care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.' "

Situational ethics, anyone?

To paraphrase per current Dem-speak, "We are objecting, we are hand-wring. We suddenly care about what you guys are doing because we've forgotten all about the need to protect the American people."

hat-tip: memeorandum

CIA Stupidity Jeopardizes War Effort

I can see why the CIA would make tapes of the Abu Zubaydah interrogations in which "severe interrogation techniques" were used -- but for cryin' out loud, how stupid of them to hold onto them for three years, disclose them, and then destroy them!

The agency's excuse, that the tapes were destroyed to protect the safety of the undercover interrogators -- doesn't pass the laugh test. Everything related to CIA undercover operatives could jeopardize their safety -- just ask Valerie Plame, right? -- so why destroy just these tapes?

And if the security of the agents really were a concern, the CIA had three years between when the tapes were made in 2002 and destroyed in 2005 to have their experts effectively mask any chance of a visual or audio identification of the interrogators.

But they destroyed them, and now you're getting comments like this:

What defines [a banana] republic? How about an executive that ignores the rule of law, commits war-crimes and then destroys the actual evidence?

Because the tapes were destroyed, the writer (Andrew Sullivan) is free to pole-vault to whatever conclusions he wants, including that the tapes showed behavior by the CIA that constitutes a war crime. Who's to rebut him?

The accounts, including Sullivan's, use the phrase "severe interrogation techniques," not torture. But that's a phrase with no limitations and no boundaries. Playing Greenday at full volume for hours is a severe interrogation technique, as is giving the prisoner a taste of his own genitals. It's a phrase laden with emotion but bereft of meaning.

The CIA may have been able to give it meaning, but its credibility on the matter is in the toilet. When I train my clients for media interviews, rule number one is always "Don't lie." Now I fully expect the CIA to lie, as in, "No I'm not an agent," and "Of course we don't have a clandestine operation in Outer Ubrokeitstan." God bless 'em for doing it to protect our country.

But lying to an intelligence oversight committee is just plain stupid, and it opens the CIA up to Kennedyesque scrutiny at a time it doesn't need more Libs with curious definitions of torture eyeballing its techniques.

Heads should roll ... figuratively, of course. Otherwise, it would be a war crime.

Tortured By Lefty Comments

Andrew Sullivan and Salon both linked to my post this morning about Mike Huckabee's irresponsible and sophomoric comments about Guantanamo and waterboarding. They did not do this to underscore that Huckabee is not qualified to be a wartime president; rather, they did it to poke fun at those who believe as I do.

Here's the passage they mocked:

You can't be for closing Guantanamo unless you have a decent answer to the question of what you would do with the lovely people who bow toward Mecca from there. Return them to countries that won't have them? Give them trials in the U.S., where their attorneys would exploit our freedoms for the benefit of those who have professed their intentions to kill us by the millions?

And I don't care how uncomfortable or terrifying waterboarding may be to the few who deserve it. It's non-lethal, doesn't bruise the skin, break the bones, starve the tummy, or stretch the skeleton -- yet it can open sealed lips.

Sullivan's comment is so inane it boggles the mind:

Notice how torture is defended as something some terror suspects deserve. And notice no awareness that torture can open sealed lips to give us false information. The point of torture is always torture.

Yes, Andy, the people who are waterboarded do deserve it because they have been party to plots to kill our soldiers, our allies or us, and they don't want to be forthcoming with the information. We don't rush to waterboarding as step one, but if the person has information important enough and they would rather see innocents die instead of spilling the beans, then yes, they deserve it.

Sullivan also hoists up the old cannard about only false information being gained from torture waterboarding. (Sorry, torture to me is still, to paraphrase what I wrote this a.m., lethal, breaks the skin and bones, causes real physical danger, like starvation, or inflicts other bodily harm.) He ignores the fact that the technique has yielded true information that saved real lives on multiple occasions.

If the information is false, what's the result? Nothing happens. So we're supposed to stop pursing information because we're afraid nothing will happen?

If the point of torture were to torture, then Sullivan shouldn't even be asking about the efficacy of process for getting information; he should only ask about its efficacy for inflicting pain on one party and sick pleasure on another. America, of course, does not torture and we certainly are not the sort of country that does the despicable for the sake of doing the despicable. That's why we have the Army Field Manual. Shame on Sullivan for thinking so poorly of his country.

But not thinking well of country is the common demondenominator for this folks, as clearly stated by commentor Chop1:

Anyone can be a suspect for anything, even the writer of this piece, although I assume his blind trust of the government's wonderful intentions and incredible ability to only harshly interrogate those suspects who are actually guilty and deserve it exclude him from ever having to worry about this happening to himself of anyone he knows, so who really cares right?

I really don't have to worry about being waterboarded, and Chop1 doesn't have to either, unless he is an enemy combatant in reality, not just in his head. The Left's worry about diminishment of our freedoms and imminent ill-treatment by government rages without one example to cite. Go to jihad school, raise money under the guise of charity and send it to a recognized terrorist organization, fight on the wrong side in the war on terror and you've got something to worry about. Be paranoid about America and you don't.

The Left's deeply entrenched fear made Sam's comment a real hoot:

Do you check under your pillow for "jihadist/terrorists" every night before you go to bed. I suggest you see a psychiatrist, living in fear every day is no way to live.

I am considerably less afraid than any of these people because I am not afraid of my country. My country has never done anything to me personally to cause me to be afraid of it and I imagine the same is true of Sam and his friends on the Left. Yet they live in terror of bogeymen poised to strap them down in some dank dungeon.

Who needs the psychiatrist?

And who among these would recognize victory? They've achieved it, after all. Here, for example, is ME:

You are also aware that hundreds have been cleared for release because even the US didn't believe they were being held for a decent reason?

Frankly, I'm amazed that you think this argument is about run-of-the-mil POWs. It's not. It's about people who have been abducted by the US government who WEREN'T on a battlefield fighting american soldiers, and are being held without charge, without trial.

Gee willikers. These people who think America is out to get everyone just acknowledged that Guantanamo detainees won the right to have tribunals, and that these tribunals are either dangerously flawed or fair, because "hundreds" have been found worthy of release! Yet they still fear America.

M also thinks that if a general is captured in an air conditioned headquarters building planning an attack, he isn't a POW. Sorry, M, you don't have to be captured on the battlefield to be an enemy combatant.

All of these folks assume I just pull my opinions out of my behind, when in actuality I read their cherished liberal media outlets, NYT and WaPo, regularly peruse the Leftyblogs, read op/eds from both sides courtesy of Real Clear Politics, and admittedly read a lot of conservative blogs.

I therefore know what waterboarding is; I know it's history; I know the results we've achieved through all sorts of interrogation techniques; I know that America does not torture people; and perhaps most important, I know that the Left is trying desperately to redefine the word "torture" so it basically means "interrogation."

They do this because they are anti-war, anti-military, and ultimately, anti-American. Fortunately, they're also anti-convincing.

The French Become More Likable

More good news out of France:

PARIS (Reuters) - The Paris prosecutors' office has dismissed a suit against Donald Rumsfeld accusing the former U.S. defense secretary of torture, human rights groups who brought the case said on Friday.

The plaintiffs, who included the French-based International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH) and the U.S. Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), said Rumsfeld had authorized interrogation techniques that led to rights abuses.

The FIDH said it had received a letter from the prosecutors' office ruling that Rumsfeld benefited from a "customary" immunity from prosecution granted to heads of state and government and foreign ministers, even after they left office.

I would have liked to have had the decision based on more substantive reasons, like the techniques were not torture and the FIDH and CCR were ridiculously trumping up charges in pursuit not of human rights, but publicity.

Still, the dismissal is justified. Underlings -- far, far underlings -- way down the command chain from Rumsfeld were prosecuted for their crimes, which were against U.S. policy. And that should be the end of it ... unless grandstanding is your desire.

The French courts, it seems, will have none of that.