Torture and Progress
In one of the clearest signs of the moral decay of the modern conservative movement, the National Review published an article by Deroy Murdock the other day which proclaimed that "[w]aterboarding is something of which every American should be proud."
This prompted a clearly embarrassed Ramesh Ponnuru to write:
Wikipedia: (Cartoon depicting the application of the "water cure" by United States Army soldiers on a Filipino. In the background soldiers representing various European nations look on smiling. The Europeans say, "Those pious Yankees can't throw stones at us any more", meaning that the USA no longer has the moral stance to criticize European colonial practices. Cover of Life magazine, Vol. 39, #1021 first published on May 22, 1902)
This prompted a clearly embarrassed Ramesh Ponnuru to write:
The most persuasive advocates of using waterboarding in some instances concede that it is an extreme tactic that should not be used frequently. Then there's Deroy Murdock, who says that "there is nothing 'repugnant' about waterboarding" and that "[w]aterboarding is something of which every American should be proud." Shouldn't he then be complaining that the administration doesn't use it enough?That prompted Murdock to write in to the The Corner to clear things up:
[T]he whole point of my piece is that I AM complaining that we do NOT waterboard enough. Yes, we need to waterboard more. At the moment, waterboarding appears to have been banned by both the CIA and the Pentagon. As I say pretty directly in my piece, Bush should reinstate waterboarding publicly and proudly, and I called him deluded for thinking he would gain anything by going along with the Left and ditching waterboarding. . . .Good lord, I don't even think Teddy Roosevelt apologists were that brazen back in 1902 when the Senate held hearings on the use of waterboarding by U.S. troops in the Philippines. We've come a long way, baby!
I hope this clears up any confusion you might have had.
Wikipedia: (Cartoon depicting the application of the "water cure" by United States Army soldiers on a Filipino. In the background soldiers representing various European nations look on smiling. The Europeans say, "Those pious Yankees can't throw stones at us any more", meaning that the USA no longer has the moral stance to criticize European colonial practices. Cover of Life magazine, Vol. 39, #1021 first published on May 22, 1902)
posted by A.L. at 12:39 AM
26 Comments:
A.L.
Do you find it as notably odd as I do that this round of the torture debate seems to include no discussion of the efficacy of torture as an intelligence gathering technique? The whole discussion is about the morality of waterboarding, the definition, and the legality. Those are important issues certainly, and in some respects I guess I'm glad we're all beginning to focus on them, to the exclusion of the tactical value. On the other hand, the absence of any such mention - specifically that torture probably yields bad intelligence - makes it seem as if we all concede the point that waterboarding would be a good, effective way of finding out where the ticking nuclear device is, and that our major concern here is whether we get to look ourselves in the mirror afterwards.
And yet it seems beyond obvious to me that in addition to being an illegal, morally repugnant betrayal of everything our nation once stood for, torture is also just plain stupid way of trying to find something out. Granted, I've never been there, but if someone were torturing me, I'd tell them my grandmother was making pipe-bombs in the basement if I thought it would make them stop, and I wouldn't consider my dignity or virtue to have been all that compromised, insofar as my grandmother is NOT making pipebombs in the basement. I'd be only too happy to send those sadistic f*ckers on a wild goose chase, if it would stop them from torturing me. It's win-win, seems to me, unless someone is prepared to tell me what we - our soldiers, the CIA and their surrogates - do to a "squaler" when we find out we've been given bad information. Is that when the bamboo shoots come out? Do detainees understand they shouldn't lie to us, because then they'll REALLY be in trouble?
Another great post. That Life cover is really a perfect illustration of how we have fallen. We are not holding ourselves to the same moral standard we held ourselves to in 1902. And the world knows it.
Good point, brux. I think part of the reason that particular angle is getting less play this time around is because it's primarily a policy issue. It's relevant to the question of whether torture is good policy. But it's not Mukasey's job to make policy. It's his job to enforce the law. So in the context of the AG confirmation process, the more relevant question is how Mukasey interprets the law.
From Wikipedia on Murdock:
He said on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews" on September 16, 2007 that he believes Saddam Hussein was involved in perpetrating the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on America.
What a guy! But seriously, if you take his efficacy of waterboarding approach, why not threaten (and then actually) cut of the limbs of the suspect's children. I'm sure it would generate lots of confessions.
A.L.
Yes, you are correct, it is the context of the Mukasey conformation which explains why the question of efficacy hasn�t come up. I�m simply pointing out that when it doesn�t come up, it makes it seems as if we all concede that torture actually works. Certainly Murdock seems to assume so
Quiddity,
Indeed, you have anticipated my next comment, and don�t get me wrong, I�m not saying that I�d be prepared to sanction torture if it could be proven to be effective. My point is simply that we can�t even have a meaningful discussion about the relative morality of torture unless and until we�re all agreed that we�re talking about a technique that works. As is, we seem to be arguing over our right to do something which is manifestly stupid and counter-productive. Murdock might as well be expressing �pride� at stepping on a rake.
From the moral AND tactical standpoint, the far more penetrating discussion would be, as you point out, over whether we as a nation would be within our rights to inform suspected terrorists that if they don't give us good information that checks out pronto, we will murder their entire family. Because that's the only information I would even begin to trust.
And I have to assume Murdock would be all for it.
I agree--we haven't done it enough. Bush and Cheney next!
I'm all for defining waterboarding as torture and making it illegal. But let's not kid ourselves. There are a some hard truths to be faced:
1) It used to be that states were the only entities that were willing and able to kill thousands of people at a throw. That capability (and inclination) is now available to groups having only a handful of members. States were deterrable. Terrorists aren't. That's an historically new threat to which all societies must respond.
2) In the "ticking bomb" scenario, you'll be willing to run the risk of lousy intelligence because you're desparate.
3) If there's a perceived immediate threat, you can beg for forgiveness or ask for permission, but if somebody is suspected of having information that can save thousands of lives, he's gonna get tortured.
I really don't see how this is a conservative or a liberal issue. You can either be in denial or you can face facts and then figure out how to preserve as much of your civilization as you can.
You could use a finding or a pardon to excuse torture in extreme emergencies. Personally, I'd rather have a statute and some congressional oversight--it's a lot more transparent and there are checks and balances.
Feel free to be repulsed--I am. Just don't be oblivious.
Ah, yes waterboarding, its OK our newest AG says so, what ELSE will that pile of excrement condone, yes we are going back in time to the Star Chamber, what will be next, trial by combat? dunking Witches?
sigh
OH for 01/20/09
Moderate,
Preserving a "civilization" that condones torture would appear to be the definition of a wasted effort, if not an oxymoron.
We should have an absolute ban on torture simply because:
1. It's morally wrong.
2. It's ineffective.
The ban should be enforced on those who, like your imaginary "defenders of the populace" won't, like the FBI after 9/11, threaten innocent people with torture and obtain completely erroneous confessions.
If some people violate the ban, at least it won't be with the sanction of the public.
That the world is becoming a dangerous place is no excuse for becoming less human. The path that allows inhuman treatment of some in the interest of public safety leads to a world foreseen by "1984".
c2h50h--
You seem to have an awfully fragile definition of "civilization." Must civilization be completely self-consistent to survive? Does the performance of a lesser evil to avert a much greater evil make a civilization morally bankrupt? If so, we've never been civilized.
Yup, torture is morally reprehensible, but so is failing to protect your own citizenry. Such protection must be the overriding priority for any civilization. To sacrifice the rights (lives) of thousands of innocents in deference to the rights of one probably-not-so-innocent is insanity. Please note: We have the luxury of protecting the rights of "ordinary decent criminals" because the scale of the tradeoff is so much different. One criminal act against a small number of people is completely different than an act of war against thousands. Sorry, but I don't have anything more morally clear than a scaling argument. The real world sucks.
So there's a tradeoff. The tradeoff ought to be strongly biased in favor of individual rights (i.e. not torturing people) but it can't be absolute.
I agree that probably is an ineffective intelligence-gathering mechanism. (Although frankly I haven't heard anything but anecdotal evidence on either side of the effectiveness argument, and the people who know aren't talking.) But you don't have anything to lose in the ticking bomb scenario. If the intelligence is accurate and you prevent the explosion, you win. If it's inaccurate and the bomb goes off, you've got much worse problems than the fact that you tried and failed to prevent the attack by torturing somebody.
The only case where you've got significant moral hazard is if you torture somebody and it turns out that there's no bomb. That's why you have to have oversight: If a sufficiently diverse set of folks from the legislative and judicial branches are convinced of the imminence and severity of the the threat, then at least you can restrict the performance of this barbaric act to the most extraordinary of circumstances.
That's why I much prefer real legislation that acknowledges the possibility of torture being necessary in extremis. Without the legislation, you're putting the executive in the position where they know that everybody knows that an illegal act may be necessary, but that it must never be acknowledged. That makes it a) something that's discretionary and b) something that must remain secret. And isn't it really the wielding of discretionary, secret power that leads to tyranny, rather than the legal exercise of necessary power, however morally inconsistent it may be?
Moderate,
As to evidence, the people who do know are talking, and they're saying it's ineffective. You just need to search for "Steve Kleinman" in testimony before Congress. His expert testimony was that, even in the "ticking bomb case" you are so enamored of, torture would be the wrong method.
On the other hand, the only people claiming torture is effective are not knowledgeable about interrogation, people like the detestable Deroy Murdoch.
As to the moral hazard, you neglect to consider the possibility that someone is tortured and the information could have been found without torture, which is essentially every case.
If you don't think civilization is fragile, you haven't been paying attention to the lessons of the twentieth century.
If an evil is performed, nay, condoned or, as some would have it, mandated by the force of law and society, then the society isn't any better than barbarism.
As for "protecting your own citizenry" -- I am not willing to grant tyranny any foothold. If it means living with a measure of fear, I'll accept the fear in exchange for freedom. I'll simply add it to all the other fears I live with and accept every day.
Last time I checked, nobody was offering me a guarantee that I'll wake up tomorrow. Since it's all the same, I'd rather go to sleep tonight with a clear conscience.
Morality is in the eye of the beholder, and is not an effective consideration. Nowhere in the constitution does "morality" get mention nor does is operate to define branches of government or their function. Nor should the "effectiveness" argument be considered germane. It simply does not matter if it works or not--it is illegal under our constitution and under the geneva conventions and likely other treaty law as well.
1. Torture is unconstitutional;
2. Torture is illegal by treaty, and treaties trump statutes;
3. The Congress (greatly aided and abetted by certain members) is ignoring 1 and 2 above, but tells us they will pass a statute--thus making everything better. A rediculous band-aid that nobody believes nor should they.
The emphasis is and should remain on constitutional and treaty grounds, and not on morality. That said, I fear that this congress is not up to the task of forcing the administration to remain within the law--in any of the above three categories.
CO,
Given the parsing we've already seen from a multitude of lawyers about this subject, and my own, admittedly jaundiced, experience with the rationalization capabilities of the legal mind, I do not share your faith in the law.
The emphasis on constitutional and treaty grounds is wasted in the present circumstance, where the administration is actively protecting and shielding those who have broken and continue to break laws.
On the other hand, if the morality and ineffectiveness of torture can convince sufficient people of the insanity of the current administration, and they are turned out of office, it may dissuade those who follow them from such activities.
C2,
"Disuading on moral grounds" exists only in sharia, I imagine. Perhaps in anarchy as well.
We here believe in law. It is all that keeps us from the ragged edge of chaos. I don't see any other paradigm.
First, it should be said that nothing that Deroy Murdock has to say should be cited as meaningful evidence of any trend in the "modern conservative movement," whether one of moral decay or anything else.
Second, I have no idea of the subject matter of the hearings on waterboarding referred to in the notoriously unreliable Wikipedia. I do know, however, that any waterboarding conducted by US troops today would constitute criminal conduct, and would subject the perpetrators to court-martial, just as it allegedly did in the Philippine Insurrection. American troops are forbidden by law to conduct such a procedure, and if anyone at this site has a shred of evidence that they have done so, I challenge him to cite it here and now.
As Mr. Giuliani has astutely noted, whether the practice is unlawful depends on who does it. The CIA can do it; soldiers can not. (For those who assert that it is forbidden to the CIA by existing law, I would simply note that the United States Senate expressly declined to declare it unlawful, even though some of its more craven members now expect an attorney general nominee to state what the Senate would not.)
As for the morality of the procedure, I am still awaiting a sensible discussion of it on this site. I would pose a hypothetical: if you honestly and reasonably thought it more likely than not that subjecting one person to the procedure would provide information that would save one innocent life, would you do it? How about 5,000 lives? Suppose one of the lives were your child? If your answer is that no, you would not do so, please explain why.
And for those who decline to answer that hypothetical on the ground that "it never works," please face the fact that there is abundant evidence that it does work, and that it has worked to save lives.
If used as punishment, or for the amusement of the perpetrator, it is always and everywhere wrong. If used to obtain information to save innocent life, it is an unpleasant task that morality requires us to undertake. And it is certainly far too serious an issue to give rise to infantile moral preening.
For the benefit of C2H50H, let me just say that the "expert" testimony offered by Mr. Kleinman is rather absurd when applied to an emergency, which is the principal instance in which the practice is justified. "Obtaining the prisoner's trust and respect" just isn't going to cut it with Sheikh Mohammed when he has an operation in the works. Among those with expert knowledge on the subject who attest to its effectiveness is one George Tenet, who has had the confidence of two presidents, Messrs. Clinton and Bush.
And among those who defend the practice of waterboarding, and who recognize that there are circumstances when, regrettably, it must be used, are Mr. Clinton, Mr. Schumer and Professor Derwshowitz. I detect a decided unwillingness on the part of the host and his cohorts here to denounce them in the terms they reserve for us fascist hyenas. Still awaiting a Profile in Courage here.
In 1944, American guards tortured seven German prisoners until they confessed to having murdered one of their colleagues whom they rightly suspected of being an informant. Following their coerced confessions they were court-maritaled, convicted and hanged seriatim at Leavenworth. (You can read all about it in "Martial Justice: The Last Mass Execution in the United States"
by Richard Whittingham.)
Were we, in 1944, less moral than we had been in 1902? If so, why; if not, why not? How does the practice of waterboarding in rare instances in an effort to obtain life-saving intelligence compare, morally, to torturing for the purpose of obtaining a confession?
Were FDR and his attorney general less moral than Messrs. Bush and Mukasey? If not, why not?
neutral,
I'm getting kind of tired of addressing these points over and over again. Again, you're late to the party. All of these points have been addressed at length in prior posts. Search the archives if you're interested.
To summarize, you're simply wrong that the legal prohibitions against torture do not apply to the CIA. They do, both under the DTA and various binding treaties. It's true that an amendment that would have explicitly banned waterboarding was stalled in the Senate, but the laws as written have long been understood to ban waterboarding, which is clearly a form of torture (not to mention cruel and inhuman treatment). Your argument is no different than arguing that cutting people's heads off is not illegal because no statute specifically bars cutting people's heads off (even though it's clearly murder).
The legal "arguments" put forth administration apologists as to why waterboarding is legal are patently frivilous and would never survive any scrutiny.
As for your assertion that torture clearly "works," where's the evidence? The U.S. admits to waterboarding only three people and we know that at least two of them provided reems of disinformation. Al Libi and KSM admitted to everything the world; they would have admitted to kidnapping the Lindbergh baby if asked.
You keep returning to the so-called "ticking bomb" scenario, but as actual intelligence operatives have testified, this situation never actually presents itself. You never have a situation where you *know* something's going to happen and you *know* the guy in custody has info. And even if you did know that, the odds are practically zero that the guy would give you accurate and timely information (as opposed to just lie to you).
Moreover, once you legalize torture for the ticking-bomb scenario, practice shows that every situation becomes the ticking bomb scenario.
You have to have a clear prohibition. The truth is that if a true 24-style scenario were ever to present itself in real life (which is highly unlikely), the people handling it would do whatever they thought they had to do, regardless of what the law says. And if the situation was really that dire, they'd never get prosecuted or convicted. But torture still needs to be against the law. Officials need to know how taboo torture is or they will use it routinely.
Casual--
I completely agree with you that the executive needs legal strictures, not moral ones. However, the legal strictures must be informed by what society thinks is proper behavior, i.e., from prevailing morality.
So, in a way, you're making my point for me. Since we know that, if the circustances are dire enough, any administration will resort to torture, you're faced with two scenarios. First, you can have members of that administration consulting their own consciences and acting in deniable secrecy. Alternatively, you can have a statute requiring that the administration inform congressional leaders and obtain the approval of something like the FISA court. It is possible to construct a law with high enough hurdles that torture will never be used routinely, to say nothing of frivilously.
A.L., I also agree that the "ticking bomb" scenario is nothing but a convenient strawman. However, it's a marker for a host of urgent situations where there's an extremely high probability of massive attack. Those situations do occur, even if they are rare.
Finally, I'm gonna dig my heels in on the "torture doesn't work" issue. You and I have no idea whether it does or doesn't, because it's rare enough in the US not to have been studied systematically. Sure, there are all kinds of people who are willing to share their experiences, although I'm sure that they have a variety of motivations, up to and including official disinformation. But when individuals tell stories, we refer to that as "anecdotal evidence" and we learn that it has almost no relation to actual fact. Obviously, the chances of a proper randomized study of torture and statistical analysis of torture are almost zero, so this will remain an open question. That's just fine by me. Most likely the answer is, "torture sometimes works on some individuals." Again, when staring down the barrel of a mass-casualty attack, an administration will have nothing to lose.
Apparently Mr. Moderate has not been paying attention. There have been studies on torture. What they have shown is that torture is essentially 100 percent effective if the goal is to get the victim to admit to something, anything, to say anything. For generating reliable information, it is as effective as rolling loaded dice for your answers.
Since everyone here admits that they don't know whether it's effective, perhaps you would accept more expert testimony? From Rear Admiral Hutson: the method "of the lazy, the stupid and the pseudo tough." This, mind you, from a person who was JAG for the Navy. I'd say he was in a position to know.
In fact, all those in a position to know agree with him -- this isn't even an issue in the senior ranks of the intelligence community, and has not been for decades.
I would add one final observation: those who support the use of torture are not merely lazy, stupid, and acting tough -- they are cowards, enabling others to commit unspeakable acts in their name for an imagined increase in their personal safety.
c2h--
I'd be interested in those studies. Do you have citations? If not, do you know their methodologies?
Please don't interpret my poking at this as an endorsement of torture as a reliable method for acquiring ordinary intelligence. I 100% agree with you that routine use of torture would be pointless and do irreparable damage to our society. But use of torture as an act of desperation is inevitable, irrespective of its reliability. Best to acknowledge that fact, codify it, and place extreme restrictions on it, rather than forcing good people with flawed judgement to take the law into their own hands.
But use of torture as an act of desperation is inevitable, irrespective of its reliability. Best to acknowledge that fact, codify it, and place extreme restrictions on it, rather than forcing good people with flawed judgement to take the law into their own hands.
I couldn't possibly disagree more. To codify the use of torture under any scenario is to ensure that it happens in many other scenarios. Everything becomes the ticking-bomb.
Moreover, when you start creating exceptions, you do immense damage to our credibility and moral authority as nation. That damage far outweighs any possible advantage that legalizing such a practice would produce (and I don't think it would produce any). It also greenlights the rest of the world to start torturing our guys (they'll invoke the very same "exception"). What are we going to say the next time someone waterboards a U.S. soldier?
And the idea that anything that can be morally excused in extreme circumstances needs to be specifically legalized is folly. It is possible to imagine extreme circumstances where, for instance, cold-blooded murder can be excused or justified. But that doesn't mean you codify all such exceptions. If you're going to kill someone, you need to act with the knowledge that murder is wrong and illegal and you need to be prepared to defend your decision to a jury. It's the same thing with torture. I don't think it's ever justified, but, like I said before, if people find themselves in a 24-style situation and feel the "right" thing to do is to torture someone in their custody, they need to do so knowing that they will have to explain that decision, that there will be reckoning. Torture is that serious. You can't legalize it. The situations in which an act of torture could be morally excused, if there are any such situations, are so rare and so circumstance-specific that it would not be possible to codify such an exception anyway.
A.L.
Thank you for the reasoned response to radicalmoderate. I tried to draft a similar response that touched on many of the points you addressed. Unfortunately, I couldn't put anything together that wasn't a rambling mess.
So, at the risk of sounding like a sycophant: What A.L. said.
A.L.--
I also would like to thank you for the reasoned response. You've apparently achieved that most difficult of blog tricks: a forum with a point of view, but where your readers can argue civilly and rationally. Having said that:
To codify the use of torture under any scenario is to ensure that it happens in many other scenarios. Everything becomes the ticking-bomb.
That's why oversight is so critical. If you can convince congressional leadership and you can get a warrant from some FISA-like court, everything can't become a ticking bomb. There is some (admittedly small) degree of transparency. Without the codification, the need for secrecy increases the chances for abuse and escalation.
That damage far outweighs any possible advantage that legalizing such a practice would produce (and I don't think it would produce any).
Given the choice between damage to our national reputation (which I agree would be substantial) and safeguarding thousands of innocents, I think the answer's clear--you protect your people. But I also don't disagree that enactment of such a law will cause reputational damage. I'm afraid the cat's out of the bag on that one, though.
It is possible to imagine extreme circumstances where, for instance, cold-blooded murder can be excused or justified. But that doesn't mean you codify all such exceptions.
Aren't the death penalty and the exemptions for soldiers in times of war exactly such codifications? What about the exemptions for less cold-blooded forms of killing, like police use of deadly force, self-defense, or defense of others? We codify exceptions all the time. The only difference is that, in this case, you're codifying something nominally non-lethal, with incredibly restrictive conditions. I won't pretend that you can restrict torture to being humane--it isn't, it never will be, and its victims live with its effects for the rest of their lives. But they do live. That's more than can be said for the victims of an attack.
I don't recall talking about the "ticking bomb" scenario at all. And I have no doubt that Al Zubeydah and Mohammed did, indeed, provide reams of disinformation, along with very vital valid information.
Let us be very clear about one thing here: No one in his right mind argues in favor of waterboarding for sport, or for punishment, or under circumstances where the accuracy of the information gleaned cannot be readily verified ("what is the combination to the safe? What is so-and-so's e-mail address? What is the password?"). Anyone who did so would be a criminal sadist, and should be treated as such. (See, e.g. the harsh punishments meted out to the Abu Ghraib sadists, who stopped well short of waterboarding.) What is at issue here are the cases where lives can likely be saved, and saved only by harsh, near-term measures.
You seem to regard the use of waterboarding as malum prohibitum, and simply refuse to address the question of whether, under appropriate circumstances, it may well not be malum in se. If you say, "torture is always wrong," I will say "I agree." If you go on to say, "Waterboarding is torture," I would say, "Very well, if you insist, but in that case I do not agree that torture is always wrong." You cannot avoid the moral question--and you have assiduously done so thus far--merely by organizing the language to suit your argument.
Nowhere have I ever contended that we should "legalize torture." I think we should pretty much shut up about it--that is the course taken by the World's Greatest Deliberative Body when it declined to say what Mukasey, too, declined to say.
For this reason I am not very interested in whether we "codify torture." I think the far better course is to avoid public discussion of the very grimy facts concerning the gathering of intelligence from murderers. That has been the approach of generations of administrations of the executive branch under both political parties. (If anyone here has rendered an opinion as to the moral decadence of the FDR administration as illustrated by the torture of the seven German POW's, I believe I must have missed it. Perhaps the episode is simply too inconvenient to A.L's argument. Or perhaps the argument that we have somehow descended into the Stone Age under the Bush Oppression has been abandoned.)
Eight of the men who were tortured as POWs in Hanoi are (or were) personal friends of mine (two are no longer with us). I am very familiar with what they went through, and how they responded. Suffice it to say that they all were persuaded to talk, but that they had almost zero knowledge of anything that could be put to use by the enemy, and had a keen understanding of those things that the enemy had no way of verifying. It makes sense, from a moral standpoint, to use harsh methods only when the information obtained can be quickly assessed. The fact that these men gave little or no such information tells us nothing at all.
You seem adamantly unwilling to answer the questions I have posed in an effort to face squarely the moral issue. And I will assume from your silence that you know of no instance where US servicemen have engaged in waterboarding. They are expressly forbidden to do so by the US Army's own Field Manual, which does not apply to the CIA. As to whether the CIA is forbidden, talk to George Tenet about it. He either concluded that it was not, or that it was a prohibition he was compelled to ignore. Think of the prohibition against burning one's draft card, or going AWOL and emigrating to Canada. Sometimes you have to act according to what you believe to be the moral imperative.
I think you are getting close to agreement when you acknowledge that "the people handling it would do whatever they thought they had to do, regardless of what the law says. And if the situation was really that dire, they'd never get prosecuted or convicted." Then what is all this moral posturing about? If we're going to codify things, why don't we include codification of the exception you just carved out?
Safe, legal and rare. And not publicly discussed. Particularly not by preening, gasbag politicians currying favor with one constituency or another.
Should the people who waterboarded Al Zubeydah and Sheik Mohammed be prosecuted?
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