Torture Memos You Can Cheer

Torture Memos You Can Cheer

By David Corn | May 14, 2009 1:29 PM


It's not often that reading a government memo makes you want to cheer. But two memos related to the use of torture released on Tuesday at a congressional hearing were rather heartening. They offered evidence that there were dissidents inside the Bush administration when it came to using waterboarding and other excessive interrogation techniques on detainees. Written in 2005 by three senior officials at the State Department and Pentagon, the memos are a reminder that even within the administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, debate sometimes ensued. Still, the dissenters lost.

It's quasi-encouraging that someone was making the case for decency and rule of law. The first memo--written in 2005 by Philip Zelikow, then a senior adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; John Bellinger, Rice's legal adviser at the time; and Gordon England, then a deputy defense secretary--argued that the United States should "choose--as a matter of policy--to treat...captives...as if they were civilian detainees under the rule of law," in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. And their point was not that international law dictated such treatment--though it might--but that this made the most sense for the United States. As they wrote in all-caps:



Such an approach, they maintained, would be "one that Americans and the world are more likely to understand and accept as reasonable."

They conceded that human treatment of detainees could in some cases produce less, rather than more, intelligence. But they recommended being grown-up about the cost-benefit trade-off:



The trio made a strong case: "If the U.S. acts as if it has something to hide, Americans and the world will assume it does." They proposed that the system for holding and handling detainees "be accessible to outside visits by properly organized representatives of relevant international institutions, the press, and foreign governments."

The second memo, written in July 2005 by Zelikow and Bellinger, made their overarching point in a straightforward manner: "We do not adopt legal standards in our behavior as a favor to terrorists. We do it for ourselves, and to be able to exemplify the values that distinguish us from the terrorists."

In other words, take that, Dick Cheney!

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http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/davidcorn/2009/05/torture-memos-you-can-cheer.html