Shorter wbgonne:

What about the "Ticking Time Bomb"? Help us! We're all going to die!

Those who may now, as Feinstein may be alluding, wish to allow a few "enhanced techniques" back into the interrogation fold should realize that these "new" techniques are anything but new. As detailed extensively by Naomi Klein in "The Shock Doctrine", these techniques parallel completely the methods in the old Kubark manual from the CIA. We had the entire Cold War to experiment with these methods. The Army Field Manual outlaws these practices because they fail to produce useful intelligence while they put our side at risk if it is known we engage in these practices.

The CIA experimented extensively on the handling of prisoners during the 50's and 60's. As Klein documents in detail, the techniques that now are in vogue, especially extreme and prolonged sensory deprivation and extended time in "stress positions" are known to be particularly effective in completely destroying a person's sanity. They were developed when there was a belief that one could completely "wipe" a mind clean and then reprogram it. Instead, the "wiping" turns out to be permanent and the "reprogramming" not possible, leaving the victim mentally destroyed.

To me, that is the primary driving force behind the current dilemma facing the Bush administration regarding the eventual release of prisoners from Guantanamo. How is the world going to react when we release hundreds of prisoners who were imprisoned under false circumstances and then tortured until they are now no longer sane? The only answer they can come up with is never to release the prisoners.

I have a sinking feeling that what we are witnessing here is some mealy-mouthed new "bipartisan" consensus. Of course, what they are always doing is bowing to some supposedly "centrist" imperative constructed by the Beltway establishment.

Since the Democrats have caved over every other issue of any importance, why did anyone expect torture to be any different?

I couldn't agree w/ this more:

... he clearly articulates the view that "The Law" is a weapon that is wielded by the bad guys. It's quite revealing to realize that these people actually regard the will of the electorate as expessed in acts of Congress as something to be fought rather than the whole edifice they're supposed to be defending.

it is not silly if kitt unconsciously make his point in a much broader sense -

Our family is American, American Indian, German and French and after 911 there wasn't one 'FBA' (Full blooded 'American' Democrat or Republican) who wouldn't have tolerated torture

'to get the evildoers' and one of our French relatives blamed it entirely on the 'Wild West heritage' and the American preference to solve conflicts with brute force.

As a HBG (Half bloodied German) I realize that the Germans used to be in the same boat (in a matter of speaking) but after the second WW the Americans did a very good job in reeducation - and so sixty years later the 'Germans' had to reeducate their American

relatives that torture is a 'no-no' under ANY conditions. And now the torture question has become the 'Gretchenfrage' in our family and the right question to judge the character of every person we come in contact with - And if we get a Feinsteinweaselanswer the person ( if she or he is worth it) gets treated with a Potpourri of waterboardingfilms.

That interrogator, Mathew Alexander, a pseudonym to protect the author’s identity, co-author of the book, How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq, was interviewed by Keith Olbermann last night (see sig).

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677#28041234

what if we had captured one of the 9/11 terrorists on the morning of the attacks but before the airplanes were hijacked?

This hypothetical perfectly captures the problem with the "ticking time bomb" scenario: it relies on totaly guesswork to determine what constitutes an "extreme" situation.

Say on the morning of September 11, according to this question, we'd had Ziad al-Jarrah in custody. The idea, presumably, is that we'd begin ripping the fingernails off a man who had as yet committed no crime on the pure supposition that he might, in an alternatie timeline, be about to try and pilot a plane into the U.S. Capitol.

Fine and good, one might say, if by doing so we could have prevented the deaths on that day.

But if this is the standard: what's to prevent the government from, say, crushing the testicles of a commenter named wbegonne if they see a reason to?

What exactly?

When the first evidence of Americans doing torture came to the surface was where the rule of law and the morality and ethics should have rained down hard on all whether G.W.Bush,Dick Cheney,Rumsfeld,Tenet and principal American Congress oversight people. For this not to have taken place in the same spirit a parking ticket is issued,a speeding ticket given or an arrest warrant made out for someone passing worthless checks is where the first rot,the first falldown,the first creep away from absolutes appeared opening onto the pragmatic slippery slope WashingtonDC is now on.

Both parties equally sharing the dereliction of duty to uphold the rule of law and go with spineless or worst still willful secret condoning of this.

Barack Obama will have a small window to fully denounce,renounce and bring full consequence of legal,moral and ethical hard lines redrawn to bear. Should he hesitate or fail in doing so he will then be as guilty as Bush,Cheney and the rest of this soon to be out of power regime's cabal.

The DC DEMs have had it easy these past eight years with the Bush/Cheney regime to pass off acute issues on and then claim they were "powerless" to do otherwise. The past two years we have seen in plain ways that the DC DEMs in Congress are not innocent,are not without taint in much of what has taken place since G.W.Bush and Dick Cheney moved into the WH in Jan.2001.

The DC DEMs have now lost the last of the cloaking device they have cowered behind.

Oh---in recent days it came about WashingtonDC is for using cluster bombs--does Israeli desires for this weapon have anything to do with this being so?

The rot reaches deep. Very deep.