Coleen Rowley: A Missed Opportunity for Accountability

[IDemo]

Fri Sep 22, 7:11 PM ET

After an all-day meeting with Dick Cheney yesterday, Republican Senators McCain, Graham and Warner emerged to proclaim that they had reached a compromise with the administration on military tribunals and interrogation tactics. McCain expressed "no doubt that the integrity and the letter and the spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved," and Graham insisted it will "take off the table things that are not within American values."

They should know better.

Of the three major flaws in the bill Bush originally presented to Congress, only one has been removed: suspects will have the right to examine the evidence against them, subject to existing rules designed to protect national security. Protection against arbitrary and indefinite incarceration was not part of Bush's proposal, nor is it in the compromise bill. And despite powerful rhetoric about "the integrity and the letter and the spirit of the Geneva Conventions," Bush got his way on that as well. Abuses which were never under discussion --- murder, mutilation and rape, for example --- are now explicitly prohibited; otherwise the President decides what can happen. In other words, this bill would explicitly allow the interrogation practices used at Abu Ghraib, so long as George Bush approved them.

As a 24-year veteran of the FBI, I know that using rough interrogation tactics to overbear a suspect's will is not only wrong ethically, it is ineffective. Subjecting someone to pain and humiliation doesn't compel them to tell the truth; it compels them to say whatever will make the pain stop. This generates bad intelligence. Moreover, when we undercut the Geneva Conventions, we eliminate any motivation for our enemies to treat our captured soldiers humanely. Our goal must be to first disrupt, then detain, interrogate, and prosecute those who would do us harm while remaining true to the rule of law and the principles which have served our country well for more than two centuries. Effective interrogation and intelligence-gathering is not at odds with established legal principles as Bush and Cheney would like us to believe. This is why the FBI forbids the use of torture and rough interrogation methods (like waterboarding), as does the Army Field Manual and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

In more than five years since 9/11, Bush's military tribunals have not tried, much less convicted anyone of acts of terrorism against the United States. It is well past time to try those in custody, punish the guilty, and release the innocent. The existing framework for military tribunals is sufficient to this task. But Bush's goal is neither justice nor security; it is power. This bill was clearly introduced as a political ploy in an election year. High political drama you might say when, whatever legislation eventually emerges, Bush can always "interpret" it to his liking via a presidential signing statement, as he has done nearly 1000 times during his presidency. Among these, the most notable was the Detainee Treatment Act --- the last bill on which McCain, Graham and Warner appeared to stand up to Bush.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20060923/cm_huffpost/030052