Let The President Define Interrogation Methods, Not The Congress

[ThomWV]

The President is Commander in Chief of the Military and the civilian Agencies which are dealing with detainees in our various wars. It is his job to define what is and is not acceptable in terms of interrogation techniques and it is the job of Congress to, through its oversight function, to monitor such instructions to see if they are acceptable to the people of this country.

So tell my why the President is silent as to guidelines and why he demands the Congress do this job for him by way of a law.

[William769]

1. Maybe civics 101?

[ET Awful]

2. Actually the President is bound by laws.

He can certainly set policy, but only insofar as it complies with existing law.

He can not make laws governing such things, he must abide by the laws in existence or get new ones passed.

It's called separation of powers.

[ThomWV]

4. That Is My Point

Let him give guidance to his Agencies and let the Congress write the laws.

It is his Agencies and his Military that holds and interrogates the detainees. He has his Justice Department to write what can and can not be done legally - he has no need of Congress to define what can and can not be done.

Were checks and balances actually working it would be Congress looking at the instructions he is giving to his interrogators to see if it is acceptable and to cut off funding for the activity if they find it unacceptable. That is how its supposed to work.

[ET Awful]

6. If you let the President define it, it is already done by the time it can

be reviewed by Congress.

Cutting funding for torture doesn't help those who have already been tortured.

Congress needs to define exactly what is acceptable and hold people responsible who violate those standards. Letting someone else define it and only having Congress react after the fact results in exactly the situation you are already seeing, an executive branch who oversteps their bounds and breaks the law, using the excuse that they believe it be legal because of what they descibe as vague definitions. If those definitions are made explicity clear, there is no wiggle room for an executive branch who chooses to exceed their power.

[TheFriedPiper]

3. This pResident can't SPELL torture, much less define it

He is an idiot puppet of Cheney and Rumsfeld.

[Vinca]

5. His Highness doesn't want his endorsement of waterboarding

in the history books. Or on an indictment.