Posted by
Always To The Right on Saturday, November 15, 2008 1:55:08 PM
One of the few points of agreement between the two presidential
candidates came on the issue of interrogation techniques. Both Barack
Obama and John McCain want to have greater restrictions on the use of
harsh techniques, although they differed on a bill that would have
placed the CIA under the same set of restrictions as the Department of
Defense. Now, though, aides to Obama now hint that Obama may not agree to using the Army field manual as the outer limit of CIA interrogation techniques
In February, the national media castigated John McCain
for supposedly betraying his opposition to torture when he opposed the
Dianne Feinstein bill that would have imposed the AFM as the gold
standard for non-torture. Columnists around the country accused McCain
of pandering to the Republican base after having wrapped up the
nomination for all intents and purposes. They attacked his honor
without understanding the issues involved in that particular bill and
what it would mean for intelligence gathering.
Forcing the CIA to adhere to the AFM would have done much more than
forbid waterboarding, which the CIA stopped using in 2003 anyway. It
went as far as blocking the CIA from using barking dogs to intimidate
detainees, as just one example of a number of methods. As I wrote in
February, if you could save one life by having a dog bark at a
detainee, would you do it? For Pete’s sake, who wouldn’t? The AFM is not the ur-text
of non-torture, and it’s designed for military intelligence, not
overall intelligence efforts — and identifying it publicly as the outer
limits of interrogation technique makes it very easy for our enemies to
train against it.
If Obama now agrees with McCain on this issue, that’s an improvement
— but will the press treat Obama like they treated McCain? Will they
start talking about him as though he was the reincarnation of the
Marquis de Sade and Vidkun Quisling rolled up into one person? The
MoveOn/Code Pink fringe certainly will, especially after his reversal
on FISA reform this summer, on which the media largely gave him a pass.
I suspect they will give him a pass on this occasion, too. And that
will speak volumes about their dishonest and vitriolic attacks on
McCain in February, smearing his honor for partisan political purposes.