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Originally Posted by mburbank
I think ths is a deeply shameful moment in Amercian history. I think the three Republicans who could have stopped this and instead crafted a 'compromise' with is little more than a fig leaf and permission not to know should be ashamed.
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I don't think this is entirely fair. Would you prefer this passed measure, or completely unmitigated torture? I think guys like McCain wanted to get
something passed, but this was a tough bill to pass. A lot of the Congressionals (I like that word) think that no rules apply to nationless terrorists, and that they are purely evil, and we need to get info from them however we can. This bill is a step in the right direction, because it lays out a precedent of rights for terrorists. That's pretty big, because up until now the conservative response was "but they isn't protected by the Geneva Convention!"
I don't love any of this. I personally think torture probably only works about 10-15% of the time, and that's not enough in my book to justify the practice. I know some might say, well, the police use interrogation methods and it usually works! But law enforcement offers other things to criminals in order to leverage information out of them, such as reduced sentences, security, etc. To my knowledge, we aren't even promising release to most of these folks, and how the hell could we guarantee them security were we even to let them go? We know some we've released from GITMO have gone right back to the front lines. This puts us in a never ending bind, b/c we can't release them, can't promise them anything, so I guess we're left with anything but 'waterboarding'?