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"-Interrogators may not force a detainee to be naked, perform sexual acts or pose in a sexual manner;
-They cannot use hoods or place sacks over a detainee's head or use duct tape over his eyes;
-They cannot beat or electrically shock or burn them or inflict other forms of physical pain—any form of physical pain;
-They may not use water boarding, hypothermia, or treatment which will lead to heat injury;
-They will not perform mock executions;
-They may not deprive detainees of the necessary food, water, and medical care; and
-They may not use dogs in any aspect of interrogation."
Meanwhile, just across the Potomac at the White House an hour later that same day (Sept. 6, 2006), President Bush devoted half of a long speech to cops-and-robbers examples, none of them confirmed or persuasive, showing how "tough" interrogation techniques—he called them "an alternative set of procedures"—had yielded information preventing all manner of catastrophe.
He made clear that his government had "changed its policies," giving intelligence personnel "the tools they need" to fight terrorists, and that he wanted the "CIA program" to continue. Bush appealed for and, just before Congress changed hands in Nov. 2006, succeeded in getting legislation granting retroactive immunity to him and other practitioners of "alternative" procedures.
It had been sweaty-palms time for the president. Two months earlier, on June 29, 2006, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court had ruled that Geneva DOES apply to al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees, and rejected the artifice of "unitary executive power" used by the Bush administration to "justify" practices like torture.
One senior Bush official is reported to have gone quite pale when Justice Anthony M. Kennedy raised the ante, warning that "violations of Common Article 3 [of Geneva] are considered 'war crimes.'" That threw a scare into a whole bunch of what one might call "unitary executives," prompting the president on Sept. 6 to plead with Congress to give "top priority" to new legislation holding them harmless for violation of Geneva. This they got in the "Military Commissions Act" passed by Congress and signed into law just before the mid-term elections in 2006.
Back to the Future, Mr. Chairman
Chairman Reyes, you may have been told that when fellow Texan Rep. Charlie Wilson took the reins of a House oversight panel, he immediately wrote to the operations people at CIA, saying, "Well, gentlemen, the fox is in the hen house. Do whatever you like." Your predecessor as House Intelligence Committee chair, Pete Hoekstra, R-Michigan, also gave the CIA free rein as long as then-Director George Tenet did the White House's bidding—whatever that bidding happened to be.
Is that how you see your role, Mr. Congressman? Is that why you have been running interference for the Bush/Cheney administration? Specifically, why did you stiff-arm those of your colleagues who wanted to put language into the FY09 Intelligence Authorization Bill ordering CIA interrogators to adhere to the Army Field Manual for interrogation?
Have a look at the above list of practices expressly forbidden by the manual. Have the folks in the hen house told you that some are absolutely necessary? Which ones strike your fancy?
You served in Vietnam. Did you see "alternative techniques" in use there? Could you visualize them being used on you—or your grandsons?
