Tortured Arguments

Giving al Qaeda an interrogation-resistance manual.

Wall Street Journal
Tuesday, October 9, 2007 12:01 a.m.

On current course, U.S. warfighting doctrine will be as tame as a church social. Over the weekend, Condi Rice announced that Iraq convoys protected by military contractors will also have State Department minders onboard vehicles equipped with video cameras. Now comes the latest flap over "torture" techniques during terrorist interrogations, well on their way to becoming little more than a friendly chat.

Post-Abu Ghraib, opponents of terrorist interrogations got the Bush Administration to repudiate a 2003 Justice Department memo said to be overbroad. Now critics are up in arms over newly leaked 2005 memos that responded to that earlier criticism by attempting to be more specific.

Given the anti-antiterror mood in Congress, the CIA wanted to know with precision what it can and cannot do with al Qaeda captives, lest its officials find themselves without defense in front of some Congressional committee. So, according to newspaper reports, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel responded by detailing that slapping, hypothermia, sleep deprivation and so-called stress positions are allowed. Are these torture? If so, then we really are at the point where al Qaeda agents will be treated like common felons.


What's really at issue here is whether U.S. officials are going to have even the most basic tools to interrogate America's enemies. Newspaper accounts of the 2005 memos say "waterboarding," or simulated drowning, is also allowed in the memos, which reflects the CIA's view that this is especially effective in breaking hard cases rapidly. Reportedly, this technique was used against al Qaeda masterminds Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zebaydah. Waterboarding, by the way, is also part of interrogation-resistance training for some Americans, to prepare them to face the enemy if captured. If Congress wants to outlaw this technique, it can do so. But it then has an obligation to say what is allowed.

As it stands now, the scolds in Congress and the Beltway press have decided to impose their view that no pressure tactics are ever necessary or justified. But if Congress and the press are going to take over the design of the war on terror, how can they justify walking away from any responsibility to make clear what is permissible?

The notion that the U.S. goes around unnecessarily "torturing" people without any rationale whatsoever is so absurd that it is almost never stated explicitly. But it is equally awkward for the Administration's critics to admit that the "coercive" methods listed in these memos to induce cooperation from al Qaeda operatives may actually work. Former CIA Director George Tenet has said explicitly that they do work and have saved American lives. But rather than face these hard issues directly, the scolds fall back on generalities about our "values."

If Congress doesn't want to wade into the difficult business of approving this pressure technique while forbidding that one, or making clear which methods can and can't be used in combination, then it should understand that the course it is on now will help al Qaeda operatives resist interrogation.

Congress wants the OLC memos made public, but the reason to keep them secret is so enemy combatants can't use them as a resistance manual. If they know what's coming, they can psychologically prepare for it. We know al Qaeda training often involves its own forms of resistance training, and publicly describing the rules offers our enemies a road map for resistance.


Perhaps the worst canard is the assumption that the Administration went looking for some yes-man to issue the OLC memos. The premise of this narrative is that issuing these memos would somehow help the career of acting OLC head Steve Bradbury. This is preposterous. The amply documented way to get ahead in today's Washington is to loudly object to some Bush policy, and then advertise your disagreement in Congressional testimony or in a tell-all book.

Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey has made himself the toast of the town that way. Meanwhile, Mr. Bradbury's predecessor at OLC, Jack Goldsmith, is now at Harvard, basking in applause for attacking his former Administration colleagues in a book. Mr. Bradbury no doubt knew he was dooming his chances of Senate confirmation any time soon. It's just possible he signed the memos because he thought they were the right thing to do under the law and as policy.

The critics of Bush policy want to have it both ways: They want to smear Administration officials with the generalization of "torture" while washing their hands of any responsibility to say what kind of interrogation, if any, they favor. If a Democrat wins the White House in 2008, she may discover that no one in her government will dare sign a memo allowing any kind of aggressive interrogation beyond "Have a nice day."