A DECENT DAY

IT IS A GOOD DAY to be John McCain, to see the White House see the light and  agree on the language of McCain’s torture amendment.  Whether Cheney is screaming in frustration about not being able to work the dark side, no one currently knows.  Whether this agreement will be honored will require vigilance from those who demand decency in the treatment of detainees.  It will not be enough if the words on paper are not put to practice, if what we see hear is lip service.

THE WHITE HOUSE will not admit McCain won on this one.  The White House take says: President Meets with McCain & Warner, Discusses Position on Interrogation. Bush managed to use the announcement of an agreement on something the White House didn’t want to agree on in the first place to pitch his take on Iraq as the central front on the war on error terror everything TM. But McCain made sure the agreement part of the announcement on the discussion agreement was clear.

This agreement basically does two things: One, puts into the Army Field Manual the specific procedures for interrogations. And two, it prohibits cruel, inhumane -- or torture.
In our negotiations, there was legitimate concerns raised by the administration concerning the rights of interrogators. And taking language from the Uniform Code of Military Justice, we provide them with legal counsel and certain protections that a reasonable person might view as carrying out of orders, not to contradict the Nuremberg decision, which, of course, said that obeying orders is not a sufficient defense.

AND SOMEWHERE Stephen Cambone is now reviewing the new rewriting of the Army Field Manual he had rewritten earlier this week.   Somebody should ask what  Cambone and his boss Rumsfeld were thinking when they tried that move.

 

MINIMIZING THE McCAIN EFFECT was evident before the announcement was made. Scott McLellan made that clear in this exchange during the White House Press Briefing.

Q Scott, does the White House have an agreement with Senator McCain on legislative language to ban torture in the interrogation of terror suspects?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, first of all, let me just correct one thing: Torture is already banned. It's banned in our laws. It's banned in international treaty obligations. And the President has made it clear that we do not condone torture, nor do we engage in torture. And if people cross that line, they are held accountable -- as people have seen.
And second of all, in terms of the discussions with Senator McCain, we've been having very good discussions with Senator McCain. We will be having more to say I expect soon. I don't have any announcement to make at this point. I would not be the one to make the announcement, but we will keep you posted as we move forward.
We've been working very closely with Senator McCain, his staff and others on -- others in Congress to make sure that we have a legal framework in place to address the detentions and interrogations while making sure that we still are able to have the tools necessary to prevent attacks from happening in the first place. So these are difficult issues, as we talk about the different kind of war we're engaged in. But we've had good discussions with Senator McCain. I expect we'll be saying more soon, and we'll keep you posted on that.

Q If you would, the reports that there is an agreement?

MR. McCLELLAN: As I said, I expect we'll have more to say soon, but these discussions have been going on not just with Senator McCain but other members of Congress, too. And we want to let those discussions come to a conclusion, and then I suspect we'll have more to say at that point
.
Q Would that be the President who has it? Who is the "we"?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'll keep you posted on it. We'll let you know.

A GOOD QUESTION NOW would be if torture has always been illegal and we have never worked that dark side, why was this agreement necessary in the first place?  We will now be told again and again we do not torture, we must look forward to a bright future.  But if this agreement was necessary, those who worked Cheney's dark side and did torture should be held accountable. How likely is that to happen?  And if we don't hold our previous bad actors, all the way up to top, accountable, the world will look on this as too long a pause on the way to truth.

UPDATE and it could be a downer
LANGUAGE TAKES A BEATING today. AP reports: Bush Accepts McCain’s Torture Policy.  This sounds like three stages of Kubler Ross Grief over dead White House policy.  Discussion. Agreement. Acceptance.

As passed by the Senate and endorsed by the House, McCain’s amendment would prohibit “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” of anyone in U.S. government custody, regardless of where they are held. It also would require that service members follow procedures in the Army Field Manual during interrogations of prisoners in Defense Department facilities.
In discussions with the White House, that language was altered to bring it into conformity with the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That says that anyone accused of violating interrogation rules can defend themselves if a “reasonable” person could have concluded they were following a lawful order.
Officials say the language also now includes a specific statement that those who violate the standards will not be afforded immunity from civil or criminal lawsuits.

THE QUESTION MUST BE ASKED if policy against torture is clear, how can any “reasonable “ person believe the order to torture is lawful?  Maybe this is a four stage Kubler Ross: Discussion. Agreement. Acceptance. Denial.

A "DISAPPEARING" QUESTION If the White House continues to insist some detainees cannot be seen by the Red Cross or any other third party, how will we ever know if the detainees most likely to be tortured are being treated humanely? If the black site prisons that the White House denies exist are in fact in some legal and moral black hole still, how will those detainees and justice ever see the true light of day?  What at first looked like a clear victory for McCain now looks far more opaque.

Comments

[Neil Shakespeare]

Shit. You know they've already figured out a way around this. This is a publicity stunt, like everything else they do. Meaningless P.R.