By my calculations, the McCain Amendment is now veto-proof. All the more reason for McCain to hold firm.
THE CONSERVATIVE SOUL: Milton Friedman speaks of the spending explosion under the Bush Republicans:
“I’m disgusted by it. For the first time in many years Republicans have control of Congress. But once in power, the spending limits were off, and it’s disgraceful.”
Thank God someone hasn’t lost his principles.
COLD CELLS: Rich Lowry’s latest point is to ask if I object to a prisoner being grabbed by his lapels. Lapels? If one of our detainees has a suit on, and isn’t naked and hooded, I would not be outraged if a guard shook him by his lapels. Please. I’m unaware of the “belly slap” but it doesn’t sound “cruel, inhuman or degrading” to me; and it doesn’t shock the conscience. I do not believe the Army Field Manual and U.S. law would forbid it. As for cold cells, I presumed Lowry was referring to the technique of inducing hypothermia, as alleged against the Navy Seals. But he is asking about milder versions – just plain old, cold and damp cells. Maybe he means something like the following:
No matter how hard it was in the ordinary cell, the punishment cells were always worse. And on return from there the ordinary cell always seemed like paradise. In the punishment cell a human being was systematically worn down by starvation and also, usually, by cold. (In Sukhanovka Prison there were also hot punishment cells.) For example, the Lefortovo punishment cells were entirely unheated. There were radiators in the corridor only, and in this “heated” corridor the guards on duty walked in felt boots and padded jackets. The prisoner was forced to undress down to his underwear, and sometimes to his undershorts, and he was forced to spend from three to five days in the punishment cell without moving (since it was so confining). He received hot gruel on the third day only. For the first few minutes you were convinced you’d not be able to last an hour. But, by some miracle, a human being would indeed sit out his five days, perhaps acquiring in the course of it an illness that would last him the rest of his life.
There were various aspects to punishment cells – as, for instance, dampness and water. In the Chernovtsy Prison after the war, Masha G. was kept barefooted for two hours and up to her ankles in icy water -confess! (She was eighteen years old, and how she feared for her feet! She was going to have to live with them a long time.)
Gitmo? Abu Ghraib? Bagram? Camp Cropper? Nah. This passage is taken from Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago” on Soviet methods.
THE DEEPER POINT: The principle this series of examples illustrates is a relatively simple one. There are almost an infinite number of ways to coerce someone into some kind of confession. Differences in context, degree of violence, nature of violence, etc. can be endlessly drawn out, and opponents of torture, such as myself, can be asked to approve every single nuance, or disapprove. That’s why we have a clear standard in plain English. The standard is that torture is out of bounds, and also that “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment or treatment that “shocks the conscience” are forbidden. These are not vague standards in plain English and are actually the sharpest lines we can draw. That’s why it’s important to resist the casuistry of people who try to redefine the plain meaning of these words; and why it’s critical that interrogators do not go near “severe mental or physical pain.” Since these rules have been in place for decades, and their meaning, until the Bush administration, well-understood, I see no reason to change them. The priority has to be much smarter, more labor intensive intelligence-gathering, long-term infiltration of terror groups, and the grooming of sources embedded within communities that harbor religious terrorists but who are not terrorists themselves. This takes time; but it is infinitely more fruitful than the goonish and immoral way some have been carrying on these past few years.
The Dish 