Uncertainty About Interrogation Rules Slowing the Hunt for Information

[papau]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/28/politics/28CIA.html

Uncertainty About Interrogation Rules Seen as Slowing the Hunt for Information on Terrorists
By DAVID JOHNSTON Published: June 28, 2004


WASHINGTON, June 27 — Confusion about the legal limits of interrogation has begun to slow government efforts to obtain information from suspected terrorists, American intelligence officials said Sunday.

Doubts about whether interrogators can employ coercive methods, the officials said, could create problems at the start of a critical summer period when counterterrorism officials fear that Al Qaeda might attack the United States.

Interrogators are uncertain what rules are in effect and are worried that the legal safeguards that they had believed were in place to protect them from internal sanctions or criminal liability may no longer exist, the officials said.

Some intelligence officials involved in the C.I.A.'s interrogation program have told colleagues that they are bitter because their superiors, in the months after the September 2001 attacks, had assured them that aggressive interrogation techniques were necessary and legal.<snip>

[shraby]

1. Sooo.....if I read this right,

this means they can't torture someone to cough up information (possibly bogus) to implicate another person who, with torture could implicate another person (also possibly bogus info), ad infinitum.

[papau]

2. Chatter causing orange ALERT color may be down .... sigh

But our media will step in and show the folks the October evils they should worry about so they vote GOP!

[yardwork]

3. Yeah, what a shame. If this keeps up, we won't be allowed to burn witches

anymore!

[teryang]

4. This article is garbarge just like the memo

<A Justice Department legal memo in August 2002 said the government had broad legal authority over detainees, approving tactics that stopped just short of a prisoner's death.

The memo said interrogators would use extreme interrogation methods without violating international treaties or federal law, which bars inhumane treatment.>

"Gee, I thought I could torture people, they told me it was legal."

[damnraddem]

6. No, no -- they knew they couldn't torture anyone!

They just thought they could beat them to death.

[damnraddem]

5. The Bushistas got caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

Now no one knows which cookies are OK. Just another sign of the lack of leadership caused by misleadership.