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Speaking to the point in that last post, Sen. Whitehouse asked Blair if his point to Kit Bond about withholding some interrogation techniques from public release was meant to circumvent the new uniform standards for interrogation. Or did it mean compliance with "more or less the design of the Army field manual right now," where some specificity on implementing the interrogation techniques is all that’s withheld for operational security. "Is that what you intended by your response?"
Blair: "The general pattern I have in mind [is that], the information more widely available is more general than [that] used against adversaries… We have to assure the American people we are acting correctly but we don’t want to provide intelligence support to those trying to come after us."
But not creating a loophole for non-Geneva compliant CIA interrogation techniques? "No, sir. Not saying ‘Here’s the document, and then, just kidding, here’s the real stuff."
Update: Michael Scherer was at the White House briefing on this and reports:
The official just made clear that any separate interrogation policy would not allow "different techniques" from the Army Field Manual. "We need a protocal that may be more appropriate for the intelligence scenario than for the battlefield scenario," the official said. "That doesn’t mean reintroducing techniques that are inconsistent with the Army Field Manual." The briefing is still ongoing. Will update as appropriate.
Crossposted to The Streak.
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This is as disingenuous as the “ticking time bomb”.
If you tell people how you’re going to interrogate them, sure, I suppose they could “train” to resist. But there are so many unrealistic assumptions embedded in that concern it’s hard to address them all.
But the main one is when you’re captured by enemy fighters on the battlefield, you are utterly helpless and alone. It’s not a game, it’s your life and all the hopes and dreams carried in it, and somehow, all that training seems cold comfort.
That, and any interrogation resistance training would be a 2 or 4 week school, utterly insufficient to develop and build the kind of systems and tools that might be effective. You’d almost have to have full time professional “interrogation resisters”, and they’d likely then be very poor infantrymen or aviators…
mikey
Greg Sargent has an update too….
“Today’s New York Times reports that White House counsel Gregory Craig, who’s in the thick of these decisions, privately told Congressional officials yesterday that “the White House might be open to allowing the use of methods other the 19 techniques allowed for the military,” as the paper put it.”
It would appear the named official contradicts the unnamed one. On a rather significant, all-undercutting point nonetheless. Perhaps 2 updates are in order.