Ending Torture As a National Policy

TW: A significant portion of the American public supports or has supported torture as a national policy. W. Bush embraced the concept, Obama has reversed the policy. As I have said before while I certainly agree with the change and I believe a majority of Americans do as well, we shall see if that attitude persists should a terror event ever occur. Nevertheless, it is interesting to read of significant military support for the policy reversal.

From New Yorker:
"...The group of military men, which included the retired four-star generals Dave Maddox and Joseph Hoar, lectured Obama about the importance of being Commander-in-Chief. In particular, they warned him that every word he uttered would be taken as an order by the highest-ranking officers as well as the lowliest private. Any wiggle room for abusive interrogations, they emphasized, would be construed as permission.

... a retired four-star Marine general and conservative Republican named Charles (Chuck) Krulak. Krulak insisted that ending the Bush Administration’s coercive interrogation and detention regime was “right for America and right for the world,” a participant recalled, and promised that if the Obama Administration did what he described as “the right thing,” which he acknowledged wouldn’t be politically easy, he would personally “fly cover” for them.

Last week, as Obama signed the executive order, sixteen retired generals and flag officers from the same group did just that. Told on Monday that they were needed at the White House, they flew to the capital from as far away as California, a phalanx of square-jawed certified patriots providing cover for Obama’s announcement.

...retired Major General Paul Eaton, stressed that, as he put it later that day, “torture is the tool of the lazy, the stupid, and the pseudo-tough. It’s also perhaps the greatest recruiting tool that the terrorists have.” The feeling in the room, as retired Rear Admiral John Hutson later put it, “was joy, perhaps, that the country was getting back on track.”

Across the Potomac River, at the C.I.A.’s headquarters, in Langley, Virginia, however, there was considerably less jubilation. Top C.I.A. officials have argued for years that so-called “enhanced” interrogation techniques have yielded lifesaving intelligence breakthroughs. “They disagree in some respect,” Craig admitted. Among the hard questions that Obama left open, in fact, is whether the C.I.A. will have to follow the same interrogation rules as the military. While the President has clearly put an end to cruel tactics, Craig said that Obama “is somewhat sympathetic to the spies’ argument that their mission and circumstances are different.”

Despite such sentiments, Obama’s executive orders will undoubtedly rein in the C.I.A. Waterboarding, for instance, has gone the way of the rack, now that the C.I.A. is strictly bound by customary interpretations of the Geneva Conventions. This decision, too, was the result of intense deliberation. During the transition period, unknown to the public, Obama’s legal, intelligence, and national-security advisers visited Langley for two long sessions with current and former intelligence-community members. They debated whether a ban on brutal interrogation practices would hurt their ability to gather intelligence, and the advisers asked the intelligence veterans to prepare a cost-benefit analysis. The conclusions may surprise defenders of harsh interrogation tactics. “There was unanimity among Obama’s expert advisers,” Craig said, “that to change the practices would not in any material way affect the collection of intelligence.”
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/tny/2009/01/behind-the-executive-orders.html