Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Some of those practices are torture, but - putting hoods or sacks on a detainee’s head? 

I haven’t followed any debate about that practice, so perhaps this is an old question: can someone explain why that is so bad as to be forbidden by law?  (Of course, if the sack were to impede the detainee’s breathing, that would be totally unacceptable.)

The Senate vote was almost party-line:  45 D’s voted for the bill, one voted against; 43 R’s voted against the bill, five voted for.

It was even worse in the House:  220 D’s voted for, six against; 191 R’s voted against, five for.

President Bush will veto this.  Because he’s a Republican.  Common decency be damned.

/revise and extend by anti-torture crowd…

a) Limitation- No individual in the custody or under the effective control of an element of the intelligence community or instrumentality thereof, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation not authorized by the United States Army Field Manual on Human Intelligence Collector Operations… Unless its my life, my family, my city at risk. Then we’ll grant an exception and waterboard the perp. We can always pardon the intel guy afterwards.

See? We’ll gain moral superiority by opposing waterboarding, but make some other sucker stain his soul with blood to save our sorry ass.

RC wonders: “Some of those practices are torture, but - putting hoods or sacks on a detainee’s head?

I haven’t followed any debate about that practice, so perhaps this is an old question: can someone explain why that is so bad as to be forbidden by law?  (Of course, if the sack were to impede the detainee’s breathing, that would be totally unacceptable.) “

Put a sack over your own head, RC.  Keep it there for 8 hours.  Tell us about what it was like.

And that’s without the fear of a bullet in the back of your head.

Sorry, but you appear to have mis-read the bill:

No individual in the custody or under the effective control of an element of the intelligence community or instrumentality thereof, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation not authorized by the United States Army Field Manual on Human Intelligence Collector Operations.

Please note that this bill isn’t a black list (if it’s on the list, it’s prohibited).  The list you’ve complained about is already prohibited by other laws.  Instead, this bill is a white list (only techniques published in the freely-available manual can be used).  The day after this bill becomes law, Al Qaeda will have the anti-interrogation curriculum established, using our own manual as the text book.  “If you are ever captured by Americans they will try the following ten techniques; so we will teach you how to resist them.” I don’t see how we gain with such a law.

"The day after this bill becomes law, Al Qaeda will have the anti-interrogation curriculum established, using our own manual as the text book.  “If you are ever captured by Americans they will try the following ten techniques; so we will teach you how to resist them.” I don’t see how we gain with such a law.”

Apparently the U.S. Army disagrees with you, since that’s the manual they use for interrogations, despite that fact that the whole world can read it, not just Al Qaeda members.  Do you know something the Army doesn’t?