Balkinization

It's Come to This

Marty Lederman

In response to an ACLU FOIA request for the CIA Inspector General report on interrogation techniques, virtually the only thing the Bush Administration is willing to disclose to the public is that we waterboarded certain detainees. Everything else is redacted. Do they not appreciate how chilling and absurd this is -- that the only thing they're willing to acknowledge is that they committed the most serious war crimes?

Quite the legacy.

Posted 8:48 AM by Marty Lederman [link]

Comments:

Wouldn't the logical conclusion be that, far from being "the most serious war crimes", the waterboarding is actually th eleast of it?

What's scary is all the stuff we don't yet know about.

# posted by

bamage : 9:06 AM

With all the red ink expended by George W's Administration on the ever growing budget deficits since Clinton's surplus, where did the Bush Administration find the black ink for all this redacting?

# posted by

Shag from Brookline : 9:47 AM

Bamage is right.

There is already adequate evidence that many detainees have died while under our custody..some violently.

No, waterboarding is a stalking horse; there are worse things we have done, permitted to be done by others acting as our proxies, or done at the final links in the chain of custody.

# posted by

Michael : 10:24 AM

I agree with Bamage and Michael.

Perhaps the greatest horrors (and the least defencible) are the outrages perpetrated on those that were in fact entirely innocent ... and those that were killed, rather than compliantly "spilling the beans" so that the maladministratin can at least make the claim: "See! It worked! Look at the lives saved!" (claims that are in themselves rather dubious, not to mention irrelevant as to legality of such).

Cheers,

# posted by

Arne Langsetmo : 1:19 PM

This is what it's come to.

# posted by

CharleyCarp : 2:11 PM

As in just about every other release of information from this WH, one must always remember that we get the best, not the worst. That means that the redacted items are worse than the waterboarding they are 'fessing up to, and the only reason we know about the waterboard is because the beans were already spilled. How many prisoners have already died that we know about, between Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and Baghram? Lots more than would be killed by this technique alone. So I'll agree Bamage is right.

For shag, the Bushies had to run red ink budgets because they used all the black for redactions and deathless prose arguing executive privilege motions.

# posted by

rugger9 : 4:54 PM

Just posting to note that Bart De Palma has not deigned to comment on this story.

# posted by

Eric : 7:32 PM