With regard to treatment of suspected terrorist detainees held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, let’s get this straight: It wasn’t torture. And it absolutely wasn’t criminal. Last week, six Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee released a statement defending the “honorable public service” of American officials excoriated in public commentaries based on a Dec. 11 committee report on detainee interrogation methods. The six GOPers said Pentagon and Justice Department officials were being criticized despite having used appropriate procedures, amidst major ongoing terrorist threats, in reviewing and approving interrogation techniques. Where they may have erred, they did so in good faith and they then took great pains to correct errors. Critics calling for criminal charges against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other administration officials are thus divorced from reality. Consider the facts. Two months after 9/11, Pentagon General Counsel William J. Haynes asked whether “enhanced” interrogation tactics might help gain information useful against terrorism, and which ones were legal. Surely those were appropriate questions as part of the aggressive efforts to save thousands of American lives. Then in August 2002, the Department of Justice ? the controlling authority on these issues ? issued two memos advising that numerous forms of stressful techniques were legal. At the same time, U.S. officers at Guantanamo were requesting guidance. Based on the Justice memos, Rumsfeld in December tentatively approved a Haynes recommendation that all but three of the methods reviewed be used. None of the techniques included “waterboarding,” or anything remotely approaching it.
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After military lawyers raised more questions, Haynes and Rumsfeld withdrew the order six weeks later and Haynes painstakingly conducted a full review. Eventually, at Haynes’ recommendation, Rumsfeld approved 25 of 35 interrogation methods previously approved by Justice. Among the measures was this actual language of one of the techniques rejected as being too harsh: “Physical Training: Requiring detainees to exercise (perform ordinary physical exercise actions) (e.g., running, jumping jacks); not to exceed 15 minutes in a two-hour period; not more than two cycles, per 24-hour periods. Assists in generating compliance and fatiguing the detainees. No enforced compliance.”
This sounds like grammar school gym class to us. And the “stress” techniques that were approved, such as feeding detainees U.S. military Meals Ready to Eat (MRE) instead of hot food, or reversing sleep cycles from night to day, sound more like National Guard weekend duty than torture. Critics who demand criminal procedures against Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials ought at least be honest about what was actually done.
