To Disclose Or Not To Disclose: A Fight Inside The CIA

[Roon]

The Senate intelligence committee is conducting a major inquiry into the Bush administration program, and one of the goals is to determine whether harsh interrogations produced important information about Al Qaeda that could not have been obtained any other way. Many Democrats and Republicans have argued over the efficacy of such techniques—but partisans on both sides agree that they can't resolve the debate without total access to the operational traffic.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/200074

[ejpoeta]

1. it doesn't matter if they got anything from it!!! it is ILLEGAL!! HELLO!!

if i rob a bank and use the money for saintly purposes, does that make it not a crime!!! NO!! it is wrong. period. end of discussion.

[w4rma]

2. Some (like Cheney) want to make it legal. Every argument against this should be used. (nt)

[Xipe Totec]

3. "A Man for All Seasons": I Give the Devil Benefit of Law for My Own Safety's Sake

Tuesday, Nov 22 2005

Last night, Senator Chris Dodd was the movie picker, and he selected "A Man for All Seasons," the film which depicts the sainthood-earning battle of wills between Sir Thomas More and a divorce-hungry Henry VIII.

(snip)

Dodd was revved up and did a fine job introducing the film. But he gave his intro little of the "punch" that Senator Lindsay Graham gave his movie preamble when Graham warned that the demagoguery depicted in the film was something America had to be wary of today. It was a stunningly revealing comment from a significant Southern Senator.

However, while Dodd didn't go the political path last night, this line of exchange in the movie has profound implications today -- particularly with regard to the recent revelations about torture and inhuman treatment of detainees and prisoners under American supervision.

From "A Man for All Seasons":

Sir Thomas More

-- There's no law against that.

William Roper

-- God's law!

Sir Thomas More

-- Then God can arrest him.

William Roper

-- While you talk, he's gone!

Sir Thomas More

-- Go he should, if he were the Devil, until he broke the law.

William Roper

-- Now you give the Devil benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More

-- Yes, what would you do?

William Roper

-- Cut a road through the law to get after the Devil? Yes. I'd cut down every law in England to do that.

Sir Thomas More

-- And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned on you...

...where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?

This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast...

...Man's laws, not God's, and if you cut them down...

...and you're just the man to do it...

...do you really think you could stand upright in the wind that would blow then?

Yes. I give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety's sake.

More's statement sheds light on the debates we are having today. And I feel that the norms of any society are not able to be seen or known unless observed under stress.

Today, America is under stress -- and how we conduct ourselves as a nation determines how the world will and should see us. That's why Vice President's hard work on behalf of a CIA exemption from constaints on torture and inhuman treatment of detainees DOES become the lense through which the rest of the world will see us.

Cheney is a menace to this nation's security -- because in his zeal to pursue the devil -- he is undermining our nation's norms and very essence. He is handing our nation to the devil by engaging in terms of battle that are not constrained by law.

I'll stand by Thomas More's imagined and scripted words:

I give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety's sake.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons


http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001101.php