CIA Fears New Rules To Dampen Future Interrogations

May 19, 2009 at 7:57 am | Posted in American politics | Leave a comment

Give it up to Walter Pincus for being the CIA’s mouthpiece. But, dude, DUH! This is EXACTLY what should happen. It was never the CIA’s responsibility to interrogate prisoners. That’s not their job. It never was. And they suck at it, frankly. The more we get interrogations away from the hands of the CIA the better off we are.

Note also this particular passage:

Under an executive order signed by Obama on Jan. 20, the Field Manual is “the law of the land. . . . There is nothing outside it now,” one intelligence official said. But according to several past agency and military officials, the Field Manual is sometimes so broad as to be unclear.

Its section on interrogation bans “violence, threats, or impermissible or unlawful physical contact,” without specifying what is sanctioned. The manual also says an interrogator cannot threaten “the removal of protections afforded by law.”

Present and past CIA officials maintain that other legal techniques exist beyond those mentioned in the Field Manual that should be available for use. Panetta has said he would go to the president for authority to use them if he believed it necessary.

The CIA doesn’t know what the limits are? They were so used to going beyond the limits that they don’t know where those limits are anymore! Why the hell would ANYONE trust interrogation in the hands of America’s CIA?!?!?

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