Official Policy

Andrew Sullivan summarizes the findings of the (non-independent) Schmidt Report here. Whether or not "torture" was part of the Bush administration's official though secret policy on interrogations is still subject to a lot of semantic violence---and a lot of the evidence is inaccessible, perhaps permanently. Bottom line, in Andrew's words:

When president George Bush said that the vile practices recorded at Abu Ghraib did not represent America, he was right. They don't. They represent his administration and his policies. Of that there can no longer be any reasonable doubt.

I interviewed a big-shot Constitutional scholar for an upcoming Reason piece about the practice and policy of indefinite detention. One of the points he made is that the Supreme Court's decision in the Hamdi case must be their first, not their last step in determining the limits and checks on executive authority over captured persons. Why? Because in Hamdi the Supremes rejected a notion of completely unreviewable executive authority, granting detainees the right to an "impartial" hearing. But they never defined the constituents of impartiality, leaving open the possibility that a military tribunal could be sufficient. My expert hopes that the next time the SC is asked to rule on this---and next time can't be far off, as lower federal courts struggle to determine what could constitute an impartial review aside from an Article III (civilian) court---they will come to the conclusion that any potential judge in a review conducted by the military would be beholden to the military, and therefore of compromised impartiality. I think something similar applies to these periodic reports on abuse in detention facilities; the military is institutionally incapable of rendering an impartial report; therefore we need independent outside scrutiny.