Waterboarding
Waterboarding, and an accompanying slew of unsavory interrogation techniques, could finally have been removed from the Central Intelligence Agency's arsenal.
Yet President Bush vetoed the bill, reiterating increasingly trite anti-terrorist rhetoric.
Terrorist attacks are bad. We'd like to prevent them. We get that.
The sorts of unnecessarily excruciating - and largely inhumane - acts that would have been forbidden by the bill do not play any crucial role in our national safety.
Bush, as well as many ardent Republicans, proposes that to limit the CIA's interrogative abilities is to permit terrorists' plots to come to fruition, as the data gathered through, say, waterboarding is vital in their prevention.
However, this is a false dilemma.
The case that needs to be made, at least from a prudential perspective, is that this range of techniques is uniquely effective - that is, vital information could not have been gathered in any other, more humane way.
A likely alternative would arise through the application of less harsh techniques with the same level of efficacy.
The Army field manual, which the bill would have made a guideline for all American interrogators, includes a fairly expansive range of techniques, though notably prohibits physical force against prisoners.
Most delightful of all, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies have lambasted harsh techniques as either unnecessary or counterproductive, according to the New York Times.
Of course, Bush hasn't been swayed by much of this, contending these methods have a positive track record in keeping the country safe.
Perhaps some useful facts have been gleaned. But the Agency's techniques' gathering information does not reflect on whether they actually are necessary; again, the case still needs to be made that they are uniquely effective.
Until this happens, our national image continues to be unnecessarily sullied through our inhumane prisoner treatment and our inability to rationally assess national security.
