[Mb-civic] Tortured Arguments - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Tortured Arguments

The Rules Are for Us, Not the Terrorists

By Juliette N. Kayyem
Sunday, July 10, 2005; Page B01

Let's agree about two things. First, comparing the United States' 
current interrogation practices to those of the Soviet gulag or Nazi 
concentration camps, as Sen. Richard Durbin did recently, is careless. 
Second, being better than Stalin or Hitler has never been America's 
goal. We have thankfully always aspired to something much higher. But in 
the super-charged torture debates, it's much easier for the Bush 
administration to focus on the critics' choice of words than on the 
interrogation practices themselves. And too often, administration 
critics seem more interested in defending strained analogies such as 
Durbin's than in confronting the most vexing questions that many 
Americans are struggling to resolve.

<>The incredible fact is that, nearly four years into the war on 
terrorism and despite three Supreme Court decisions and countless lower 
court rulings, we still seem to be making up our detention and 
interrogation policies as we go along. Or, rather, the Bush 
administration seems to be making them up with almost no input from the 
other branches of government.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/08/AR2005070802285.html 

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