Torture runs counter to America’s moral values and is inconsistent with the rule of law. More importantly, torture is not an effective interrogation method. For these reasons, I convened a hearing of the Judiciary Committee subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties on Thursday to investigate the effectiveness and consequences of what the Bush Administration has called “Enhanced Interrogation.� Some of what has gone on, despite this administration’s penchant for secrecy, has become public.

Since news of the mistreatment, and possible torture, of detainees in U.S. custody first surfaced, Congress has debated, and legislated, on the subject of the legal and moral limits on interrogation. We are only starting to get to the bottom of what our government has been doing and to what extent we have gone beyond the bounds of acceptable behavior.

In my hearing, the Subcommittee heard from Malcolm W. Nance, an anti-terrorism and counter-terrorism intelligence specialist, Steven Kleinman, a Colonel in the Air Force Reserve and a senior intelligence officer and military interrogator, and Amrit Singh a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project. The only conclusion that can be drawn from the testimony we heard Thursday is that seasoned, experienced interrogators do not need torture as a tool. Indeed, they reject it. Torturing detainees leads to false, unreliable information and is a complete abrogation of the rule of law.

Unsurprisingly, a piece of this story was withheld from us by the Administration. The Subcommittee had called Stuart Couch, Lt. Col. US Marine Corps, and Appellate Judge of the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals, to ask him about his public statement on the actions of U.S. military interrogations. Sadly, the Department of Defense chose secrecy instead of oversight and did not allow Mr. Couch to appear.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 9th, 2007 at 11:25 am and is filed under Civil Rights, Foreign Policy, Politics .