Interrogation Debate: Calls For Action

An independent commission to investigate interrogation techniques used on detainees from Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere at U.S. military and CIA-run facilities? Or what about a special prosecutor, as called for by the American Civil Liberties Union? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has been a critic of the near-drowning technique known as waterboarding, says the Senate Intelligence Committee would be a better choice.

"I think it would be very unwise, from my perspective, to start having commissions, boards, tribunals, until we find out what the facts are. And I don't know a better way of getting the facts than through the Intelligence Committee. I think that's a pretty good way to do it," Reid explained. "We're talking about more than waterboarding. This is more than waterboarding,"

Calls for a blue-ribbon panel have ramped up in reaction to a newly declassified report by the Senate Armed Services Committee claiming that high-level Bush administration officials approved use of harsh interrogation methods at Guantanamo Bay and at U.S. military-run facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Senate report made a direct link between those tactics and CIA harsh interrogation methods including waterboarding, detailed in the legal memos released by the Justice Department and President Obama last week. The memos, signed by lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel, in effect, authorized and provided legal justification for the CIA’s adoption of such methods.

President Obama has often said that he's "more interested in looking forward than looking backwards" and he has promised not to prosecute low-level CIA operatives who were following legal guidelines for interrogation. But in the past two days, Mr. Obama has indicated he would not bar a bipartisan investigation into these matters.

It's worth noting the American public has been fairly consistent in its position on the use of torture, with slim majorities opposing it under any circumstances since at least 9/11. However, this, perhaps in many ways, is indicative of blurred or mutable definitions of torture; the public certainly opposes the idea of torture but when asked whether specific interrogation techniques are right or wrong, there’s a stronger tendency to hedge.

Majorities deem most torture tactics as "wrong," though some methods, such as sleep deprivation, elicit a mixed response. Still, 62 percent in a February Gallup poll said they favor some type of investigation into the Bush administration's possible use of torture when interrogating terrorism suspects (not surprisingly, these numbers fall largely along party lines.) But strong majorities (76 percent) approved President Obama's issuance of an executive order, in the first days of his presidency, imposing limits on interrogation techniques.

One year ago, only slightly more than half (56 percent) of the public in our spring 2008 Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy Index said they believe we can fight terrorism without sometimes using torture against suspected terrorists. And in 2004 when the Abu Ghraib scandal surfaced, the public was largely divided on how to assign responsibility and accountability; 45 percent in a May 2004 Newsweek poll thought the abuse was authorized by higher-ups, while 36 percent though the soldiers acted on their own. An NBC/Wall St. Journal poll in June 2004 showed a continued split: 36 percent thought responsibility was limited to the prison guards and their supervisors, 20 percent who thought it included the U.S. military leadership in Iraq and 35 percent who believed leaders in Washington bore responsibility.