As Paul Koring reports in the line story of today's Globe and Mail, U.S. Attorney-General Eric Holder has appointed a special prosecutor "to investigate whether CIA agents used 'unauthorized, improvised, inhumane' methods or stayed within the allowable special interrogation techniques, including simulated drowning and wall-slamming as authorized by the Bush administration." In other words, it appears that the Obama administration agrees with its predecessors that some 'special interrogation techniques' do not constitute torture, notwithstanding the fact that they produce physical stress. Which, fair-minded Canadians may want to note, is the very argument famously advanced a few years ago by Michael Ignatieff: "Permissible duress might include forms of sleep deprivation that do not result in lasting harm to mental or physical health, together with disinformation and disorientation (like keeping prisoners in hoods) that would produce stress."
Will Mr. Ignatieff now claim vindication for himself and for his "lesser evils" argument? Don't hold your breath. In an era of attack politics, and with an election uppermost on his mind, I suspect this is the last thing Mr. Ignatieff wants to talk about today. Pity: It would be an interesting discussion. For, as The New York Times reports, the CIA document accompanying Mr. Holder's announcement "found that the interrogations obtained critical information to identify terrorists and stop potential plots and said some imprisoned terrorists provided more information after being exposed to brutal treatment … though it … raised broad questions about the legality, political acceptability and effectiveness of the harshest of the C.I.A.'s methods…"
Nor do I think that Canadian diplomats, including those involved in the rendition of Maher Arar to Syria, will be quick to claim vindication from another announcement out of Washington yesterday. It appears that the Obama administration will continue the practice of "sending terrorism suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation." At the same time, the administration pledged "to closely monitor their treatment to ensure that they are not tortured," by having State Department diplomats involved in the monitoring.
As the Times reports, the announcement was criticized by the ACLU, which noted that "the usual method of such monitoring -visits from American or allied consular officials - had been ineffective. A Canadian consular official visited Mr. Arar several times, but the prisoner was too frightened to tell him about the torture, a Canadian investigation found." True. However, as I recall it, Mr. Justice Denis O'Connor was also quite critical of the performance of our diplomats during this affair - a part of the investigation that current and former Foreign Affairs officials would prefer that Canadians forget.