Feith in the System There's legitimate interrogation, and then there's torture.

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http://www.slate.com/id/2195383/

Feith in the System
There's legitimate interrogation, and then there's torture. Doug Feith is confident interrogators just know the difference.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Tuesday, July 15, 2008, at 7:48 PM ET

Doug Feith
Doug Feith—former undersecretary of defense for policy—has been described as an "intellectual engine" (by his former boss Don Rumsfeld) and, famously, "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth" (by Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan). Based on Feith's performance this morning before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, I would say he is more like one of those cans that erupt with an exploding snake. No matter who the questioner or what the question, Feith responds with a jolt of explosive, affronted outrage.

You may recall Feith's explosive, affronted outrage from last month's episode of congressional hearings, when he refused to show up as scheduled before this same subcommittee because he was unwilling to appear alongside another witness, Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell. (Wilkerson is evidently more in the Tommy Franks camp, having once said of Feith, "Seldom have I met a dumber man.")

The reason Feith has been summoned to testify is that he was allegedly one of the men who saw to it that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, including Common Article 3 of the conventions, which bars humiliating and degrading treatment of prisoners. The source of this claim is seated to his right this morning. British lawyer Philippe Sands, in his recent book, The Torture Team, quotes from a lengthy interview with Feith in which Feith claims to have been "really a player" in the Bush administration's decision-making about the applicability of Geneva at Guantanamo. In Sands' version, Feith viewed himself and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as having been of one mind on the Geneva Conventions. The argument Feith made to the president in January 2002 seems to have been something like this: The Geneva Conventions are terrifically important. The best way to protect them is by honoring its "incentive system," which rewards soldiers who fight openly and in uniforms with all sorts of POW protections. But that meant not "promiscuously hand out POW status to fighters who don't obey the rules." In other words, the best way to protect the Geneva Conventions is to gut them.


Sands claims in his book that Feith argued against providing Guantanamo prisoners with the protections of Common Article 3. Feith, in a passionate opening statement this morning, insists he never made "any argument against common Article 3" and in fact was "receptive to the view that common Article 3 should be used." Moreover, he says he urged that as a matter of "policy," if not law, the president should pledge to treat the prisoners humanely, which is precisely what the president pledged to do. Feith particularly objects to Sands' claim that Feith agreed that removing all interrogation constraints at Gitmo was "the point." Feith says—several times—that Sands' account is so inaccurate as to "impeach him as a commentator." Luckily, Sands still has the tape of this exchange and offers to provide it to the committee.