How we interrogate “post-9/11” detainees is the fundamental question in balancing the inherent tension of national security considerations against individual civil and political rights. More significantly, the interrogation measures we adopt define who we are as a society.
—amos guiora, 2008
Americans, believing themselves to stand proudly for the rule of law and human rights, have become for the rest of the world a symbol of something quite opposite: a society in which lawbreaking, approved by its highest elected officials, goes unpunished.
—mark danner, 2011
Two items in the news in the spring of 2012 suggest why both Amos Guiora and Mark Danner are right to be concerned about the United States' counterterrorism practices in a post-9/11 world. The first is a book, Hard Measures, by Jose Rodriquez (2012), the former director of the National Clandestine Service of the Central Intelligence Agency. In the...
