Interrogation As Punishment

Steve Kleinman, a former U.S. military interrogator whom I quoted in this piece way back in January, tells the Senate Armed Services Committee something disturbing:

“In far too many cases, we simply erred in pressing interrogation and interrogators beyond the edge of the envelope; as a result, interrogation was no longer an intelligence collection method; rather, it had morphed into a form of punishment for those who wouldn’t cooperate,” Col. Steven Kleinman said in his prepared testimony.

He’s talking about Iraq, of course. Also, as we knew already, the White House was obsessed with determining that torture was legal in early 2002, and it appears Condoleezza Rice was in the thick of it. And yet none of these Bush administration principals will ever go before a war-crimes court.