A final statement about torture

A former top interrogator is responding forcefully to the case Dick Cheney made on Thursday in favor of torture (what the former VP and his allies refer to as "enhanced interrogation methods.")

Brave New Films released a short video Tuesday of Matthew Alexander taking apart Cheney's argument piece by piece. Alexander, who uses a pseudonym for security reasons, was a 14-year military interrogator who oversaw more than a thousand interrogations and conducted more than 300 in Iraq himself. He led the interrogation team that scored one of the United States' most high-profile captures, that of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and he did it using traditional methods.

Alexander easily takes down Cheney's arguments. The most immediate blow Alexander strikes is, of course, his obvious success, which undercuts Cheney's case for more brutal techniques. Alexander also engages on the level of principle. For Cheney, the suggestion that torture is a poor strategy because it aids terrorist recruitment is nothing more than old-fashioned blame-America-first cowardice.

"After a familiar fashion, it excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do," said Cheney.

The president and others who have condemned torture don't say that it "excuses the violent." Rather, they say it makes a violent reaction more likely -- and Alexander backed them up.

"At the prison where I conducted interrogations," responded Alexander, "we heard day in and day out, foreign fighters who had been captured state that the number one reason that they had come to fight in Iraq was because of torture and abuse, what had happened at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib."

Alexander put the number making this claim at 90 percent.

Alexander, however, made a broader point at the end of his interview, one that would certainly evade Cheney's grasp, convinced as he is that Al Qaeda recruits "hate us for our freedoms."

Sotomayor to Begin Visits With Senators Tuesday

Source Legal Times

Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor will head to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to start meeting with senators, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said today.

Sotomayor is scheduled to meet with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), Gibbs said. Staffers were also trying to schedule a meeting with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

"We are hopeful that other visits can be scheduled for that Tuesday and for the rest of the week," Gibbs said at his daily briefing.

The meetings are a chance for senators to ask Sotomayor questions behind closed doors, and for the nominee to sell herself to those who will vote on confirmation.

In addition, Sotomayor's Judiciary Committee questionnaire is likely to be finished some time next week, Gibbs said. The questionnaire asks for personal and financial information, as well as descriptions of what she considers her most important rulings.

The Judiciary Committee is preparing for the influx of information and work by requesting additional funding from the Senate. A spokeswoman said today that it was unclear whether the funding had been approved yet, but it could be used to hire temporary staff, buy equipment, and pay for other miscellaneous expenses.

Republicans on the committee have hired a former assistant attorney general to be chief counsel of their Supreme Court team. Elisebeth Cook, who had worked in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy since 2005, led the office for the last eight months of the Bush administration. She previously was an associate at the boutique litigation firm Cooper & Kirk.