WEEKLY STANDARD ON DETAINEE TREATMENT:

FOOL ME ONCE, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. When it comes to detaining prisoners seized in Iraq, Afghanistan and on the other fronts of the terror war, the Pentagon’s “just-trust-us” mentality continues to undercut American strategy. Thankfully, Congress is at last on the verge of doing what the administration clearly cannot: set clear standards for the treatment of detainees. …

…[T]he Pentagon is itself currently in the midst of a drag-out fight on Capitol Hill to stop Congress from enshrining the same Army Field Manual as the uniform standard for its interrogations. The relevant legislation–proposed by Senator John McCain and supported by a who’s who of retired military and intelligence officers–would go a long way toward ending the climate of confusion and uncertainty that has contributed to abuses at Bagram, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere.

In opposing the legislation, the Pentagon argues that it is not Congress’s place to be arbiter of the rules for treatment of detainees, insisting that it alone should wield that power. It also warns, as spokesman Lawrence DiRita put it in a recent op-ed in USA Today, that by establishing a clear standard for interrogations, the amendment would “hamper the country’s ability to readily adapt and update interrogation methods from Al Qaeda detainees who we know are trained to resist known interrogation techniques.”

NEITHER OF THESE ARGUMENTS ARE PERSUASIVE.

more (via The Corner, I think)