FBI's Secret Interrogation Manual: Now At the Library of Congress

McGruber writes "The FBI Supervisory Special Agent who authored the FBI's interrogation manual submitted the document for copyright protection — in the process, making it available to anyone with a card for the Library of Congress to read. The story is particularly mind-boggling for two reasons. First, the American Civil Liberties Union fought a legal battle with the FBI over access to the document. When the FBI relented and released a copy to the ACLU, it was heavily redacted — unlike the 70-plus page version of the manual available from the Library of Congress. Second, the manual cannot even qualify for a copyright because it is a government work. Anything 'prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties' is not subject to copyright in the United States."

Comments

Re:Key paragraph

[cold fjord]

Try that in Texas... hell, try it in any state in the union. A foreign aggressor who pulled that on Americans would without doubt create new "terrorists" more quickly than they could kill them.

No, a foreign aggressor that did that would be in a war, just like al Qaida is. Yet somehow you fault the US for defending itself in this case. There is a key difference between the US and Pakistan, for example. The US government controls all of its own territory whereas Pakistan's central government does not. The tribal territories in Pakistan are largely outside the control of the central government. That is where various guerillas and terrorists flourish. That is where much of the drone activity that you decry occurs. There are without a doubt occasional mistakes made in targeting, but the US has made efforts to avoid that, and probably has caused much less collateral damaged that most wars in the past. The Pakistani army has a view about that.

Pakistani General: Actually, The Drones Are Awesome

There is an unacknowledged asymmetry in your grievance. You only complain about the occasional random mistake by the US, but you have nothing to say about the regular, planned, and deliberate brutality of the Taliban and al Qaida, including at weddings.

17 Beheaded in Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan for Attending Wedding Party with Dancing

A massacre of 17 deliberate beheadings at a wedding versus the unfortunate rare accidental strike on a wedding. The regular occurrence, versus the rare occurrence. Do you think that the Taliban should worry about its wedding massacres too? Or just the US?