WASHINGTON — A day after releasing a set of Bush administration opinions that claimed sweeping presidential powers in fighting terrorism, the Obama administration faced new pressure on Tuesday to support a broad inquiry into interrogation, detention, surveillance and other practices under President George W. Bush.
This is also the primary motivation for broad interrogation of exomes or genomes of patients for which diagnosis remains unclear.
Even then, irrespective of whether the person's answer to this question reflects the truth, the only thing that could be learned from such a broad and extensive interrogation would be the individual's perception, not their actual knowledge.
A broader question arises here.
This is true, he said, despite a broad consensus that interrogation might be the best source of information on an elusive, low-tech, stateless foe like Al Qaeda.
Citing the United Nations Convention Against Torture, the memorandum argued that a broad range of interrogation techniques, among them forced standing, hooding, subjection to loud noises and deprivation of sleep, food and drink, might be inhumane but did not constitute torture unless they resulted in "prolonged mental harm".
That request prompted a broad legal review of interrogation techniques by a working group of Pentagon lawyers.
When President Obama took office in 2009, he said he wanted to "look forward, as opposed to looking backward" and rejected calls for a broad investigation of C.I.A. interrogations and other Bush administration counterterrorism programs.
He lists a broad range of policies — Guantánamo, habeas corpus, military commissions, rendition, interrogation and so on.
