Make no mistake: the United States torturing prisoners places our own people in danger. There are Americans all over the world - tourists, soldiers, diplomats, business people - and many get captured or kidnapped each year. And when these people are tortured, our indignation, our horror means nothing because we've done the same thing. It may be that we tortured the guilty and they torture the innocent, but that doesn't matter to the rest of the world. We are as bad as them. We've given up our vaunted principles, the principles on which this country was founded, to fear.
Anyway, Bob Cesca posted a great analysis of the issue here. Check it out. It says pretty much everything I want to say.
Here's a bit:
But it's not just Bush administration officials they're defending here. Extrapolating what the torture superfans are suggesting, they appear to believe that in light of the threat of terrorism, any administration should be able to torture, including the current president. In other words: they're simultaneously accusing President Obama of being an oppressive and tyrannical "fascist," while also insisting that he should exercise the power to do whatever he wants in order to prevent another terrorist attack. Put yet another way: unchecked government power is awful, unless Sean Hannity is scared. Then it's excellent. Put a third way: WTF?
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The reality is that the Bush torture methods were both horrifying and ineffective. The procedures we've read about in the OLC memos were clearly forms of torture as have been previously defined by America's own standards (you might recognize waterboarding from such famous torturers as the Khmer Rouge, Imperial Japan and North Korea), and by most accounts they're absolutely ineffective at acquiring decent information. And in fact, as McClatchy reported on Tuesday, the Bush administration used these torture techniques to gather intentionally false information about a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
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And I'm still baffled how anyone in their right mind can possibly defend these torture policies in the face of overwhelming evidence condemning it. I mean, it's torture! Yet the right continues to chug from their bottomless mug of contradictions -- even Senator McCain, who endured unspeakable atrocities at the hands of the North Vietnamese, has fallen into this trap. Last year, in the heat of a presidential campaign, the senator voted in favor of allowing the CIA to continue to use the same techniques described in the OLC memos. Only now has he condemned the CIA's use of torture.
1 comment:
I agree with the moral implications of torture, but I'm not as convinced of its complete ineffectiveness, at least in some circumstances. It seems to me that, at least theoretically, there are a couple of situations in which torture might obtain valid, if not necessarily important, information: (1) where the validity of the info can be verified quickly and the prisoner remains in custody do that the torture can be resumed (perhaps the classic "smoking gun" scenario that probably exists only on "24"; and (2) where the info that the prisoner has is a relatively small piece of the puzzle. For example, I'm sure that some American POWs in WW II provided information to the Japanese under torture under the belief that the information wouldn't help the enemy that much. And, I suspect that the CIA has obtained some valid info under torture.
Of course, even if true, this suggests that torture is unnecessary and/or counterproductive in almost all situations. The issue, of course, is whether the information was important enough to justify torture (if torture can ever be justified), and, whether the information could have been obtained with less coercive methods.
At the same time, many of the countries and groups condemning the United States hardly have clean hands themselves when it comes to torture or other forms of brutality. In fact, the condemnation over American practics from, say Iran, is hypocritical given their own practices. I understand the military's aversion to these interrogation methods because of fear that they will be used on Americans, but that argument doesn't make much sense really. Abjuring from torture didn't keep the Japanese in WW II or the North Vietnames or the Iraqis from torturing American POWs. Having Americans do it may provide another rationale--in the same sense that US military action provides another rationale for countries obtaining nuclear weapons--but it's unlikely to be the trigger. They are going to mistreat prisoners whether we do or not.
Don't get me wrong; I don't think we should be engaging in these practices, especially if there are other ways to get information. And the willingness of the lawyers and others in the administration to look the other way or ignore all moral considerations is rather Nazi-like. I think Obama was right to release the memos and I agree it is rather bizaare that the right-wing seems to embrace torture, not as a necessary evil, but almost as a moral imperative, ie, these people are so far outside the pale of humanity that they should be tortured. This is especially pernicious given that some percentage of the prisoners are innocent. But that doesn't seem to bother the right-wing; they don't worry too much about whether defendents in the US actually innocent either (except when it's a Republican senator).
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