Conservative leaders like Karl Rove claim talking about whether or not the government sanctions torture is the worst thing ever. Yeah, Mr. Rove, talking about the evil one does in life sure brings about trouble, huh?
For me, when anyone has to educate an adult in this nation who is a political leader or advisor about why torture is bad, that is a sure sign that adult just does not need to be a leader or advisor to anyone. I've written before about the problems and inherent conflicts between use of torture and the basics of American democracy.
Now we get this defense of the indefensible:
"You see, where other human beings might just tell us anything under being tortured, the exotic Muslim requires torture for disclosure. Our legal obligations are nullified by the biological imperatives of "those people." First we had "torture works." Then we had "they deserve it." Now we have "they need us to do it."
Zubayda, of course, gave up all the useful intelligence he ever would before he was tortured. Which sort of puts a crimp in this whole theory.
The torture apologist thrives on secrets, on playing on your fear of the unknown. You don't know that waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) 183 times actually didn't prevent "a hole in the ground in Los Angeles." So Thiessen explains today that the redacted parts of the memos -- you know, the ones that were edited to protect the identity of CIA interrogators -- actually contain all the information that proves torture worked, which is why they were redacted.
The justifications for torture provided in the memos themselves are not a good faith evaluation of the torture program's effectiveness, since the writers of the memos are self-evidently trying to justify the use of torture. In other words, the memo writers have a reason to overplay the program's effectiveness, because they are conscious that what they are doing is illegal. There's only one way to know what happened, and that's through the release of the rest of the torture works memos. So let's do it.
But let's take a step back a moment. The Right has focused the torture debate on KSM because they are banking on the idea that KSM is so terrible that no one could possibly sympathize with him. As long as the torture debate is centered around whether or not we should torture one particular, terribly evil person, the right remains the sentimental favorite. But let's take a moment to consider what Thiessen and others are arguing in the long term: that we must torture and that for our own security, we must keep it secret. We currently live in a country where the president can detain anyone indefinitely without trial on suspicion of terrorism. Torture apologists want to add to that authority the ability to torture people that they detain without trial, without anyone actually knowing about it.
In order to try someone you've tortured, you'd have to make coerced confessions admissible in court. But of course, the reason we don't do that is because there's no way to know if a coerced confession is real, or if it's the result of being waterboarded or stuffed in a small box. So anyone you've tortured, you have to keep locked up forever, because if you release them, you risk that these methods -- which torture apologists explain must remain secret -- will get out.
You see where this is going. There's absolutely no way to reconcile the use of torture with a functioning, democratic society."
It only took 183 waterboards per prisoner per month to get false confessions to 9.11
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I may "misremember" but I remember a post from Kevin Drum quoting someone as saying the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed began tearfully telling everything he knew even at the mention of water boarding. As I read this I may have "mis-remembered" reading an article saying this same Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was killed as Pakistani police and American agents tried to apprehend him.
ReplyDeleteMy point is that this stuff is through the looking glass so to speak.
One thing I do know is that Bushco has established torture as one of the principal underpinnings of their image as the guys who will gladly do anything to fight terrorism and protect the American people. But this underpins their expansion of the security state and justifies, in their minds, the curtailment of our civil liberties.
It's for out own good that they empower and enrich themselves in this manner
It is an image mind you.
The Soviet Union posed a much greater threat to our survival but in the end but we didn't torture them routinely. Or did we?
It seems odd to me that a political movement that owed so much to the image of the Noble Reagan and the nobility of choosing death over doing absolutely anything, especially torture, just to live another day
So it goes.
Life is so simple here in the playpen. We blame Karl Rove for all that is dirty and evil then go review movies while munching popcorn and Milk Duds. I suppose the next one you will throw spitballs at will be Miss California. Why not roll Donald Rumsfeld's yard and yell "nyah, nyah, nyah!" at his dog??
ReplyDeleteTo answer Oxymoron, and the other nieve types in the "progressive" blogosphere, we did not torture the Soviets, we did what we will have to resume doing in the future - we will hand them over to the Egyptians or the Saudis who have no second thoughts when it comes to finding out who is responsible for killing innocent children. The bad guys usually sing like canaries then. If a member of your family went to work or school one morning and did not return because a terrorist ended their life, you would not wring your hands so much over waterboarding. And the only reason you are so pious about it this time is because Bush did it. Let's quit playing silly games.
ReplyDeleteif talking truth about torture angers you, or if talking about movies angers you, then you will often feel rage by visiting here. some deep-seated desire for self-torture maybe?
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