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I haven't said too much about the whole torture issue yet. I tend not to say much if things I read say it better than I think I could. But for the record:
1) Waterboarding someone six times a day for a month is torture, not "enhanced interrogation."
2) If it takes that kind of frequency, and you can't trust the information you get, it's not effective.
3) Frankly, I don't care if it might be effective. It's illegal. It's illegal because it's wrong. One of the best comments I've seen on this (sorry, don't remember the source) said that torture is like the One Ring in Tolkien's work: however tempting it might look, however convinced one might be that it can be used for positive ends, whatever the extreme circumstances, it corrupts. It destroys the ability to make ethical judgements. It fosters a sense of power and invulnerabilty that lead the user to misuse it ever more and more.
4) The publicized instances in and of themselves look like crimes against humanity to me. And I'm afraid we have still seen little of the evidence; I fully expect there will be more revelations.
5) It's time for a full investigation by a body that has power to issue subpoenas and, potentially, criminal indictments. We do not dismiss those suspected of murder or drunk driving in an effort to "look forward" rather than back.
6) It's is difficult for me to find sympathy for Kalid Sheikh Mohammed or Abu Zubaydah. My reading convinces me that these are two pretty nasty individuals. However. If we have a vicious dog, we put it down. If we have a suspected criminal, we put him on trial. We don't torture them, whether out of perverted glee that we can, or out of the misguided belief that we can get get valid evidence. The first case is monsterous, the second monsterously incorrect. I cannot confidently say, given what I've read in the last week, that monsterous acts didn't occur... six times a day!? For a month!!!?
7) The terrorist chickenhawks have smeared this country's reputation in ways that I will never be able to forgive or comprehend, whatever happens from here.
We used to at least pretend to be better than our enemies.
ReplyDeleteDitto on all of that. Torture is about who we are and there needs to be an accounting.
ReplyDeleteI'm sympathetic to animal rights, but when they compare the plight of factory animals to tortured prisoners or the holocaust then I have to check out.