Torture: Day of Reckoning At Hand?
With the drip, drip, drip subtlety and perhaps even some of the pain of waterboarding, a growing number of politicians seem to be finally realizing that the use of torture is not only thoroughly un-American, it is morally abhorrent, and are speaking out about it.
Can there be any doubt, as I wrote not long ago, that there is no darker stain on the Bush presidency — and on America at the start of the new millennium — than the top-down approval of the use of torture and this secrecy-obsessed administration’s systematic efforts to justify its use on the one hand while denying that it approved its use on the other?
Actually, yes.
With too few exceptions, the silence inside the Beltway during years of torture revelations from Abu Ghraib to the Rumsfeld Gulag to Afghanistan has been one giant silent scream and has compounded the shame that I have felt over a country that I bleed red, white and blue for.
So what has now changed?
* The drumbeat in the American town square against torture has grown louder.
Credit is due Andrew Sullivan, who has blogged about the horrifying similarities between the Gestapo’s use of Verschärfte Vernehmung, enhanced torture techniques that would leave no visible marks, and the CIA’s embrace of these techniques, as well as the tortured Nazi-like explanations of the White House and Justice Department in trying to justify their use.
* The administration’s Orwellian parsing has collapsed under its own weight.
The proverbial straw that broke this camel’s back was an October 4 New York Times investigative report that found while the Justice Department publicly declared torture to be “abhorrent” in a 2004 legal opinion, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales then issued a secret opinion that endorsed the CIA’s use of hard-core techniques like waterboarding that the agency had cherry-picked from the cookbooks of Soviet and Saudi dungeon masters.
* Discomfort over the refusal of Gonzales’ designated replacement to say whether he believes that waterboarding constitutes torture.
What looked like a slam-dunk nomination has instead become a long overdue moment of moral clarity as a small but growing number of senators say they are troubled by Michael Mukasey’s equivocating over a technique condemned by U.S. military leaders, human rights organizations and prominent Republicans including Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham.
Mukasey’s waffling before the Senate Judiciary Committee came in response to a question from Dick Durbin, who then sent the nominee a follow-up letter with the signatures of all his fellow committee Democrats. Republican Arlen Specter then asked Mukasey to clarify his position, as did presidential candidate McCain and Graham, himself an Army lawyer.
Now four other presidential wannabes — Senators Clinton, Obama, Biden and Dodd — say they will vote against Mukasey if he doesn’t denounce waterboarding, and no amount of Rovian parsing on the part of the White House is going to bail out the nominee.
Congressional Democrats already have blocked confirmation of two other nominees to lesser posts — John Rizzo, who had endorsed torture, as general counsel of the CIA, and Steven Bradbury, author of the secret legal opinions on interrogation, as head of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel.
The White House whines that Mukasey has been put in an untenable position, and there is indeed some political grandstanding going on here. But I also would say that a long overdue day of reckoning has arrived.
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18 Responses to “Torture: Day of Reckoning At Hand?”
AS also links to someone associated with SERE and the story is that “enhanced interrogation” is used to extract false confessions.
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/10/waterboarding-is-torture-perio/
[...] Clark Torture: The Day of Reckoning Arrives » This Summary is from an article posted at The Moderate Voice » Domestic and international news [...]
It’s sad that the victim’s genitalia are considered obscene while his injuries are not considered obscene.
Rudi, I went through Navy SERE school in the early 1990′s and let’s just say the training was very good. I support Nance’s viewpoint totally and it’s really the best essay on waterboarding I’ve ever read.
Shaun–
Excellent post. And thanks to Rudi for the additional link.
How depressing that a man who has been lauded for personal independence and integrity (Mukasey) still can’t make clear distinctions as to whether waterboarding constitutes torture or not. I also was appalled that he seemingly could not answer questions about whether or not he considered the president above the law. This lack of moral clarity is destroying us as a nation in a way that 9/11 never could.
[...] Mine Torture: Day of Reckoning At Hand? » This Summary is from an article posted at The Moderate Voice » Domestic and international news [...]
After all this time what I’d like to know is what is and isn’t being done legally? Some of what the administration wants has been struck down in courts, the DoJ backs one thing but not another, Abu Ghraib has been on lockdown after the incident….etc..
But are we making headway on the day to day practices? Frankly I’m just confused at this point. Confused, disgusted, and ashamed for my country.
I don’t think we’ll ever get the bottom line answers..
I listened to Gen. Hayden, who spoke in a very straightforward way, only to end ,by saying ‘I can’t tell you,”
I think the military’s new manual is back on track, but the CIA is still, as it has always been, the arm of the government for doing what can’t be done in the light of day. What are they doing and where are they doing it? No one knows. It’s all a national security issue, plus it’s also protection against culpability for past actions.
Hayden, and others, make one argument that is really hard to dispute. If they made their interrogation methods public, enemies could prepare to resist, or take adbantage of, the techniques. Since that would be true for both benign psychological tactics as well as some quite brutal ones, it’s impossible to guess what it really protects. Maybe keeping the enemy guessing is part of the game, too.
I admit also, that the question of what constitutes torture is not as easy to answer as it appears at first glance.
We can all agree about the extremes (NO to waterboarding) but there are so mnay iffy areas. Is denying exercixe really torture? Is faliling to provide a Koran?
Something can be a bad idea without being torture, but in accusations of maltreatment, too much is lumped together with the same degree of condemnation.
From the moment Abu Graib became news, it’s been only an incremental learning curve, and I don;t see the ‘aha, so that’s it” moment ever arriving.
We can only nibble away at what we can nibble away.
Basically, not only the answers are fudged and secretive, we are really not clear about what the wuesions should be. Waterboarding – that’s a clean NO.
In the case of Graham at least, ignore the rhetoric and watch the vote.
He has a history of talking tough on torture only to capitulate when his voice might make a difference in a vote count.
Also I like this line.
What the White House leaves out is the fact that THEY put him in that position, not the Congress.
Rudi,
Thank you. Keep talking. We need to hear this stuff….
Thank-you Shaun, thank-you Andrew Sullivan, thank-you Rudi, thank-you Dr. Estes, thank-you TMV. The very idea that people need to be educated about what is and isn’t torture, and why they should be outraged by torture at the hands of America in particular, is disturbing and nearly incomprehensible to me, but I am SO glad people like you are doing it. The ideals and moral standards this country was founded on, and the principles so many have made sacrifices to defend, can not be allowed to be subverted and perverted by a few dangerous idiots who by all rights should know better.
Doma, FANTASTIC comment.
Please join the Harvard Anti-Torture Coalition in protest.
This is the end of the line. When a nominee for Attorney General does not concede that waterboarding is illegal explicitly because he wishes to protect waterboarders from criminal liability, there is nothing left but shame and mourning.
We, a coalition of Harvard students against torture, call upon others to join us in our symbolic protest of Mukasey’s tortured response by posting an entry in silent, drowning black. (See http://www.stop-torture.org)
[...] grandstanding going on here. But as I said yesterday, I also would say that a long overdue day of reckoning has [...]
“I think there are probably very few people in this room or in America who would say that torture should never, ever be used, particularly if thousands of lives are stake”?
Charles “the bold” Schumer 2004 Senate speech
[...] The Moderate Voice – We can only nibble away at what we can nibble away. Basically, not only the answers are fudged and secretive, we are really not clear about what the wuesions should be. Waterboarding – that’s a clean NO. Davebo said, October 30, 2007 at 12:41 pm: … Read more.. [...]