Controlling People With Pain

Digby has been covering the excessive and inappropriate use of tasers for a long time. Now the Occupy movement is raising awareness of some of the brutal techniques being used to control people and the militarization of American police forces in general. She has a great post today about the use of pain to control and achieve compliance.

A couple of months ago I was really surprised by the sheer numbers of San Francisco police in riot gear sent out in response to (and in anticipation of) the OpBART protests. But the nationwide response to the overwhelmingly peaceful protests with riot police, pepper spray, batons, tasers, tear gas, sound cannons, and flash grenades is just stunning.

The notion that people gathered in peaceful protest can or should be brutalized is appalling. This is the same mentality that justifies torture. Torturing people to elicit information is wrong, as I have written repeatedly. Torturing people to make them compliant is just as wrong.

I used to think we'd come a long way from the days of using fire hoses and police dogs to intimidate and control protesters. It now appears we have come a long way, but in the wrong direction: we now have higher-tech methods of abusively controlling people, and seem to have little compunction about applying them.

It Has Come to This

I wasn't aware of this incident until I saw this piece at Digby's blog.

During Monday's Phillies game, a person in attendance at Citizen Bank Park ran onto the field while the Cardinals were up to bat. According to those at the game, this fan was promptly tasered.

This is just amazing to me. We seem to have lost all sense of proportion. Having a young child myself, I'm used to hearing kids threaten death and dismemberment for all sorts of minor transgressions. That's developmentally appropriate at a certain age, but eventually we're supposed to grow out of it as we come to understand both physical and social realities. By the time we're adults (or even teens), we are supposed to have developed some sense of measured response.

But really. Fans (usually inebriated ones) have been running onto fields for a long time: At least as long as games have been televised. And I am old enough to remember the "streaking" fad. For those who are fans and want to watch the game, these things are an annoyance, but a minor one at most. You have a delay while the intruder eludes a few security guards or police for a few minutes, then they subdue the person, remove them from the premises, and the game resumes.

In my experience, the intruder usually eludes being captured for a few minutes, probably causing a little embarrassment for the pursuer, but truly nothing of consequence is happening here.

So why is it even remotely reasonable to use a weapon of any kind, much less a taser, to subdue such a person? Delaying a sporting event isn't a serious offense. No one is in serious danger of attack (though there have been assaults on players an coaches, nothing that remotely justifies this kind of response to someone just running around). Embarrassing security personnel isn't smart, but again, it can't possibly justify subjecting the interloper to this level of physical danger.

[As someone once wrote about the decision to run out on the field, it probably seems like fun at first, but once you get removed from public view, you may get a lesson on differing interpretations of the term "reasonable force," especially if you've made the security guard or off-duty police officer run around and look a little foolish. But that was talking about a little roughness, not electrical shocks.]

My hat is off to Digby for her ongoing coverage of the taser issue. The taser is a great example of how our society has become inured to violence and torture and how the threshold for these things has gotten ridiculously low. Are we really so culturally immature that we believe this kind of behavior is reasonable?

What Digby Said

I think Atrios or someone should have a copyright on that title, but whatever: Digby is right, as usual:

There were those who warned that allowing anyone president to have unaccountable powers would lead to every successor to fight to maintain them. But no one wanted to believe that a nice Democrat would ever do such a thing. Ahem:

Read it. And weep.

Popular Depictions of Torture

Torture is a standard trope in many forms of popular entertainment. Frankly, it's so common that I don't think some writers even realize what they're including in their material. For example, the very fun (and mostly kid-appropriate) movie The Incredibles has some very intense scenes of torture. I realize that's a staple for superhero movies, but it didn't seem necessary in that otherwise terrific film. And it made me regret that my daughter saw the film, as I felt she was too young to understand that part (but old enough to be troubled by it).

Now, in my youth I saw plenty of "torture," too, but mostly in silly contexts such as cartoons or the Batman TV series, where the "danger" was usually so comical as to be laughable. I mean, Batman being fed to a giant "man-eating clam" is just too silly for even a child to take seriously. We get the message that the bad guy is trying to "torture" Batman, either to extract some information or to make his (highly dubious) demise slow and painful. And I suppose one could argue that such easy depictions of something truly awful might actually lessen one's horror at the real thing (though in my case, that obviously wasn't the outcome).

This is all brought to mind by my seeing the new Star Trek movie over the weekend. I really enjoyed it, both because it was a fun movie from end to end and because I can't even remember the last time I saw any movie on its opening weekend, even standing in line with friends to get good seats. What fun!

As many Star Trek episodes do, this one has some torture in it (though less graphic than much of what's out there these days). I can barely remember an episode of the original series where Captain Kirk or one of his crew didn't get abused in some way by someone. (And is it just coincidence that that series overlapped with Batman in the mid-1960s?) But I had forgotten the really excellent (and excruciating) episode in Star Trek: The Next Generation where Captain Picard is tortured at length by the Cardassians.

There's a great discussion of it at length in this article from Slate by Juliet Lapidos (hat tip to Josh Marshall at TPM). Read the whole thing; it's very good. Here's a highlight:

The extended torture sessions take a toll not just on Picard but on his interrogator as well. The more time the Cardassian spends with Picard, the more he becomes fixated on breaking his prisoner. And so the supposed goal of torture—information—is sidelined, while the means by which the goal will theoretically be achieved—mental submission—becomes an end in itself. As Picard puts it, "Torture has never been a reliable means of extracting information. It is ultimately self-defeating as a means of control. One wonders it is still practiced."

One gets the impression watching Dick Cheney recently that big chunks of the U.S. government crossed that line at some point (like waterboarding the same guy scores of times). Eventually the already dubious goal of forcefully extracting information gets lost in the mission of breaking the victim. Instead of the ends justifying the means (though they still insist that's what's behind it), the means themselves are merely trying to justify their own use. (If you can't break the subject, what's the point of trying to? Thus, you must keep trying.) Ultimately, torture demeans both the torturer and the victim, and for no good outcome.

The good news is that this stuff is only a minor subplot in the whole Star Trek movie. I highly recommend it to those who like the old Trek: the new angles on the familiar characters are a lot of fun. I'll avoid further comment so as not to spoil it for anyone. But go read the Slate article.

Talking About Torture

First, my apologies for being so silent this month. It's not that there aren't things I want to write. I just found myself immersed in a project for work that ate up all my time. Now that I have at least somewhat caught up on little things like sleep and family, I can once again start to share with y'all!

So we're back to one of our long-time topics here, torture. To summarize for those who arrived late: I'm against it.

But the "debate" goes on. The release of the White House "torture memos" this month has made quite clear that some truly despicable acts were approved and applied. I can think of no explanation for waterboarding someone dozens of times that doesn't involve sadism, desperation, or cluelessness. All of which are completely inexcusable.

Probably the most bizarre aspect of the discussion to me is the focus on whether these tactics "worked." As if somehow, some nugget of information extracted by torture justifies grossly immoral, inhuman, and patently illegal behavior. The "effectiveness" of torture (about which I have ranted many times) is a completely tangential issue. Torturing people is wrong, and to claim that it is necessary or otherwise justified just defies both rationality and decency.

The worst and most lasting legacy of the last few years may not be the state of global economic ruin; that will recover. But the pervasive post-hoc justification of unthinkable, unspeakable acts will be hard to wean people from. A generation that grows up believing that ends justify means will be difficult to live with.

The always excellent Tom Tomorrow gives a good slant on the torture "debate" in this week's comic.

Fantasy and Reality

Maybe it's because I never watch the show, but I just don't get the phenomenon that is the television series "24." I mean, I get that it's an exciting drama and all that. What I don't get is the way so many people (including pandering politicians who should know better) seem to think it's reflective of real life:

Bauer’s fictional defense of torture and his fictional claims of its effectiveness are having very real consequences. Over the last two days, right-wing commentators have cheered Bauer’s belligerent Senate testimony, wondering how Congress could be so ungrateful to a torture advocate like Bauer. Often their commentary has been directed at critics of the Bush administration’s torture policies and suggests that the “average person” would approve of Bauer’s conduct.

Maybe people need to drag themselves away from the teevee a little more and get out in the real world with real people. The fear culture that is gripping this country is not healthy. People grossly overestimate the danger to themselves and their families from criminals, terrorists, child molesters, kidnappers, and so on.

I'm not suggesting that these things aren't real or that there aren't precautions one should take against them. But when the perception of risk is out of proportion with the actual risk, we end up doing things like overprotecting children so they can't even go outside to play or giving up fundamental rights and freedoms in exchange for protection from overinflated risks.

I realize that crime dramas and such can be very compelling, but they're not real.

I'm reminded of a line by Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller about people misunderstanding media (my emphasis):

We believe violence is exciting in entertainment. In America we have the First Amendment; there are no censors. But there are anti-violence censorship letter-writers. They want to make sure you'll never see anything that they wouldn't want to see. They say that if we had nothing on TV but shows like thirtysomething and Growing Pains all the world problems would be worked out in an adult, peaceful manner. They don't understand EVERYTHING's fake on TV. Homer Simpson doesn't work in a nuclear power plant! Homer Simpson is just an actor!

It seemed funny at the time. Perhaps, like many entertainers, he was just prescient.

Sick, Sick People

No, I'm not talking about the virus that's been ransacking my family for the last couple of weeks.

I'm talking about some key people in the U.S. government for the last several years. Buried in an update to a long post by Digby on Dick Cheney is some material from Vanity Fair about the use of "intelligence" gleaned from torture:

“As soon as I learned that the reports had come from torture, once my anger had subsided I understood the damage it had done,” a Pentagon analyst says. “I was so angry, knowing that the higher-ups in the administration knew he was tortured, and that the information he was giving up was tainted by the torture, and that it became one reason to attack Iraq.

“We didn’t know he’d been waterboarded and tortured when we did that analysis, and the reports were marked as credible as they could be.” However, approval for Abu Zubaydah’s treatment had been given at the highest level.

We've been over this before (though not recently): not only is torture wrong, it doesn't work. At least, not in the sense that it provides accurate information. At some point, the victim of the torture just tells the interrogator what (s)he wants to hear. But some sick folks find that useful:

“The White House knew he’d been tortured. I didn’t, though I was supposed to be evaluating that intelligence,” the analyst says. “It seems to me they were using torture to achieve a political objective. I cannot believe that the president and vice president did not know who was being waterboarded and what was being given up.”

So there it is: I thought it was bad that they lied about the intelligence to justify invading Iraq, but it's actually worse. They tortured people to generate the "intelligence" they wanted to justify starting a war that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions displaced, turmoil in the region and the loss of international respect for the country.

It's just stunning what these folks have been up to in our name. As the apologists keep making the rounds on their "Bush legacy" tour, we need to remember that this is the legacy we inherit and will have to work to live down.

Appalling. Sickening.

Came across this transcript of Bill Moyers' interview with Jane Mayer.

There are plenty of disgusting bits, but here are some lowlights:

JANE MAYER: Well, I think they knew they were being asked about torture. I mean, they danced around the question. They've redefined the term "torture" so that what was torture before 9/11 they say has not been torture since.

BILL MOYERS: Why?

JANE MAYER: Because they wanted to interrogate people in completely brutal ways. And they wanted to avoid being accused of war crimes. So one of the witnesses there, Doug Feith in particular, who was the number three in the Pentagon, argued right after 9/11 that the Geneva Convention should no longer apply to anybody that was picked up in the war on terror, that was a terrorist suspect. And so they took away the rules of war, which were the Geneva Conventions, which America really pioneered in many ways. And they also said that the criminal laws didn't apply to the same suspects. So they were left with kind of a legal limbo. And they made up the laws as they went along on it.

Yup. Making up the rules as they go along, and obfuscating their tracks. Sounds about right.

And what happens when you start trying to make excuses and exceptions?

JANE MAYER: Well, there are a couple of things I want to say about this. One is to say that there's a special exception here: We won't torture except when we will torture, is a legal problem. The convention against torture, which the United States Senate ratified, has no exceptions. It's a major felony. There's no excuse for doing it for war. There's no excuse for national security. It doesn't have exceptions. So this is a serious legal problem.

But it's not just the legality, it's also what it does to the moral fiber of the society:

BILL MOYERS: Torture can become an accepted way of life for a society. I mean, you can get used to it. Or you can know it's going on and realizing that it doesn't affect you, so it doesn't matter to you. Do you is there a possibility that that's happening here?

JANE MAYER: Well, you know, there's a great book out called, "Torture and Democracy," by Darius Rejali, which is about how torture has worked over the years. And one of the things he writes about is that it has a very corrupting effect on a society and also on military discipline, on anybody involved in it. There's this tendency to get rougher and rougher. You don't get the answer you want? You up the level of aggression. It also has a horrific effect on the outlook of the people who were involved in this program there and I do describe how one of the interrogators in particular who did waterboarding with the CIA is wracked by nightmares now according to one of his friends. He - you can't go to that dark place without it affecting you.

I've said it many times before (and I'm tired of it, but it's important): torture is wrong. It's always wrong. And every justification given for it inevitably reflects the corruption that such mistreatment engenders.

The Legacy of Torture

I'm on vacation, but stumbled across this tonight:

...torture always comes home. And the techniques of this war are likely to show up in a neighborhood near you.

Just something to look forward to.

My Government Tortures People

I'm not proud of this fact. And for those of us who've been paying attention, it's not news, either. Anyone who saw the pictures from Abu Ghraib and read some of the other accounts of people who have been detained over the last six or seven years knew, even if they didn't want to admit it, that the United States government has been torturing people.

The news this week is that now they've basically admitted it, though they still try to couch it in terms that suggest they aren't doing it anymore (unless they feel like they need to). And I should point out that the discussion/admission pertains almost exclusively to a particular technique known as waterboarding. There are plenty of things, short of waterboarding, that constitute torture, and it's pretty clear that many are in current use.

So, this week both the U.S. Attorney General and the Director of the C.I.A. have acknowledged past uses of waterboarding by the C.I.A. We tortured three people. The excuse given is basically that they thought it was a good idea.

Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post writes in his excellent column today:

Putting aside for a moment the question of whether the ends did in fact justify the means -- and there is considerable evidence that the waterboarding of those three men miserably failed that test as well -- the White House argument is deeply perverse and goes against core American values.

Waterboarding is undeniably cruel. It is undeniably an assault on human dignity. The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution -- the one banning cruel and unusual punishment -- doesn't come with an asterisk indicating: Except when you think it's really, really important.

I guess it's been a while since I wrote on this topic (for a while, it felt like all torture, all the time), but this is undeniably awful. Whatever moral standing the U.S. still had left is quickly evaporating.

No wonder all the presidential candidates keep running around saying they are in favor of change (even the ones who support the current policies). There's not much in this current stand to like.

Torture is wrong. It's always wrong. And any government official who condones it belongs in prison, not in office. As a friend e-mailed me tonight: "Impeachment: It's not just for sex anymore!"

Oh, Those Good Old Days

Tom Tomorrow this week waxes nostalgic for those innocent days, back in the twentieth century, when we used to discuss how to parse "what is is" and what constituted sex.

Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition

*sigh* At least, nobody expected it would reappear in the 21st century. In the United States.

As I wrote over a year ago, I can't believe we're having this discussion, much less a debate. For the U.S. Senate to be arguing with a nominee to be Attorney General over whether a technique directly out of the Inquisition constitutes torture is sickening. That there are people making not just legalistic hair-splitting arguments, but actual defenses of waterboarding, is appalling.

That one of my senators voted to approve said candidate's nomination is beyond belief. I thought it was bad when she voted to ban flag burning. I am deeply concerned that the moral underpinnings of this country may be lost, that there is not a sufficient number of people who actually understand what is happening to all of us and our reputation in the world.

Scott Horton has another excellent piece in Harper's today:

There is no respectable opinion that can hold waterboarding legal. It is criminal depravity. When we allow its justification as an article of polite conversation, we deal our society and its values a potentially mortal wound.

“Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable,” George Orwell reminded us in “Politics and the English Language.” In the waterboarding debate, Orwell’s warning has found its most literal application.

The ongoing discussion is worrisome, but I am encouraged that so many voices are being raised in opposition. Horton, of course. Christy Hardin Smith at Firedoglake today. Anonymous Liberal had a couple of good posts on the subject yesterday. And Keith Olbermann did another of his excoriating special comments last night. And the LA Times' media watchdog comes out strongly over how the debate is portrayed:

When the media characterize it as a political struggle between the White House and congressional Democrats or as a complex debate over national security in a post Sept. 11 world -- two convenient dodges -- they aren't being realistic or fair. What the media really are doing is engaging in a sophisticated fan dance -- a convenient act of concealment.

What's really at stake is whether this country will continue to stand with the framers of our Constitution and our authentic moral traditions or whether we now will allow Bush and Cheney to put us shoulder to shoulder with Pol Pot.

Wow. I hate that things have gotten to this point, but it is encouraging to hear people speaking out, and speaking out strongly. Keep it up! Public opinion is on the right track on this:

Asked whether they think waterboarding is a form of torture, more than two-thirds of respondents, or 69 percent, said yes; 29 percent said no.

Asked whether they think the U.S. government should be allowed to use the procedure to try to get information from suspected terrorists, 58 percent said no; 40 percent said yes.

Now, why a substantial majority like that doesn't translate into political action, it's hard to say. The invertebrates on Capitol Hill don't seem to get that it's us they need to listen to, not their own echo chamber.

Who'll Stand Up For Us?

Great. Just in case you were on the fence on this torture thing (maybe I should change the name of this to TortureBlog...), here's fine news about the U.S. State Department: In order to keep their own options open regarding torture, they are now unwilling to condemn the practice of waterboarding even when applied to U.S. citizens by others. In other words, they say it's OK for people to torture me, so long as they get to do whoever they want to torture, too.

From an article in Harper's (pointed out by Digby at Hullabaloo):

And the reason for the public contempt consistently shown Bellinger by the [international] legal community is simple: He finds it impossible to condemn torture. No legal adviser before him had any problem with that proposition.

The Bellinger referenced is Jim Bellinger, senior legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Read the rest. Read Digby's comments, too. Who's supporting the troops now, eh?

Nice: disdain and derision. That's just how I like to see my country's legal stands viewed elsewhere. I'm really looking forward to my next international trip.

It's going to take a long time to build a new reputation for this country. I hope we get the chance to do it.

But Don't Take MY Word for It...

I keep harping on the fact that torture is wrong and doesn't work. But why take my word for it? I'm no expert. Guess what? Even professional interrogators say that. Here's an excerpt from a column by retired Army colonel Stuart Herrington, who "served 30 years in the U.S. Army as an intelligence officer, which included extensive experience as an interrogator in Vietnam, in Panama and during the 1991 Gulf War."

The piece is called "Two problems with torture," and you may already have guessed what those two things are: "It's wrong and it doesn't work." Go figure.

Here's more detail on how it's supposed to be done, and how it's being done now:

In interrogation centers I ran, we called prisoners "guests" and extended military courtesies, such as saluting captured officers. We strove to undermine a prisoner's belief system, which we knew instructed him that Americans are unschooled infidels who would bully him and resort to intimidation, threats and brutality. Patience was essential. We rejected the view that interrogators could merely "take off the gloves" and that information would somehow magically flow if we brutalized our "guests." This notion was uninformed and counterproductive, not to mention illegal, and we made sure our chain of command understood that bowing to such tempting theories would result in bad information.

Persuasive? I'd always thought so, and it certainly worked for us in contingency after contingency in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. But when I explained these immutable principles to an auditorium of young Army interrogators last year, one reaction puzzled me. "Sir," a young soldier queried, "that 'tender-loving-care approach' sounds all well and good, but it takes time. What do we do when the chain of command sends out a requirement and says they need the information by the end of the day, and that thousands of lives may depend upon it?"

The very question tells us that intelligence professionals have failed to educate their commanders that detainee interrogation is not like a water spigot. "Give the inquisitors the freedom to push the envelope of brutality and good information will follow" seems to have become the watchword since 9-11.

The blog post at LGM that pointed me to Herrington's article suggests that gathering intelligence isn't actually the point:

In fact, torture (in the contemporary American context) is designed to demonstrate masculinity and Will; to sort of those who are "serious" about protecting America from those who aren't.

I'm not sure I buy that entirely. Certainly there are some who use brutality as the ultimate form of bluster and swagger. But I tend to think it's more about putting up the appearance of effectiveness, in a shallow, TV melodrama sort of way. As anyone who watches TV these days can tell you, you just rough people up, they give you information, and you solve all your problems in a matter of hours, if not minutes. Never mind that this is not how the real world works: it's how a lot of people perceive the world as working. After all, the closest most of us will ever get to an interrogation is watching it portrayed on TV.

And as the self-same TV tells us, image is everything, and perception is reality.

But they are not. Turn off the TV and think a little, OK? Thank you.

Slightly Better Torture News

In fairness, not all the news on torture is bad. There is one participant in the Republican side of the race who gets it on this issue: John McCain:

Senator John McCain, who is perhaps the most forceful (and one of the only) anti-torture voices in his party, has sharply rebuked Rudy in an interview for suggesting yesterday that he didn't know what waterboarding is and that extreme interrogation techniques might be defensible in some circumstances.

On the other hand, McCain is notorious for saying very reasonable things, and then voting for just the opposite. I talk to a lot of liberal and Democratic voters who seem to think McCain is very reasonable and moderate. But if you look at his voting record, he's dead solid conservative. He just talks a good "moderation," and has a good P.R. machine.

And, I should point out, that although he speaks out rather forcefully against torture and related madness, his message doesn't seem to be resonating with the voters or the other candidates. His campaign seems to be doing an imitation of David Caruso's career. And none of the other candidates seems to have caught the meme.

But at least there is someone over there saying something good. So there is hope, however slim.

Torture and Popular Culture

[Never thought I'd see, much less write, a title like that.]

Digby over at Hullabaloo has a great, long post about torture and TV and stuff. It's not pleasant. As usual, Digby says everything I would want to say, and says it much better.

Just a reminder:

Cruel and unusual punishment is banned in the constitution for a reason --- it makes barbarians of all of us.

I really want to stop writing about this.

Update:

...but I can't. It's a big topic among those running for president these days, but at least some of the candidates trivialize it. Rudy Giuliani yesterday told a group in Iowa that

...they talk about sleep deprivation. I mean, on that theory, I’m getting tortured running for president of the United States. That’s plain silly. That’s silly.

No, that's torture. Anonymous Liberal, filling in for Glenn Greenwald at Salon this week, dredged up some actual descriptions of sleep deprivation being used as torture. It's grim, but it's worth reading to understand what people like Giuliani are trivializing:

Apparently, this is what it's like on the campaign trail:

Mr. Bashmilah was subjected to severe sleep deprivation and shackling in painful positions. Excruciatingly loud music was played twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week. Guards deprived him of sleep, routinely waking him every half hour. Initially, the cell was pitch black, his hands were cuffed together, and his legs were shackled together, severely restricting his movement and causing him pain. Later, he was chained to a wall and the light in his cell was left on at all times, except for brief moments when the guards came to his cell ... Mr. Bashmilah's psychological torment was such that he used a piece of metal to slash his wrists in an attempt to bleed to death. He used his own blood to write "I am innocent" and "this is unjust" on the walls of his cell.

I wonder what Giuliani writes on the walls of his $4,000-a-night hotel rooms.

I'm sick of this, I tell you. Even when Giuliani says right-sounding stuff about torture, like this:

So I think America should never be for torture. America should be against torture. It violates the Geneva Convention. Certainly when we’re dealing with armed combatants, we shouldn’t get near anything like that.

That's pretty good, but his very next words were:

There is a distinction, sometimes, when you’re dealing with terrorists. You may have to use means that are a little tougher.

And later, this:

So let’s be careful on how we define this. And, sure we should be against torture. But we should not be against aggressive questioning. And the line between the two is going to require some really difficult decisions about drawing it and kind of trusting each other with the discretion for the president to make decisions about what has to be done in the interests of the American people.

This insistence that somehow it isn't torture if you're doing it in a good cause is sickening. Or that good people might sometimes torture bad people, and that's somehow all right. Sick. And sickening.

We have no business discussing the nuances of when and on whom we should be allowed to
use "aggressive questioning." A civilized society doesn't work that way, doesn't go there, doesn't even think seriously about it.

That used to be us. It can be again.

Revisiting Torture

When I first started blogging, I used to write on torture a fair amount. More than I'd like to, because I don't like the topic at all. My views on the subject should be very clear to all who read this: Torture is wrong, always.

Now the subject rears its ugly head again, and brings to mind Yet Another Reason why torture is wrong: it makes people lie. When people are doing something they know is wrong, they tend to lie about it. And then when caught, they sometimes say it wasn't wrong at all. I know this. My six-year-old knows this. That "adults" somehow think we won't notice or care is stunning.

It was encouraging, once upon a time, to hear my nation's government denounce torture. It is sad to learn now that at the same time it was doing that, it was sanctioning the use of torture.

Like slavery, torture is an institution that has no place in modern civilization. Those who advocate it or try to minimize its harms have no place in high office or polite society.

Rational Discussion of Torture

I just read a very good, reasonable discussion of various positions on torture, and it's well worth reading. It comes from the blog Anonymous Liberal, where the blogger (who is no longer truly anonymous, as I recall) consistently provides clear and readable analyses of complex issues (particularly legal ones).

In particular, he does a great job of debunking the "ticking time-bomb" scenarios that is most often used to justify removing policies that prohibit torture. And he does so on two grounds: 1) The scenario is completely unrealistic, and therefore inappropriate as a basis for policy, and 2) Practically speaking, no policy would apply in such a scenario:

Just because you can construct a hypothetical scenario were shooting a girl in the head is the "right" thing to do, that doesn't mean that we should do away with the legal prohibition against murder. When it comes to acts that are sufficiently bad--such as murder and torture--you need categorical rules.
...
In a true ticking bomb scenario (which I'm convinced is like saying "when you meet a real unicorn"), people will do what they think they have to do, regardless of what the law says. And in that kind of extraordinary situation, no one would be prosecuted for resorting to extreme, even illegal tactics.

But you can't let highly unlikely hypothetical scenarios dictate policy. Regardless of whether there are conceivable situations where torture could be justified, it has to remain illegal.

I recommend reading the whole piece. It's really very clear and well-reasoned. Policies on extraordinary conduct require an extraordinary amount of thought and clarity. Making emotionally-charged decisions based on irrational scenarios is a prescription for bad policy (see USA PATRIOT Act, for example).

Wonderful Human Beings

I was about to turn in for the night, but gagged on this [emphasis mine]:

During tonight’s presidential debates, candidates were asked whether they would support the use of waterboarding — a technique, defined as torture by the Justice Department, that simulates drowning and makes the subject “believe his death is imminent while ideally not causing permanent physical damage.”

Both former mayor Rudy Giuliani and Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) suggested they would support using the technique. ...

The audience applauded loudly after both statements.

Ick. This is what passes for public discourse in what purports to be a civilized society: A debate over who can pander hardest to the basest motives of the voters. I am ashamed.

Torture has no place in my country. It is wrong. It is dangerous. And I'm tired of having to write that.

I almost wrote about this last week after reading this story:

The top U.S. commander in Iraq admonished his troops regarding the results of an Army survey that found that many U.S military personnel there are willing to tolerate some torture of suspects and unwilling to report abuse by comrades.

It's nice to know that someone in the military has the sense to understand that torture and other abuse of others makes our troops less safe and mocks the values they are supposedly fighting to uphold and defend.

Angry. Really angry. And frustrated. I want my civilization back.

Be Excellent to Each Other

I haven't talked about torture here for a while. I suppose that's good; I don't like to dwell on torture, and it's a subject that I would prefer not to have come up very often. Indeed, the frequency with which the subject comes up these days is itself almost as disturbing as the torture itself.

Anyway, the thing that brought me to the subject today was reading this post by Scott Lemieux on Lawyers, Guns and Money (LGM). Although I don't think what's currently being done to Jose Padilla constitutes torture, per se, it is inexcusable, or as Lemieux puts it:

This kind of systematic mistreatment of prisoners is an utter disgrace on every level: moral, political, legal, and pragmatic.

I hate to think that my government, my countrymen, tortures anyone for any reason, but at least in the case of active warfare or imminent threats, I can understand how one might arrive at some kind of rationalization. But when one has incarcerated and incapacitated someone for literally years, the ongoing abuse loses any rationality.

It's sick, it's wrong, and it's pointless. So stop it. We need to get remove from power the people who seem to think it is a good or useful practice.