progdogblog

Let’s Talk About Torture For Just A Second-


As the debate continues on who knew what and when, whether it was effective or not and did it make us safer. It seems as though we are being coddled into taking our eye off the ball, again, and losing site of the fact that what we are talking about is TORTURE. There are a few things that we, Americans, are forgetting.

Did members of Congress know?. Not withstanding that none of us know the full truth of the matter yet, and without pointing fingers, whether I want to or not, at either Republicans or Democrats, I do believe that there was some understanding of the fact that these types of methods were being entertained. With that belief, a factor of degradation to the ‘American morality’ begins to rear it’s ugly head. People somewhere, long before we knew, were contemplating the compromise of our values.

Now we learn over the last few days that there were orders for ‘enhanced interrogation’ coming directly from the White House in advance of any Top Secret CIA memo’s. That the Office of the Counsel to the President, Alberto Gonzalez, was signing off on requests for these methods very early on. The precedence for the Presidents attorney delivering the ‘okay’ for the engagement of torture is unknown to me, but I challenge any reader to find any more serious an example in our history. Again, our values compromised.

So it seems that, almost from the beginning, there was clear desire, if not intent, to use ‘ways of making people talk’ that Americans have rejected in the past and will continue to reject in the future.

The argument has been made by those on the right that ‘enhanced interrogation’ was needed because these were hardened men, terrorists, and they had no intention of giving us any answers, ‘the truth'. Inside that, they have also tried to lay the foundations for the future use of these techniques by touting them as acceptable, necessary, and effective. There are, however, glaring problems to be addressed with each of these statements.

We now know that waterboarding was used as persuasion to develop a link between Al Queda and Iraq. First being used over 180 times on a man who was completely cooperative with the U.S., short of one area, ‘the link’.

Why did they waterboard him?. Because it’s true, it is effective. The question you must ask yourself is how is it effective. Only when you KNOW THE ANSWER to the question you are asking does torture become useful. A mindset focused on a specific response is the bare bones of torture. Extreme pain and fear will be inflicted until the ‘right’ information is given, even if it’s a lie. A man can be interrogated for an indefinite period of time through conventional means, all the while providing you information that is for you to determine the truthfulness of, for you to decipher reality from. One does not torture because they can not get an answer, but because they don’t get the answer they want to hear. So torture is effective, employ these means and you will hear what you ‘want to hear’.

Addressing the acceptability of such practices should be fairly cut and dry. People that subscribe to the viability of torture do so out of fear. Without a level of understanding to the way the World and ‘the enemy’ view America when we behave in a hypocritical manner, they listen to and believe the things they hear from right-wing extremists.

Having become nouveau chique inside the GOP, torture has been dumbed down and softened to remove the sting of what it is they are advocating, new terminology has been applied to cover the harsh connotation of the word, and pundits use their shows as platforms to shrug their shoulders, smile and say ‘enhanced interrogation’ methods have made us safer. Let’s be very clear about something here, ‘enhanced interrogation’ IS torture and all the things that go with it. Just the same as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is shellshock, the more abrasive and brain jarring term used to describe the condition during the 1st and 2nd World Wars. In the immortal words of George Carlin, “maybe if we still called it shellshock, then some of these Vets would be getting the help they need”.

I don’t need to have the word torture softened for me. It is Americas right and responsibility to maintain the level of emotion and outrage that comes along with that type of behavior.

In conclusion, focused on safety, I would ask of you just one question. If the shoe was on the other foot and it was the Afghans (just as an example) who were indefinitely holding Americans prisoner and continuously torturing our men and women, your sons and daughters, stripping them, hanging them by their arms, waterboarding them, and all in full sight for us to see....how safe do you think those people would be? Same goes for us.