The Wall Street Journal is full of it:
On current course, U.S. warfighting doctrine will be as tame as a church social … Now comes the latest flap over “torture” techniques during terrorist interrogations, well on their way to becoming little more than a friendly chat.
Wrong. Bzzt. For Chrissake, WSJ, have you even bothered to read the Army Field Manual? And the specific techniques described therein for interrogation? Hardly a friendly chat.
So, according to newspaper reports, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel responded by detailing that slapping, hypothermia, sleep deprivation and so-called stress positions are allowed. Are these torture?
According to any standard of history, according to the standard of the United States up until Bush, according to the treaties we have signed and that, by our Constitution, have the absolute power of law … yes. Hypothermia was a technique specifically used by the Soviet Union to break the zeks in the Gulag. Stress positions as well. Sleep deprivation is well-documented as one of the cruelest tortures known. Victims required constant supervision to keep them from bashing their heads to knock themselves out. People die from sleep deprivation.
What’s really at issue here is whether U.S. officials are going to have even the most basic tools to interrogate America’s enemies.
The basic tools we want allowed are those detailed in the Army Field Manual. Things like “ego up”, which helped us kill Al-Zarqawi.
Techniques perfected by the Soviet union are not “basic tools”. Torture is not a “basic tool”. Water-boarding and stress positions are not “basic tools”. They are the desperate means of barbarians.
What’s at stake here is whether we are going to sacrifice everything we are as a nation because we are scared that bombs might go off somewhere.
Newspaper accounts of the 2005 memos say “waterboarding,” or simulated drowning, is also allowed in the memos, which reflects the CIA’s view that this is especially effective in breaking hard cases rapidly.
The Khmer-Rouge thought so too.
Note also the wording — they “break” the terrorist. When you break someone, they will say anything they think you want to hear. What we need is not “breaking”. What we need is conversion. What we need is a person who freely gives us information, including stuff we wouldn’t think to ask. Al-Zarqawi was killed because of incidental information that came out during a conversation with his interrogators.
As it stands now, the scolds in Congress and the Beltway press have decided to impose their view that no pressure tactics are ever necessary or justified. But if Congress and the press are going to take over the design of the war on terror, how can they justify walking away from any responsibility to make clear what is permissible?
First of all, the Constitution specifically states that Congress makes the “Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;”. So they are not “taking over the design of the war on terror”, they’re doing their damned job. Second, the torture opponents have made it very clear what should be permissible — Army Field Manual …. Army Field Manual.
The notion that the U.S. goes around unnecessarily “torturing” people without any rationale whatsoever is so absurd that it is almost never stated explicitly.
Former CIA Director George Tenet has said explicitly that they do work and have saved American lives.
He also said WMDs were a slam dunk. There are thousands of people who will tell you that torture doesn’t work — people who have administered it and people who have received it. One of them is John McCain, who, unlike George Tenet, was actually fucking tortured. For real. And is crippled because of it.
But rather than face these hard issues directly, the scolds fall back on generalities about our “values.”
Those damned values! Next thing you know, we’ll be supporting family values!
Remember when the conservatives were all about the values? Sigh. Good times.
Funny me. I value having the highest moral standards in the world. I value having our soldiers reknowned for their humane treatment of even our most brutal enemies. I value being the shining beacon of civilized behavior for the world.
But that’s just me.
Congress wants the OLC memos made public, but the reason to keep them secret is so enemy combatants can’t use them as a resistance manual.
Wrong again. We know what techniques are being used. We just want it to be officially admitted. And I thought the whole point of torture was that they couldn’t prepare for it. Make up your mind.
Nowhere in this misguided, misinformed, anti-American editorial does the WSJ ever mention the fucking Army Field Manual, which spells out precisely what methods may be used to interrogate. Methods that have proven, through 200 years of American history, amazingly effective in obtaining useful intelligence.
I usually like the WSJ. But like the rest of the Right Wing, they have utterly surrendered to the terrorists. By supporting torture and sacrificing our — yes — values, they’ve given bin Laden everything he ever wanted.
Go to hell. The rest of want to fight the terrorists, not give in to them. We don’t to become what we’ve beheld. We don’t want to shred the Constitution and destory our moral standing. What does it profit a nation to win the War on Terror if they lose their soul?
Update: Sully says it even better:
There are some things worse than avoiding all casualties in warfare. One of those things is abandoning the core meaning of what a country and a civilization stand for. If America does not stand against the torture of individuals seized without due process by an unchecked executive power, then American stands for nothing. In fact, if this standard had applied two centuries ago, America would not exist at all. The president takes an oath not to prevent any American life from being lost in wartime, but to protect and defend the Constitution which is the sole guarantor of such liberty. Churchill upheld that rule, even as London was reduced to rubble and hundreds of thousands of mother’s children were lost. Washington made it a central hallmark of the meaning of his new republic. To destroy the constitution, the rule of law, and habeas corpus and to legalize torture in the false hope of saving lives is the action of those who do not understand freedom and who do not understand America. It is the action of cowards and slaves.
What part of “Live Free Or Die” do these people not understand?
All of it, apparently.