Five Before Chaos

UPDATED below the jump.

It looks like this might is going to have to become a regular column on here, at the rate she’s going, bi-weekly. This time, our crazy, clueless conservative Charity, over at She’s Right, just really “isn’t sure” if torture is wrong. Now if you’re a regular reader of hers, you know she’s, uh, logically challenged, to be PC for the sake of snark. Actually, logic seems to be conspicuously absent over there. Put your brain around this and tell me if it starts to hurt:

If I was to take the premise that no credible intelligence comes from torture as true, along with the premise that credible intelligence was obtained using waterboarding, wouldn’t I have to conclude that waterboarding is not torture?

It looks like a form of torture to me. I mean, what else would you call it?

The only option left is to declare one of my premises to be false. If it is false that torture does not produce credible intelligence information, and in fact it does, that sure does undermine the most reasonable argument against the use of torture.

Just a side note here, that a civilized people should not use torture is not a reasonable argument. It is an emotional argument. If we based our laws on whether or not a practice makes some people feel icky when presented with a detailed description, we would have to end legalized abortion, now wouldn’t we?

So where does that leave waterboarding?

The answer is, I don’t really know. I think it is disturbing, but that in and of itself is not a reason that it should not be done.

No, it wasn’t one of George Bush’s speeches, although the flow is strikingly similar. See, like most of her ilk, she fails to grasp what humane behavior is, whether it’s not letting kids go without healthcare, or torturing people, whatever. And of course, torture of a living, breathing sentient human being is no different than aborting a fetus. Gotta throw that one in there.

Civilized people do not torture. That’ s part of what makes us civilized. What’s so hard to understand about that?

Now, I know, this is where I should point to all of the military experts, veterans, and the like giving logical, rational and impassioned arguments about how we shoudn’t torture, and that it doesn’t yield reliable info in most cases. But do I have to? Fer chrissake, they wouldn’t even torture Nazis back in the day:

When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects.

Back then, they and their commanders wrestled with the morality of bugging prisoners’ cells with listening devices. They felt bad about censoring letters. They took prisoners out for steak dinners to soften them up. They played games with them.

“We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess.

“During the many interrogations, I never laid hands on anyone,” said George Frenkel, 87, of Kensington. “We extracted information in a battle of the wits. I’m proud to say I never compromised my humanity.”

And please, no comparisons to the “terrorists” and the Nazis. There is no comparison. You don’t have a friggin’ clue if you think otherwise. Or you should be reading TownHall.com and not wasting my bandwidth. And pick up a history book, too while you’re at it.

And with a hat tip from Caohimin Laochda, a recent Harper’s article about the Bushies, their love of torture, and how they get rid of anyone in the admin that doesn’t toe the line, something that should make it quite clear:

Their fixation has nothing to do with the camouflage they generally put up about torture allowing the nation to defuse nuclear bombs like Jack Bauer in “24.” It is directly tied to their own perception that they are guilty of criminal conduct and their determination to abuse the powers of Government to block any effort to prosecute them.

Waterboarding is torture. It has been understood to be torture since the sixteenth century. Waterboarding was used to torture Black slaves in America before the Civil War. American prosecutors have indicted and tried criminal defendants for torture in connection with the use of waterboarding—bringing and succeeding in cases against both Americans and others. Judge Wallach’s excellent law review article, “Drop by Drop,” covers this well-documented history which the Administration insists that all its lawyers forget. Wallach’s op-ed summarizing his conclusions can be found here.

There is no serious or competent basis upon which waterboarding can be claimed to be legal. The persistence of these bogus arguments is just more evidence of the deterioration of public discourse. Our habit as a nation has always been to accept anything that our political leadership states as a respectable contention, even if worthy of criticism. But with the arrival of the Bush Administration this has become an extremely dangerous premise. 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.  

What’s even more sick is she calls herself a Christian, but like many fundies, she seems to have been asleep during Jesus’ talks about love and peace. What’s next, a column on how the free market can deliver torture better than the gov’t? Go show her some love and set her straight, will you?