What is torture?
“For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” Matt 7:2
This is another restatement by Jesus, albeit in a more ominous tone, of the Golden Rule. In this case, He warns us that if we want peace, we have to stop waging war. If we want understanding, we have to stop demagoguery. If we want justice, we have to stop torture and renditions.
One of the enduring embarrassments of Bill Clinton’s presidency was his attempt to parse “is” in his Grand Jury testimony.
I submit that there is a far worse stain on the Bush presidency over his parsing of the word “torture”. It is far worse because it isn’t just one man’s weakness, it is the policy of our country.
You probably know most of the facts.
The legal opinions rendered by Alberto Gonzales staff which redefined what “torture” means from an international standard to something akin to major organ failure.
The signing statement president Bush added to the law Congress passed prohibiting torture, which claimed that Congress can’t tell the President what to do in times of war and so the Executive Branch is exempt from this law.
The Congressional witnesses to conditions in Guantanamo comparing it to Nazi concentration camps.
The admitted practice of “renditions” where prisoners are taken by force without legal review to other countries to be “interrogated”. The fact that at least two foreign citizens subjected to this practice later turned out to be cases of mistaken identity.
Here are some facts that you may not know.
There is no credible research that torture actually works in the gathering of “actionable” intelligence.
Those that survive the methods that we employ (yes we have killed people), not only suffer physical but also psychological damage. The Christian Science Monitor ran a series of articles using data gathered during the recent trial of Jose Padilla which suggest that he had a mental breakdown as a result of his interrogations and may not recover.
If you don’t recall, Jose Padilla is a US citizen who was held for more than three years without charges and without access to a lawyer (rights both guaranteed under the Constitution). He was recently convicted of the charges against him, but he also, because of his mental state, he was not able to fully participate in his defense.
Thankfully, the new nominee for Attorney General has said in his confirmation hearings that he does not support the new definition of “torture” that the administration created. He did equate past practices with those of Nazi Germany. And he will support the independence of the Justice department from the White House.
Yet as recently as yesterday, our President told the American people that he is not a torturer. I guess it depends on your understanding of the definition of “is”.