Clarity My A–Oh, Never Mind 0

So the current Federal Administrator says he wants clarity about what constitutes torture:

President Bush fought back Friday against a Republican revolt in the Senate over tough anti-terror legislation and rejected warnings that the United States had lost the high moral ground to adversaries. “It’s flawed logic,” he snapped.

Bush urged lawmakers to quickly approve legislation authorizing military tribunals and harsh interrogations of terror suspects in order to shield U.S. personnel from being prosecuted for war crimes under the Geneva Conventions, which set international standards for the treatment of prisoners of war.

The sophistry of this comment, indeed, of the whole position which it encapsulates, leaves me speechless. No, not speechless.

Disgusted beyond words.

What should separate us from barbarians–and terrorists–is the ability to know through our values what constitutes torture–and other crimes against humanity.

I very much fear that someone who cannot recognize torture when he or she sees it, to paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart’s famous comment about pornography, is beyond the pale of civilization.

Any thinking person sees that the current Federal Administrator’s demand for “clarity” on torture is actually a demand for loopholes through which to drive electric wires, sleep deprivation, waterboarding, and the other mistreatments which shall forever be linked to the current Federal Administration and will also be forever a betrayal of the values upon which my country was founded.

But, if he wants clarity, here are some comments; follow the link to have your bones chilled:

Tom Malinowski, citing descriptions of Stalin’s torture dens:

He might begin with Robert Conquest’s classic work on Stalin, “The Great Terror.” Conquest wrote: “When there was time, the basic [Soviet Secret police] method for obtaining confessions and breaking the accused man was the ‘conveyor’ — continual interrogation by relays of police for hours and days on end. As with many phenomena of the Stalin period, it has the advantage that it could not easily be condemned by any simple principle. Clearly, it amounted to unfair pressure after a certain time and to actual physical torture later still, but when? . . . At any rate, after even twelve hours, it is extremely uncomfortable. After a day, it becomes very hard. And after two or three days, the victim is actually physically poisoned by fatigue. It was as painful as any torture.”

Conquest stated: “Interrogation usually took place at night and with the accused just roused — often only fifteen minutes after going to sleep. The glaring lights at the interrogation had a disorientating effect.” He quoted a Czech prisoner, Evzen Loebl, who described “having to be on his feet eighteen hours a day, sixteen of which were devoted to interrogation. During the six-hour sleep period, the warder pounded on the door every ten minutes. . . . If the banging did not wake him, a kick from the warder would. After two or three weeks, his feet were swollen and every inch of his body ached at the slightest touch; even washing became a torture.”

A company–well, it’s more than a platoon, though maybe not as much as a company–of retired generals sees the current Federal Administrator’s desire for “clarity” as the hypocrital double-speak that it is. After stating that the standards are already clear, they point out that:

. . . that clarity will be short-lived if the approach taken by Administration’s bill prevails. In contrast to the Pentagon’s new rules on detainee treatment, the bill would limit our definition of Common Article 3’s terms by introducing a flexible, sliding scale that might allow certain coercive interrogation techniques under some circumstances, while forbidding them under others. This would replace an absolute standard – Common Article 3 — with a relative one. To do so will only create further confusion.

Moreover, were we to take this step, we would be viewed by the rest of the world as having formally renounced the clear strictures of the Geneva Conventions. Our enemies would be encouraged to interpret the Conventions in their own way as well, placing our troops in jeopardy in future conflicts. And American moral authority in the war would be further damaged.

George Orwell said it: The object of torture is torture.

And the current Federal Administration is enamored of torture for the same reason it was enamored with invading Iraq: Because it thinks it is above and beyond the law.

God help us all.