Torture Is As Torture Does

Digby wrote at length on the issue of how our torture policies are changing us and, predictably, has it down. Jane Mayer has written an important and thorough piece in the New Yorker that is well worth a full read. There is a lot there but there is some knock-you-off-your-feet stuff. One of the original cheerleaders advocating the use of torture is John Yoo, former law clerk to the honorable Clarence Thomas and now enlightener of young lawyers-to-be.

In a recent phone interview, Yoo was soft-spoken and resolute. “Why is it so hard for people to understand that there is a category of behavior not covered by the legal system?” he said. “What were pirates? They weren’t fighting on behalf of any nation. What were slave traders? Historically, there were people so bad that they were not given protection of the laws. There were no specific provisions for their trial, or imprisonment. If you were an illegal combatant, you didn’t deserve the protection of the laws of war.” Yoo cited precedents for his position. “The Lincoln assassins were treated this way, too,” he said. “They were tried in a military court, and executed.” The point, he said, was that the Geneva Conventions’“simple binary classification of civilian or soldier isn’t accurate.”

Yoo also argued that the Constitution granted the President plenary powers to override the U.N. Convention Against Torture when he is acting in the nation’s defense—a position that has drawn dissent from many scholars. As Yoo saw it, Congress doesn’t have the power to “tie the President’s hands in regard to torture as an interrogation technique.” He continued, “It’s the core of the Commander-in-Chief function. They can’t prevent the President from ordering torture.” If the President were to abuse his powers as Commander-in-Chief, Yoo said, the constitutional remedy was impeachment. He went on to suggest that President Bush’s victory in the 2004 election, along with the relatively mild challenge to Gonzales mounted by the Democrats in Congress, was “proof that the debate is over.” He said, “The issue is dying out. The public has had its referendum.”

Wow. An issue that caused a blip on the televised MSM, saw a couple of short sweep-it-under-the rug congressional hearings, and barely a moment of stir in the Gonzalez hearings does not constitute a referendum. The President saying he doesn't condone torture shouldn't cut it, yet apparently it does.

Many of the "suspects" we are detaining and subjecting to extraordinary rendition (picking people off the street or out of their home, blindfolding, gagging, drugging, and then shipping them off to a country that will torture them) will never see a courtroom let alone be formally charged.

The point of due process isn't to benefit the guilty, it is to protect the innocent. It is easy to justify torturing people like bin Laden (not that I am) but we institute safeguards that the few innocents inevitably caught in our web aren't treated like criminals. So how do we deal with the smugness that has created this awful situation? How do we teach people that it is easy to sit in judgment and proclaim what treatment is "legal" when you don't have a fear in the world that anything like this could ever happen to you?

I would remind the smug bastards Yoo, Gonzalez, Bybee, Bush, Cheney, Chertoff and all of those other assholes that a percentage of the people we are responsible for torturing are innocent. Then I would suggest they get a taste of their own medicine. Strip their clothes from them, beat them, whip them, deprive them of light, food, water, urinate on them, attach wires to their nuts. then pretend you are goin to drown them. When will they get the point that it isn't about coddling prisoners, it is about whether we become the animals that we set out to cage and torture.