There is a well established doctrine in US criminal law that is summed up in the expression “fruit of the poison tree,” which is a legal metaphor establishing the axiomatic concept that evidence obtained through illegal state action is not admissible in court. In other words, if the police break the law and, as a result of that illegal action, obtain evidence of criminal activity, such evidence is “tainted” and is not admissible in a subsequent criminal trial.
I do not invoke the exclusionary rule as a direct legal analogy to the current national discussion of torture because US Constitutional rights are not afforded to every person on the face of the earth and because this rule (as with all legal matters) has important exceptions; rather, I bring it up because it beautifully and succinctly summarizes the lengths to which we as a people will go to defend our freedoms and to support the rule of law. The underlying sentiment of the exclusionary rule is clear: in the United States the end does not justify the means, if the means involve violations of US law.
The rule of law, and the related principles under which we all live, holds that it is better to let a guilty person go free than to tolerate the state to violate the law in order to convict him/her. As any good manager can tell you, anything you tolerate is something you encourage, and so we long ago determined we will not tolerate our government’s violation of its own laws. Therefore it is disheartening to see Vice President Cheney, his filial mouthpiece Liz Cheney, and other so-called “conservatives” (i.e. supporters of limited government?) attempting to defend the Bush administration’s use of torture by alleging that such practices supposedly obtained evidence that “kept us safe for 7 years.” It’s all they’ve been saying for the past few days: “don’t focus on what we did, focus on what we found out!”
I have had enough. The results of torture, whether good or bad, are IRRELEVANT, because torture is not only against the letter of the law of this land, it is against the very idea of who we are as a people and a nation. The United States of America does not torture. Period.
It is tremendously frustrating to watch torture being debated in all forms of media and not see this fundamental point being thrown in the face of each and every Bush administration apologist attempting to whitewash their actions by alluding to supposedly useful information they claim was obtained via torture. If my government used torture to learn something I do not care what was learned! I do, however, care that my government for a time ceased to care about the rule of law, which I find far more personally threatening than any alleged terrorist plot that may or may not be in the planning stages even as I type this.
It is ironic that the only person who has forcefully attempted to slam the brakes on the “look at the fruit, not the poison tree” argument was Shep Smith on, of all places, Fox News. The spokespersons for the left, not to mention the media outlets themselves, need to shut down the faux debate about the effectiveness of torture because it is little more than a smokescreen for fundamentally un-American activities. We may very well be able to improve our economy by invading weaker, resource-rich countries and plundering their national wealth, but that against US and international law. It would be folly to even engage in a debate about the effectiveness of such a repellant practice, yet that is basically what Mr. Cheney, Ms. Cheney, and the rest of the right-wing talking heads are doing as they attempt to shift the discussion away from the existence of torture and onto its purported benefits.
The only way to win this game is not to play.