It has been a mind-bending task to suss out the Busheviks' rules for Justifying Torture. As a nation, we are dizzy to the point of distraction from the effort. But a few principles seem clear.
- We didn’t do it Because it would be wrong. What you’re referring to are acts by Bad Apples. They are not like us. They are the baddest of apples, who violated our American moral principles, without which we might become bad apples, too. Anyway, we put them in jail, because that’s what we do with Bad Apples.
- Whatever we might have done, —and we’re not saying we did--was legal.
Legal is how we tell bad apples from good. In this case, we were very careful to operate within the carefully drawn outlines drawn by the people we hired to look carefully at how we were already operating and draw careful outlines so that it all fell carefully within the outlines. Anyway, the president said we could, so that makes it Secret Double Legal.
"And so by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture."--Condoleeza Rice
- It wasn’t torture. We had these outlines, see, and we were always inside them, because they were drawn to include where we were. We call the area out there beyond where we were, torture. We can’t tell you exactly, what lies in those outer areas except to say if we did tell you, then we would have a standard independent of what we did, which would threaten principle #2, above. Besides, then our enemies would know, too, and then it wouldn’t be effective, which brings us to:
- We did it because it worked. It was effective. What, you’d rather be dead? You think if you were dead you’d have any moral scruples? We’d do anything that works.
- If it worked, it was right. And if it was right, how it be torture? Therefore, (since the contrapositive of a true if/then statement is always true) if it was not right, it wouldn’t have worked. So we didn’t torture. Because we only did things that worked.
- Look! Nancy Pelosi!
For Republicans, these principles have been found to be effective (and you know how they feel about effective!) beyond the narrow limits of justifying torture. The defense of Scooter Libby, for example, involved a remarkably deft use of several of these principles.
- I didn’t do it.
- If I had done it, I wouldn’t have noticed, because I had so many things on my mind.
- It was legal because Dick Cheney told me to do it. No real crime was committed, so move along.
- It was done to protect the national interest.
- You seen any mushroom clouds over Manhattan lately?
- Look! Vanity Fair!
So what I want to know now, is why this move was not allowed: we did not do it because it did not work. Or, we did not do it because it was not right.
For it has not been allowed in the Republican playbook for Not Working to be flipped to Not Right. In these cases, a Mistake is called, and being right can continue to be asserted.
A Mistake is defined as something should have worked on the basis that players only that which works, that which is Right—but which turns out to have failed due to the acts of Bad Apples.
Some historical instances of successful Mistake rulings:
Weapons of Mass Destruction —mistakes, based on bad information furnished by Bad Apples so persuasive that even the French believed them.
Katrina Response —mistake, based on things no one could have foreseen, bad initial assessments of how bad things really were by Bad Apples, compounded by delay, red tape, and malfeasance resulting from regulation and waste fraud and abuse by previous administration and current state and local government Bad Apples.
Senator Vitter’s dalliances —mistake, based on Bad Juju in the cultural air, fomented by Bad Apples who don’t hold Family Values seriously. Bad Juju infected Sen. Vitter—as it had Rev. Ted Haggard—causing a mistake, allowing him to invoke the I Didn’t Do It rule under the Irresistible Outside Pressure clause.
After all these mental gymnastics, we await with sore head and fond hope that President Obama can deliver on his promises to do what’s right and do what works--and more importantly, refuse to do what’s wrong and what doesn’t work.