Well Neocons, hope you’re happy. All this torture is sticking to America like shit. Oh wait, I mean, it isn’t because we don’t do that. Or, what we’re not doing has corrupted our efforts to defend America.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 — Six years after the Bush administration embraced harsh physical tactics for interrogating terrorism suspects, and two years after it reportedly dropped the most extreme of those techniques, the taint of torture clings to American counterterrorism efforts.
The administration has a standard answer to queries about its interrogation practices: 1) We do not torture, and 2) we will not say what we do, for fear of tipping off future prisoners. In effect, officials want Al Qaeda to believe that the United States does torture, while convincing the rest of the world that it does not.
Yes, we are shooting ourselves in the both feet. Like Barney Fife, we are torturing people and we will not get away with it. The world will not turn its head while this country tortures and the world will not forget what we have done.
But that contradictory catechism is not holding up well under the battering that American interrogation policies have received from human rights organizations, European allies and increasingly skeptical members of Congress.
The administration may in fact have slowed down or even hidden this program more deeply. It won't admit any of this because then the perfect administration would have to admit some weakness or wrong mindedness and we know that doesn't happen here.
Just a reminder, the torture we have wrought upon others will not go away. It will stay around world courts and in our memories until the 'greatest country in the world' meme dies in its sleep.
The nomination of Michael B. Mukasey as attorney general, once expected to sail through the Senate, has run into trouble as a result of his equivocation about waterboarding, or simulated drowning. Mr. Mukasey has refused to characterize the technique as torture, which would put him at odds with secret Justice Department legal opinions and could put intelligence officers in legal jeopardy.
At a House hearing last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted that the United States had mishandled the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian engineer who was seized in New York in 2002 on suspicion of terrorism and shipped to Syria, where he was imprisoned and severely beaten.
Intelligence officers should be in legal jeopardy if they tortured. Because it’s illegal. And if we aren’t doing it, then interrogations should be open to the public. And if the incarcerated prisoners are guilty then we should be able to prove it.
http://www.nytimes.com/...