TORTURED LOGIC

TORTURE IS EITHER WRONG or it is not.  Spokesman Larry DeRita defended the Pentagon against further torture charges in a way limited to the Department of Defense.  Left out was a defense of the CIA and other government agencies.  This was a misleading defense of the part for the whole.  Because torture almost certainly still going on, just behind more walls of secrecy.  If you doubt this, Cheney now seeks a waiver for just these agencies for behavior now forbidden for Defense Department personnel. [story]

The proposal, which two sources said Vice President Cheney handed last Thursday to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the company of CIA Director Porter J. Goss, states that the measure barring inhumane treatment shall not apply to counterterrorism operations conducted abroad or to operations conducted by "an element of the United States government" other than the Defense Department.

DIRTY DEEDS MUST BE DONE but the price will not come dirt cheap.

"This is the first time they've said explicitly that the intelligence community should be allowed to treat prisoners inhumanely," said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "In the past, they've only said that the law does not forbid inhumane treatment." Now, he said, the administration is saying more concretely that it cannot be forbidden.

WE TELL OURSELVES we are a government of laws, not men. If our laws are cruel, are we not as well? 

Last April, in photographs from Abu Ghraib, ordinary Americans finally saw the reality and results of interrogation techniques the CIA has propagated and practiced for nearly half a century. Gen. George Fay's recent report blamed the CIA's influence for use of torture by military intelligence personnel at Abu Ghraib. In their harsh treatment of "ghost detainees," CIA interrogators moved about the prison with a corrupting "mystique" and extreme methods that "fascinated" Army interrogators. [SF Gate]

THE MYSTIQUE of the secret and the tortured may fascinate more than just soldiers, it may corrupt us all.

Comments

[john_m_burt]

Where is the country of my birth? Which way should I walk to find it?

[john_m_burt]

Where is the country of my birth? Which way should I walk to find it?

[KathyF]

You beat me to this one. I just saw it over at MSNBC, thought I must be reading something from the third world. El Salvador was always big into torture, I seem to remember. Didn't work out that well for them, did it?

[elendil]

If the CIA exemption goes through, will it still be possible for the American people to plead innocence by claiming that they were ignorant?