ENHANCED PROPAGANDA

THE BOTTOM LINE below the ooze in the abyss of the dark amoral sea?  Torture is evil without qualification.  When George Bush says, “We don’t torture,” he is lying.  Labeling torture “abuse” or “enhanced interrogation techniques”  scourges language to make it say under extreme duress what is untrue.  Saying you need “all options” open is the roar of beast, not a civilized man. Our leaders have swum out of the amoral sea, slimed, and now boldly declare they live in a moral jungle where the beast rules. [story]

The comment, by US national security adviser Stephen Hadley came amid heated national debate about whether the CIA and other US intelligence agencies should be authorized to use what is being referred to as "enhanced interrogation techniques" to extract from terror suspects information that may help prevent future assaults. . . . During a trip to Panama earlier this month, Bush said that Americans "do not torture."
However, appearing on CNN's "Late Edition" program, Hadley elaborated on the policy, making clear the White House could envisage circumstances, in which the broad pledge not to torture might not apply.
"The president has said that we are going to do whatever we do in accordance with the law," the national security adviser said. "But... you see the dilemma. What happens if on September 7th of 2001, we had gotten one of the hijackers and based on information associated with that arrest, believed that within four days, there's going to be a devastating attack on the United States?"
He insisted that it was "a difficult dilemma to know what to do in that circumstance to both discharge our responsibility to protect the American people from terrorist attack and follow the president's guidance of staying within the confines of law."

WE DON’T TORTURE but we might have to.  The Bush Administration has applied every interpretation possible to language to absolve the evil of torture.  It is important to note that it has looked at all international treaties and domestic laws looking for a way out, to make language say what it does not.  What would be torture here is not torture if it is conducted overseas, or if it has some “exemption.”  No label or change of venue can change the reality. [story]

After 9/11, however, the Bush administration took the view that the prohibition on "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment" simply does not apply to foreign detainees held outside the United States. It pointed to the fact that when Congress ratified the treaty, it stated its understanding that "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment" comprised conduct that would violate the United States Constitution—whose Fifth Amendment prohibits any coercion that "shocks the conscience" in interrogations. Claiming that the U.S. Constitution does not extend to foreigners overseas, the administration reasoned that the treaty prohibition on "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment" is similarly limited.
This legal sleight of hand allows the president to insist repeatedly that he does not condone torture and acts only in accordance with the law, while simultaneously dispatching the vice president to Congress to preserve the loophole that allows the infliction of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment on foreign suspects abroad. That loophole is the legal underpinning of the CIA's reported practice of "disappearing" foreign suspects into secret "black sites" and then using interrogation tactics against them that would unquestionably be forbidden if employed at the agency's Langley, Va., headquarters.

WHAT KIND OF INTELLIGENCE do we get for our efforts and what will people do to avoid torture?  Intelligence expert Larry Johnson writes about a simulation where he and other United States personnel were put through the rigors of “enhanced interrogation techniques.” [story]

After 30 hours, one of my classmates gave me up in exchange for a grape soda and a ham sandwich.

GIVEN UP FOR A HAM SANDWICH?  There are some things an al Qaed’a or Iraqi is unlikely to relent on, but while Cheney seeks an exemption for The Option and some have not been so explicit about what TORTURE enhance interrogation techniques means, many former CIA agent say torture is neither necessary nor desirable.  The Israelis who know a thing or two about the ticking bomb scenario prefer to use rapport to get what information they need. [story]

"We ought to declare we don't do this. We ought to declare the intelligence isn't worth it," said Frank Anderson, a former chief of the CIA's Near East and South Asia division in the agency's Operations Directorate, the clandestine service.

There's also the question of what brutality does to those who carry it out, Anderson said.

PREVIOUSLY NOTED are the use of doctors at Guantanamo to assist in assessments of detainees’ mental condition and how best to use their weaknesses against them.  Hypocrisy and the Hippocratic Oath cross each other in opposite directions.  We are met on the great battlefield of that war of amorality amok in service to the very morality we cherish.[story]

But this administration is now openly and baldly saying that it claims the right to torture, at its discretion. All the fictions that sustained the war on terror -- that abuses were one-time mistakes by low-level grunts; that the rules about human rights weren't clear; that soldiers didn't understand the parameters when they beat and humiliated and tortured prisoners -- have been replaced by a clear declaration: The United States is going to torture people as it sees fit, to subject them to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment wherever and whenever it decides to.

WE FIND OURSELVES again at war.  Our worst selves get the better of our best.