what is torture?
“Gruesome interrogations”
What just popped into your mind? Did it involve a car battery and some wires, maybe a power drill and a hammer? I bet it didn’t involve water-boarding in the presence of a doctor, or a slap across the face. But “gruesome” techniques is how the AP describes the isolated interrogation methods under the Bush administration in an MSNBC article that never really elaborates any further to explain what makes them so “gruesome”; allowing you to assume they consisted of the images that just popped into your head.
What the article was referring to were harsh interrogation techniques that the Obama administration banned and just released details on; water-boarding under doctor supervision (used only on two terror suspects), slapping, sleep depravation, and confinement. There is some debate as to whether these techniques are actually torture, but apparently NBC feels that this constitutes not just torture, but the elevated degree of “gruesomeness”. This leaves the question, what would NBC define as the kind of torture that most of us think of when we hear the word; you know, car batteries, electrodes, finger nail pulling, that kind of torture? Super-duper-ultra-gruesome-torture?
Even if we do define these techniques as torture, are there no circumstances that warrant them being an option (even the much more “gruesome-torturous” techniques)? If the passengers on flight 93 had captured one of their hijackers and were able to take control of the plane by systematically breaking the fingers of their captive, would that have crossed the line? If we could go back in time and water-board Mohammed Atta to prevent 9/11, is there anyone who would not make that tradeoff?
Does it make a difference that the two instances that required water-boarding were used only after intense interrogations failed and were performed under doctor supervision, and directly lead to the uncovering of a plot to follow up 9/11 with the hijacking of planes to crash into buildings in Los Angeles? Literally saving thousands of American lives.
Do you think it does us any good to define these activities as torture, then admitting to the world that we engaged in torture, when our enemies interpret ”torture” completely differently then we just defined it? When we say we “tortured”, they read it as we burned people with acid, lopped off body parts, electrocuted, ripped off finger nails, you know the kinds of things they define to be torture.
If our enemies announced to the world that the most harsh treatment they would ever possibly but rarely consider was to put their prisoners through supervised water boarding and face slapping, would that not make our soldiers’ mothers sleep better at night? Would they not trade that “torture” any day with the prospect of having their children beheaded, raped, beaten, mutilated, killed?
Bottom line, Obama may very well believe water-boarding is torture, but what good does it do to publicly say this? He has the power to stop it, but why make a spectacle out of it? If he was truly acting altruistically in the name of humanity and moral standards, couldn’t he have just quietly put an end to the practice just knowing he made a difference? No, he had to make it a political issue, appeasing his Bush hating base, in the process making our country less safe, alienating our intelligence community, and emboldening our enemy.