Torture
Deceit and denial
It’s been interesting to watch both the Bush administration and the Burmese regime twist and flail after the revelation of grievous misdeeds. Burmese diplomats, borrowing a page from Robert Mugabe, are making noise about “neocolonialism” and insisting that everyone in the world but them is guilty of “confrontation.” But again, we have footage of their goons murdering a Japanese journalist
Torture, continued
A commenter going by “napoleon15” took me to task the other day for this post, one of many in which I’ve denounced the Bush administration’s pro-torture policy. “What the US does to al-Qaida war criminals doesn’t even begin to compare to what the Nazis and others have done,” wrote my respondent. Andrew Sullivan has unearthed a document describing Verschärfte Vernehmung,
The party of torture, the “tumor of tyranny”
Just the other night, eight out of 10 GOP candidates for president offered enthusiastic endorsements of torture, to lusty audience applause in South Carolina. The question posed to them, by pseudo-journalist Brit Hume, concerned a lurid hypothetical about three U.S. shopping malls being bombed. A suspect in a planned fourth attack has been captured. What would these candidates do to
Ashcroft on the Daily
Appearing on the Daily Show of Oct. 18, John Ashcroft defended the use of “alternative techniques” — i.e., torture — in prisoner interrogations. Very important, he argued, for interrogators to do more than just ask “would you please” of terror suspects. Must get them to divulge the plans for “the next attack.” The truth about the torture debate is that
The bill passes
Dahlia Lithwick of Slate breaks down exactly what this detainee rights bill means. Her piece is two days old but still worth reading, as the bill has now passed. Lithwick also makes an interesting point in this piece. The infamous Abu Ghraib photos, she claims, did not shock the nation’s conscience; perversely, they softened up public perceptions and made torture
“The darkest blot on the conscience of the nation”
Those are Senator Pat Leahy’s words on the impending Senate passage of this disgraceful bill on detainee rights. See this NY Times report: “What this bill would do is take our civilization back 900 years,” to before the adoption of the writ of habeus corpus in medieval England, Senator [Arlen] Specter said. Fine by Bush and Cheney, fine by hordes
Torture: the real stakes
An essential post from Marty Lederman [all italics in the original]: — “It’s important to be clear about one thing: The question is not simply whether, in the abstract, it would be a good or acceptable idea for the United States to use such techniques in certain extreme circumstances on certain detainees. I happen to think that the moral, pragmatic,