point of order…

Posted on Monday 11 May 2009

There are lots of levels to the Torture Debate:
  • Torture is outlawed by the Geneva Conventions, an agreement that we’ve readily endorsed.
  • Torture is deliberate mistreatment of other human beings, inconsistant with "all men are created equal."
  • Torture doesn’t produce trustworthy information.
  • The U.S. has opposed Torture of prisoners when other people do it.
Each one of those points has arguments on either side, pro or con. But none of them are addressing what’s on the table right this minute. Right now, the allegation is that:
  • We tortured our prisoners with a specific aim – to get them to confirm that al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq government were in cahoots, that Iraq was a participant in the 9/11 attack. Our "Torture Program" was instituted to extract a reason for invading Iraq, whether it was true or not. And it was not.
All of the stuff Cheney is saying about how they went to the OLC, and about saving American lives is immaterial to the question at hand. In one specific, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, was sent to Egypt and tortured until he told them what they wanted to hear. He subsequently recanted and admitted he was lying to make the torture stop, but the information was still used by both Colin Powell and Bush in their cheerleading for war. This is a monsterous allegation way in front of those other questions

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