Seneca Tips
There was a letter to an editor in Friday's Washington Post the subject was
Mr. Ashcroft and the Memos on Torture. That was how the Post headlined a group of letters. implicated was their own comments on the subject
Legalizing Torture (washingtonpost.com) on Wednesday. All this stemming from Att. General Ashcroft's testimony this week and his refusal to release memo's written by White House lawyers
Bush Didn't Order Any Breach of Torture Laws, Ashcroft Says |
New York Times.
The Abu Ghraib prison scandal has been leading towards a fairly obvious conclusion since Sy Hershs' second article if not the first and since Major General Antonio Taguba was escorted and guarded through his testimony before congress by Stephen Cambone Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.
That the administration was going to manage this by stonewalling, and that
essentially this was deliberate policy cascading top down from the very highest level. Perhaps suffering from slight mismanagement, along the way.
The letter writer makes following hypothetical statements : What if - by using torture against an al qaeda operative U S forces might be able to save one American life, should torture be authorized? What if - by using torture against an al qaeda operative U S forces were able to prevent a significant terrorist attack saving hundreds or thousands of American lives, should torture be authorized? What if - by using torture against an al qaeda operative U S forces were able to prevent a terrorist attack against Britain, should torture be authorized?
I'm not certain of the logical difference between the second and third statement except to underscore the writer's essential tribalism. The letter writer makes all these assertions using a number of repetitive almost formulistic phrases. Significantly naming torture not interrogation as the object of analysis in the formula's coda. The writer feels that these editorials - he names them in plural, the one from the NYT may have been on his mind as well - are [the events] viewed in an intellectual vacuum. When viewed against the realities against of a war against terror taking a stand against torture - the deliberate installment of pain and fear to gain information would appear foolish
Tortured on what evidence? One of his other formulas in his hypothetical is the a priori assertion that he knows these are Al Qaeda operatives, whose guilt is obvious, coexistent and punishment justly concurrent. Guilt only supposed by any man until you pull it, along with their fingernails, out of them. Confession obtained under duress is not used in our judicial system because it is understood to mean nothing. It is important to understand that this guilt, this status cannot be assumed nor can we grant it, even for the sake of an hypothetical.
The writer's steadfast blinkered simplification of this issue leads me to wonder whether his warning against intellectual vacuum is really against what he may perceive as (the) vacuum of intellect. What is being supplied in this letter is little but situational, or as writer perfers "positional", ethics. A very low road.
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