Pictures from an Atrocity Exhibition
I've had a certain fascination with Mukasey's torturous confirmation for Attorney General. The narrative so far is that he was initially seen as a good pick. Competent and non confrontational to congress. There were two days of hearings, but they ran very different. One day accommodating, the second day intransigent and obfuscatory following the party line
The Stench of Torture.The Senate Subcommittee responded with a written request for clarification
Mukasey, tortured. - By Bonnie Goldstein - Slate Magazine. No response seemed to clarify things or at least I couldn't find it in my RSS feeds. This lead to a procession of declarations by Senators on the committee for and against the nomination, but by weeks end enough had declared for him with the result that Mukasey confirmation will vote out of committee and pass in a floor vote
Schumer, Feinstein Announce Support for Mukasey - washingtonpost.com. In Shumer's (D. NY) case he came down on the nominees side because he seemed to believe that Mukasey would follow the Law whatever the Law was left to
Schumer and Feinstein Back Mukasey - New York Times.
In the middle of the week I listened to a Diane Rehm show segment on this (w/ Susan Page hosting) and was continually struck by the cloying and cute nature of the rationalizations offered
The Definition of Torture.. In general form it goes like this: We'll deny doing anything. We'll declare that, yes, torture is bad and that as good people we don't do bad things: therefore the things we do are not bad. As a second round these people try to distinguish between things that contravene law or just norms. And within law distinguish between US law, or treaty law. Dismissed whenever inconvenient. Finally and without fail they then hide behind the shabby and thin curtain of it being a classified program, to avoid saying anything specific at all.
The issue almost arbitrarily at the center of this is the practice of water-boarding: specifically whether we practice water-boarding or water-boarding lite. Which is to say: simulated drowning or controlled drowning with the lungs filling with water. It is likely that in practice this is a pointless distinction. That if all you are doing (which may be what you state and signal you are doing) is pouring water over the face this is unlikely to be an effective technique. It is when water not air is breathed and enters the body, and the panicked drowning reaction kicks in, that it would even seem like you were at work with the technique at all. And that is drowning. That is torture
waterboarding is just the type of torture then Lt. Commander John
McCain had to endure at the hands of the North Vietnamese. As a former
Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival,
Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I
know the waterboard personally and intimately. Waterboarding is Torture Period (Links Updated # 4) (SWJ Blog). Small Wars Journal.
That is what belief in these techniques signifies. What do we say interrogation is? Pain: up to the point of organ failure and death. To that point and no less. Guests on the program took care to point out the parallels in practice and phrasing from German documents from the Nazi era. Also that in nearer patrimony the defended techniques were designed from SERE training that selected members of the Armed forces undergo to understand and resist enemy interrogations. Which were derived from practices of our enemies, that always were previously condemned. The calisthenics of the Hanoi Hilton, Guadacanal. We believed that what our enemies did sprang from impulses of vengeance, frustration, impotence, and to set public example. As much as to obtain "information". What would hold true, holds true. After hearing it repeated stated I would specifically question the assertion that "these techniques work". We have John McLaughlin's (former acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency) assurances that they do. But from what of these techniques, which he admits were combined, lies the effectiveness. How rigorously quantitatively and free from bias has this been examined? We see the 24isms "It works on TV". We smile and say we set this aside, but it is too clever to admit that TV and the movies are just fiction and not deal with the body of evidence that an image even fictional will carry more weight than an argument of ideas. The argument has been cast heavily in emotional and simplistic terms, the pictures communicate with that. The other side of this is: garbage in garbage out. That the "enhanced interrogated" simply will tell you anything. To which it is countered: we get the truth. But there are really two simultaneous interrogations occurring. The subjugated human intelligence will examine and interrogate its interlocutor, his or her queries and needs, and supply that which will saits it's appetite. They will say whatever, whatever will be listened to, whatever they know will generally seem to establish what you seek to confirm. It should be pointed out that the prime mover of this issue is accountability; providing legal cover for actions already occurred. Some of the guests tried to make a point on the notion of responsibility; of leaving things not done. There will be blood on our hands if there is not blood on our hands. Therefore do everything. In the event of another attack (or its postulation); there is culpability as well in not doing the right and effective thing because you were tragically occupied in visceral, base and vengeful things. There is culpability in doing things that while impossible to measure or account for (in concrete terms to the individual or bureaucratic mind) that change us as a nation, as a people. It should be understood there is potential for staggeringly great human moral failing there.There is culpability in practice and at the margins. What is done in practice is always a little closer to the ground than the theory. Less neat more subjective. A little further down the slippery slope : the place you leave off at the end of one day will be the place you start at on the next. If Judge Mukasey thinks differently about these things he is kidding himself and selling his soul to the devil in the bargain, and our souls as well.
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