War Crimes

I can't say I'm the least bit shocked at any of the revelations coming out about the prevalence and severity of torture occurring during the last 8 years. Olbermann and Maddow can say it better than I can so I won't go into all the chilling details nor debunk all the insane reasoning. What I will note is the absurdity of claiming torture "works" when one suspect was waterboarded 83 times and the other 183 times. If it "worked," a few times would easily suffice to get all the information necessary to find out actionable intelligence.
183 times means it's NOT working.

The men in our custody have been told that Americans are violent infidels capable of montrous cruelty--torture just proves them right. When these suspects are treated humanely, they are far more likely to start questioning what they've been told about America, and give helpful information--if they have it. American agents, working in a foreign country and culture (often having no command of native languages) often pick up someone low-level or not involved at all. The bad-guy's drivers brother-in-law, as it were. (The real life CIA is nothing like it is in the movies. It's full of people making mistakes, pursuing faulty leads, getting the wrong guy.) And even if they might have the right guy, whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty?" Why should one have to be a citizen to be due this fundamental assumption?

What happened was that Cheney and Bush didn't get the intelligence linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda, because there was no such link. So the order went out to continue the torture until the suspects finally figured out what they had to say to make it stop. Whatever they coughed up, whether verifiable or not, was then seized on by Cheney et al. to justify the invasion, with no details given as to how the intelligence was obtained for reasons of "national security." The torture "worked" when they said what the torturers wanted to hear. Might as well be the Spanish Inquisition.

The truly pathological part is that once this phony narrative was established, it assumed the status of "fact" in the minds of those propounding it. When the Nazis lied, they knew they were lying. When they said they were "resettling" Jews, they knew damn well they were killing them. I honestly think Cheney believed the intelligence he made sure was invented.

It's the scariest kind of mendacity, when the liars believe their own lies. I also think George Bush believed it when he said "The United States does not torture." He'd read the memo from his lawyer saying it wasn't.

Torture is never, ever, ever okay. (Big Mark, if you defend it, I will reject your comment. Read Matt Alexanders "How to Break a Terrorist" instead.) It may be dreadful for the victim, but it is soul-killing for those who perpetrate it. And it begs the question, where was the conscience of these people? (Hence today's Hy-Art). When did their self-righteousness cloud out their sense of right and wrong? When did they start to believe you are an American before you're a human being? A citizen of this country before you are a citizen of the planet?

The truth is the vast bulk of this torture, from waterboarding to Abu Ghraib, had nothing to do with getting intelligence. It was about revenge. These people had dared attack the United States, had dared question our power and hegemony, and that justified any amount of abuse. We dehumanized our enemy and in doing so, lost our humanity.

I'm relieved that Obama put a stop to these techniques, but make no mistake about it, they continue all over and America and certainly the world. Things go on in prisons and detentions centers in this country that are cruel, inhuman and degrading. I was stuck in a tiny holding room with 50 other men for 4 hours once, and this goes on every day. People kick drugs in prison, unattended, all the time, and if you've ever watched someone go through that, the lack of even minimal medical supervision is horrific. There isn't enough staff--we want criminals off the street, but we don't want to pay for anything resembling rehabilitation. Most of the discipline and punishment in prison occurs between inmates, doing the dirty work so that the administration can keep technically "clean" hands. If you declare that you will refuse to engage in any violence under any circumstances, as in a race riot, you risk getting beaten to a pulp for it, and forced into protective custody. Inmates are victimized by other inmates all the time--the adminstration is too overwhelmed to prevent it, or doesn't really care.

Human beings who exercise dominance over other human beings will abuse that power, no one is exempt. Thinking we are different, just by virtue of our Americanness, is the height of arrogance. If it still means anything special to be American, we need to investigate and prosecute the torturers to the fullest exent of the law, period.