The man at the airport bar was watching Dick Cheney on FOX News. (No matter where I travel, FOX News is on the monitors, which explains much about our nation's present predicament.)
"I gotta admit," the man said. "I agree with him. I don't like him much, but I agree with him on this torture thing."
I was staring at my Sam Adams and had not initiated a conversation. I'd rather talk to Sam Adams than anyone who agrees with Dick Cheney on anything; especially torture.
"You think we should torture?" He nudged my elbow and became impossible to ignore.
The man was wearing a Texas Rangers gimme cap, a blue denim shirt, and a pair of Dockers. His belly was doing the middle-aged beer push over the rim of his belt and his eyes appeared scrunched up against his nose. An open expression and a round chin made him look friendly, though, and I didn't want to be rude.
"No sir," I said. "I don't think we should torture."
I was hoping this ended the discussion but the amber-colored liquid melting the ice in his glass was also warming him up to a talk with a stranger.
"Why not? What if it was your kid they was gonna kill and torture would get the information so the Seals could rescue your kid?"
"It's not very likely it would provide that information, sir. My guess is that it would end up sending the Seals on a dead-end mission and they are not men to be trifled with. I'd hate to get them mad."
"Yeah, I know; you're being funny. But if it was your kid you'd want the terrorist tortured to get some truth out of him."
Maybe, I thought, but right now I'm being tortured. I looked down the long bar and there wasn't an empty stool, nowhere to hide. My flight was still two hours away and my work was completed and I didn't want to unfold my laptop. I just wanted to talk to Sam Adams and stare at the TV.
"The thing is, sir, it doesn't get the truth. It just gets you something to stop the torture. When they figure out what you want to hear they just make it up and you waste a lot of time chasing after phantoms."
"I think you're wrong and the vice president's right."
"Maybe. I've sure been wrong a lot in my life but I think the vice president's been wrong more in the past few days than I have in my entire life."
I took a big gulp of beer and looked back at the TV. A glistening-lipped blonde with cerulean blue eyes was offering Rupert Murdoch's daily interpretation of the endeavors of America and the wider world. If only she were as intelligent as she was fetching.
"You don't think America should torture, do you?"
He had turned on his bar stool and was staring at my right ear. I raised my empty glass to let the bartender know I needed another and maybe another and another, depending on when the neighbor at my right was departing.
"Nope, I don't. Never. Not ever. Period."
"Well, you're wrong. We gotta do whatever we need to do to protect ourselves and our families."
"Sir, here's the thing. That doesn't protect us. It only makes us more enemies and W has planted a big crop of those for us already so the market is kind of glutted right now."
My voice was steady and not confrontational. I just wanted him to leave me the hell alone and go catch his flight back to Booger Hollow. Turning back to the TV, I had to wonder why we were still talking about the merits of torture in my departure lounge bar or on news broadcasts. What bothered me even more was that Dick Cheney was still in the midst of the discussion. I realize he's a citizen and has a right to an opinion but I don't understand why editors still put him in front of cameras and ask him questions. Of course, I was watching FOX.
"I think you are wrong. That's all. You're just wrong."
"Yes, I reckon you've made that clear."
"But tell me why not. Why don't you think we should?" The man's face had gone soft and his voice sounded slightly tremulous. Alcohol may have launched new emotions.
"Sure. I'll tell you and I'll tell Cheney and W and any other person who would torture a person in my name or my country's name: it's immoral to torture another human being for any reason. I think it's immoral to torture any living creature. Let's remember who we are and how we got here. We got moral power in the world by being a force for right and good. America doesn't torture people. That's what Nazis did, for god's sake. Why would we for a second let ourselves become anything like the vilest types of humans that ever lived?"
My argument sounded convincing to me and my barstool buddy sat silent. He scratched at his chin and ordered a scotch and water. Please don't let him be on my flight, I thought. He'll try to sit next to me.
"You know, if it were up to me," he said after a few minutes of silence, "I'd stick a red-hot branding iron on their ass until they talked. Let 'em suffer."
"It's probably a good thing it's not up to you then, I suppose."
This time he spun quickly on his stool and I turned immediately in his direction almost instinctively as if I were going to defend myself from a swing. But he stuck out his hand in friendship.
"I sure respect what you've got say but I also respectfully disagree. Our country's in danger and we've got to do some new and different things to protect ourselves. I know it ain't right but I think it's worth the risk to get whatever information we can from the bad guys."
I shook his hand.
"Well, I'm afraid you are wrong, my friend. It just slowly turns us into bad guys, too, and to hell with anyone who ruins the name of my country by using torture to protect it. If you have to torture people to save something then you need to look hard at what you are saving."
In a minute we were both zoned out on the television again and then he just laughed. I wondered what was funny until he said, "I'll bet we can agree on something."
"What's that?"
"I'll bet you are as happy as I am ol' W ain't still in there makin' things worse."
"Ha. Finally, common ground," I said.
We touched our glasses in a toast. And then I bought him a drink before he left for his plane, which, fortunately, was not the same flight as mine.
Also at http://www.moorelthink.com
OGDEN NASH SAID" CANDY IS DANDY BUT LIQUOR IS QUICKER
TORTURE OPTIONS ARE DIFFERENT AND THE MOTIVES ARE SICKER
IF YOU TRY ONE FORM OF WATER TORTURE AND IT DOESN'T WORK, DON'T DESPAIR
THERE ARE NUMEROUS VARIATIONS DEPENDING ON WHAT THE VICTIM CAN BEAR
CONCERN ABOUT LEAVING MARKS OR LETHALITY MAY BE OF SOME CONCERN
WITH ENOUGH PRACTICE & EXPERIENCE WHAT WORKS FOR YOU IS EASY TO LEARN
FROM BOARDING TO DRIPPING TO INGESTION OR DUNKING TO NAME A FEW
NONE OF THESE TECHNIQUES REQUIRE 183 TRIALS BEFORE TRYING SOMETHING NEW
WHETHER TO TRY ANOTHER VERSION OR MODALITY DEPENDS ON TIME, CONDITIONS, & OBJECTIVE
IF SECRECY IS OF PARAMOUNT IMPORTANCE THEN THE TORTURER MUST BE SELECTIVE
IF OUTSOURCING A VICTIM TO A SPECIALIST COUNTRY, DENIALABILITY MAY BE A CONSIDERATION
WHO ACCOMPANIES THE UNFORTUNATE PERSON MAY DEPEND ON THE DESTINATION
ACCOUNTABILITY IS RARELY A CONSIDERATION SINCE THE TORTURER BELIEVES HE WILL BE PROTECTED
ESPECIALLY IF THE ADMINSTRATION IN QUESTION SHOWS HOW EASILY THE MATTER IS DEFLECTED
ULTIMATELY WHETHER THE LAW IS FOLLOWED OR JUSTICE IS DONE DEPENDS ON WHAT THE CABAL DICTATES
WHETHER SACRIFICIAL LAMBS ARE USED OR BLANKET PARDONS GIVEN WILL DETERMINE THEIR FATES
Bush applogized to the WHOLE world for the torture in Iraq.
The water boarding torture was done for politics. Get into a war with Iraq so we could control that part of the world.
Now we have
around 4,000 US People dead, 100,000 dead Iraqis .. 2,000,000 refuges hiding in countries close to Iraq.
So much for your Reagan's last hope and light in the night.
I wonder where McCain is in all this? He says don't look into it or go after people. Why did he help writing laws? Was it just political? Or being a coward?
https://secure.aclu.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=Nat_Petition_SpecialProsecutor&s_src=olcpage&s_subsrc=flyer
God help us.
The radical right certainly is'nt.
Justifying torture is like justifying mass murder, or rape, or the abuse of children. As Arianna said in her post, there is no "other side" of this issue: torture is clearly wrong by any measure, and thoroughly illegal. To claim that such-and-such is "not torture" is to ignore not only history and common sense but international treaties that define exactly what torture is, treaties which the US signed and in many cases created.
Somebody asked, "Who would Jesus torture?" For Bible-thumping conservatives this is as legitimate a question as there is. Would JC really approve of waterboarding? Really? Or is this whole Christian thing a front?
Gawd I am so disgusted by this thinking (or lack thereof). What examples does one need to recognize:
It's immoral,.
It's illegal.
It accomplishes nothing (but feel-good illusions of "confirmation").
And creates enemies who will torture us, and anyone else they don't approve of, if they get an opportunity.
If it was good enough for Jesus...
And investigating those who handles these interrogations would send a chill through CIA. The result would be to make our country less safe.
The majority of Americans understand what this is about and support it. And Obama knows that. He will not actually go ahead with these investigations, because it will cost him a lot in political capital.
Looking out for one's own is inherent in our psyches. It's looking out for others that is hard and a mark of loftier principles.
Maybe that's the point? The moral high ground is ours. But we will not change the minds of those who have decided to take the other side of the "argument." I put that in quotes because the law is clear -- both man's and the "god's law" so many want to use in other fights. Why do they abandon God for the sake of torture? And if they will stand pat, even to deny such obvious counter-arguments, they will never yield.
I'm certain: We Don''t Torture. But... I've been wrestling with the whole "prosecute" and "don't prosecute" thing -- purely for selfish reasons. I can see it now: All Torture Trials, 24/7 Torture Hearings -- daily sound bytes, perp walks, denials, appeals... on and on and on. They won't give up.
What then happens to High Speed Rail? Health Care? Education? Immigration? Poverty? Sigh.
On the other hand, would we allow a child molester to go free -- he placed a child in a box with insects or snakes or rats; kept a child awake for days or hung the child on a wall?
No.
I'm not a "religious" person, but didn't Christ say, "Whatever you do for the least of these you do for me." Torturing anyone is torturing Jesus, isn't it?
I remain astounded at the "rightwing" denial of their own standard bearer.
Which is another reason we must have strict rules restraining anyone who is given extreme power over prisoners or others. Ask anyone who has been in prison. There are good guards, but all too many of the "corrections officers" would love to act out Mr. Barstool's fantasies. Does he really want to "protect his family" or just to get his jollies from perversity?
This whole discussion is bringing out some terrifying personality traits in seemingly normal citizens.
And fifty years ago we were aghast at what the Germans allowed to happen.
We put Saddam in and we took him out. Wrong choice both times. Took the Shah out and put in Khomeni, that was really great for the Iranian people. If the harshest alleged criminals are treated with humanity we prove ourselves to be the Americans this country was founded to be. Cheney has never been an active service men. When you recognize how many vets are homeless simply by the trauma of their war years, it is actively un American to torture. I'd like to see Cheney go through a minute of water boarding and see what information he gives up. I would bet he'd give up nothing. Too many people have confessed to crimes they didn't commit just to stop lengthy police interrogation. Time to take back the ideals of a just United States.
Has no one read of how during the Death March the Japanese passing our sickly, emaciated, marching troops in Vehicles would make a game out of decapitating them with their swords? Or how Japanese guards would laughingly steer delirious American soldiers into the path of oncoming Japanese truck convoys just to watch them get run over and turned into a dirty, brown smear on the roadway?
Japanese leaders that participated in this torment were tried and executed after the war as War Criminals, What your friend at the bar doesn't understand is that there is no evidence that any of the torture performed on these GWOT prisoners resulted in any valuable information at all. We might as well have just steered them into the path of an oncoming American truck convoy and let them be reduced to a dirty smear on the roadway.
Americans can't have it both ways. They can't be the "Good Guys" while emulating the "Bad Guys".
(For anyone who is interested, the first hand accounts in Donald Knox's "Death March" paints an unambiguous picture of what being a captive of an amoral society is like.)
I believe you carry that trama with you afterward for a very very long time. Of course, if they do it 5 or 6 times a day for a month, we have a whole other discussion.
Ask someone at SERE to waterboard you to see if you are "just fine" afterward.