Tuesday Torture

Joe Sudbay:

Your president had a busy, busy day yesterday. He cut that deal with the health industry, which seemed to pave the path for reform legislation later this year (although anyone who has dealt with a health insurer knows they change the rules without warning.) So, be wary. Then, he fired the top general in Afghanistan. Today, Obama is meeting with the recipients of the "Top Cops" awards.

So, yesterday was a very busy news day. But, as predicted, cable news and its talking heads were in a frenzy because Wanda Sykes picked on Rush Limbaugh. After a day of that blather, Jon Stewart reviewed the situation and put it into perspective: "Bad jokes and gay marriage are destroying this country, but torture can save it."

Think Progress: Harold Ford: I Would Have Voted To Approve Torture

This weekend, former Vice President Cheney repeated his claim that torture “saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of lives.” Of those, like President Obama, who condemn torture as making America less safe, Cheney insisted, “in effect, we’re prepared to sacrifice American lives rather than run an intelligent interrogation program that would provide us the information we need to protect America.”

This evening on MSNBC, former Democratic congressman Harold Ford, Jr., adopted many of Cheney’s right-wing talking points to defend torture, saying he was “not as outraged as some are about” what happened at Guantanamo. He suggested that he even would have voted to approve torture in order to “prevent the destruction of an American city”:

FORD: You have to remember when this was occurring. This is 2002, 2003. The country was in a different place, in a different space. And if you were to say to me, as an American, put aside my partisanship, that we have an opportunity to gain information that would prevent the destruction of an American city, to prevent killings in American cities, and we have to use certain techniques, I’m one of those Americans that would have voted a certain way, Chris. And that polling said it might have been torture, but I’m not as outraged.

Watch it:

Matthews was incredulous, telling Ford, “You are veering into Cheney country here.” He said Ford’s talking point about the destruction of an American city was “Cheney talk.” “That’s what he used to justify torture,” Matthews said.

The ticking-time-bomb scenario Ford seems to invoke is simply a “red herring” that “doesn’t happen” in the real world. And according to the interrogators themselves, torturing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah — the two Cheney most frequently cites as “proof” of torture’ effectiveness — provided no actionable intelligence.

ThinkProgress released an extensive report today, Why Bush’s ‘Enhanced Interrogation’ Program Failed. Read the whole thing here, and leave your comments here.

digby: De-basing Torture

The argument against torture is slipping away from us. In fact, I'm getting the sinking feeling that it's over. What was once taboo is now publicly acknowledged as completely acceptable by many people. Indeed, disapproval of torture is now being characterized as a strictly partisan issue, like welfare reform or taxes.

Here's a representative exchange from Chris Matthews today in a discussion of whether or not it's a political problem for Nancy Pelosi to be seen as knowing about torture:

Chris Cillizza: There was a poll a week or two ago, an independent poll, a media poll that asked people whether what had gone on a Gitmo was torture and by a large majority people said yes. The next question was did they think that those techniques would be necessary in certain circumstances and a slimmer, but still more people said yes than no so you have this weird disconnect. People do think it is torture, but they feel like if it yeilds results that it's the right thing to do, so this is tough especially as it relates to the Democratic Party base which clearly believes that this is something that is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Matthews: (to Harold Ford) ... You seem to be suggesting you can't be both tough as nails and at the same time looks as if you worry about human rights violations. Is that a problem or not?

Harold Ford: No I ... Eric Holder said this best when referring to the Ted Stevens case in the aftermath when they said they wouldn't move forward when they said the United States would not move forward. He said the most important thing in the justice department is not winning, it is justice.

So, in this sense, I think having the conversation about what happened at Guantanamo Bay, and I'm not as outraged as some about it, because I think some of those techniques were enhanced and might have risen to a level of torture, you have to remember when this was occurring, this was 2002 and 2003. The country was in a different place and a different space and if you were to say to me as an American, put aside my partisanship, that we have an opportunity to gain information that would prevent the destruction of an American city to prevent killings in an American city, and we have to use certain techniques, I'm one of those Americans who would have voted acertain way Chris in that polling that said it might have been torture, but I'm not as outraged.

Matthews: wait, wait. You are veering into Cheney country here.

Ford: no, no, no

Matthews: ... the destruction of an American city? What evidence did you ever have that the enemy had a nuclear weapon that could blow up an American city? That's Cheney talk. That's what he uses to justify torture. We have no evidence that any enemy of ours had a nuclear weapon.

Ford: No, no. I said if thousands of people in America ... we can play the game of associating me with one person or another. I'm just saying ..

Matthews: No but you said blow up an American city. What are you talking about?

Ford: In 2002, 2003, remember where America was. You remember our mindset. If the American people were told that there were those that might have been held at Guantanamo Bay that might have had information, after our country was attacked on 9/11, I'm certain that people would have wanted them to take those, take certain steps. I'm not arguing at all that there was evidence that that would have happened, yet Cheney has said that he hopes that all the data is released and then maybe we'll have an opportunity to see that.

Now it's true that Matthews challenged Ford, but as per usual he misses the point. He thinks the problem with Ford's point is that he used the ticking time bomb scenario when what he actually said was that the country's "mindset" determined the limits (or lack thereof) to what it could do. And ironically, Matthews off point challenge actually forced Ford to lower the stakes even more and admit that he thinks torture is justified pretty much any time people felt threatened.

Some of this probably Ford's reflexive, phony identification with "the middle" which he perceives on this topic as being pro-torture on the basis of the poll Cilizza cited. And sadly, that poll is reflective of the fact that people are starting to feel that it's not just ok to publicly support torture, but that opposing it is nothing more than dopey DFH politics.

Ford seems to think that Cheney's call to release all the CIA info will prove that his nervous nsellie-ism will be validated. I'm not so sure. But, it doesn't matter. If everyone but the "Democratic Base" has so lost all sense of decency that they think torture is a-ok, then I'm sure they won't mind if it turns out that the torture didn't work. They have bought into Cheney's "one percent solution" which holds that even if there's only a one percent chance that an America could be harmed the government must prevent it by any means necessary. It might not turn out to be real, and it could result in a terrible catastrophic blowback down the road, but nobody ever said we wouldn't get our hair mussed. And today, we have the head of the Democratic Leadership Council endorsing the logic behind it.

One hopes this will make a difference, but I doubt it. Since polls are showing that half the country thinks torture is justified, mealy mouthed politicians everywhere will be rushing to join them. There's nothing they hate more than being categorized with the DFHs.

We are in big trouble when torture becomes just another political football. It's the kind of thing that turns powerful empires into pariah nations. Why anyone thinks it's good for America for the world to perceive us as violent, pants wetting, panic artists who could start WWIII at the least sign of threat is beyond me. I certainly don't feel safer.

hilzoy Division

In a comment thread at Obsidian Wings, CharleyCarp makes a very important point about prosecuting Bush administration officials for making torture US policy:

"The people who think prosecution of these people is too divisive need to take into account their continuing conduct. They are trying to sow division right now. I'm not saying we should give in to them, but at a certain point holding back to preserve societal consensus isn't on the menu."

I think this is absolutely right. I do not think that we ought to fail to prosecute Bush officials because it would be divisive -- I think that upholding the rule of law is more important than avoiding divisiveness, and besides, since any prosecution of high administration officials is always divisive, this principle would seem to me to imply that no high official should ever be punished for breaking any law. I think this would be disastrous. I also hate the idea of a double standard for the powerful and the powerless.

That said, some people, possibly including our President, do seem to think that it is important to avoid divisiveness. Anyone who holds this view ought to consider whether there is anything that, say, Dick Cheney might do that would render this consideration beside the point.

I don't mean to suggest that we should prosecute administration officials because they seem to have nothing better to do with their time than accuse the present administration of willfully sacrificing American security. My argument all along has been that we should make the decision whether to prosecute on purely legal grounds; prosecuting people for being complete pains would be obviously abhorrent.

The point is rather that if one were already convinced that someone did deserve to be prosecuted, but were holding back in order to avoid divisiveness, there ought to be some point at which that impediment to prosecution ceases to carry any weight. And it's worth asking where that point is.

Of course, were the administration to decide to prosecute high administration officials who had been criticizing them, that would carry political dangers of its own. (I have wondered whether Cheney is as outspoken as he is precisely to make it seem plausible that any prosecution of him would be an attempt to silence an administration critic.)

That's why I have been in favor of appointing a special prosecutor from the get-go. Find someone of unimpeachable integrity, appoint him or her as a special prosecutor, make him or her completely independent, and let the chips fall where they may.

DougJ Ticking bomb, bitches

I hesitate to post about this, since Cohen begins with “Blogger alert” and agrees that torture is a “moral abomination”, but nevertheless it’s a fascinating glimpse into contemporary Beltway media thinking:

But where I reserve a soupçon of doubt is over the question of whether “enhanced interrogation techniques” actually work. That they do not is a matter of absolute conviction among those on the political left, who seem to think that the CIA tortured suspected terrorists just for the hell of it.

Cheney, though, is adamant that the very measures that are now deemed illegal did work and that, furthermore, doing away with them has made the country less safe. Cheney said this most recently on Sunday, on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “Those policies were responsible for saving lives,” he told Bob Schieffer. In effect, Cheney poses a hard, hard question: Is it more immoral to torture than it is to fail to prevent the deaths of thousands?

It’s a perfect example of the Slate/TNR/WaPo tendency towards “what if genocide is good for housing prices” contrarianism. You know the drill: (a) we live in a dangerous world filled with “messy” choices and (b) it’s important to challenge complacent “consensus” by thinking “outside the box.” It’s why Bill Saletan has to “soak his head” in white supremacist propaganda and compare those who reject racial supremacism to those who reject evolution. It’s why Pinochet should be lauded as a hero, not condemned as a mass murderer. It’s why the public needs to hear Amity Shlaes’s distorted New Deal revisionism over and over again.