The right's reaction to the torture memos has been depressingly predictable -- they've all chosen to rationalize, in one way or another, the horror of what was done. But few have been as callous as Abe Greenwald:
Slapping is a nasty business, but if you tell me it’s torture I’ll slap myself to make sure I’m awake. Though chances are I am, seeing as I’m regularly sleep-deprived. And confession by bee sting simply must be used in the next Austin Powers movie.Part of the reason I wrote this piece contrasting the Bybee memos with the ICRC's report on torture is that once you've crossed the line, it's difficult not to cross the new line. So "slaps" were approved, but if the ICRC report is correct those "slaps" turned into outright beatings. And while the bug was never used, Abu Zubayda was stuffed in a small box with three relatively fresh gunshot wounds, one of which reopened before he passed out. The clinical language used in the memos, while horrifying on its own, does little justice to what likely happened.
Greenwald also defended waterboarding:
An unapologetic waterboarding policy would mean the U.S. could dispense with its wink-and-nod renditions, its interminable legal parsing, and its ever-conflicted public attitude. Waterboarding is quick, bloodless, painless, and uniquely effective; if explicitly overseen by competent appointees, it would doubtless become more of each.
Waterboarding is torture. It was torture when the Khmer Rouge used it. It was torture when the Spanish used it on the Jews during the Inquisition. It was torture when we prosecuted Yukio Asano for using it on an American civilian in World War II. It is not "painless," and it very clearly violates the various legal prohibitions on torture that the United States is obligated to follow, and none of these things can be rationalized by the presence of "competent appointees." Moreover, it's efficacy as an intelligence-gathering tool is incredibly suspect, note that the above examples suggest that the practice is only effective at inducing suffering.
That's not the only reason of course. The other is that both Zubayda and KSM were waterboarded to the point where depravity meets absurdity, something we didn't know before the release of the memos. It's self-evident that if waterboarding were so effective, it wouldn't need to be used so much. Which is exactly why, as Andrew Sullivan points out, some people in the CIA lied about its use, claiming that KSM "sang right away. He cracked real quick.” He sang so beautifully and cracked so quick that the CIA needed to waterboard him for a few more weeks to keep him singing, right?
First they said it wasn't torture. Then they said it was OK because it worked. Now they're stuck arguing that the evil of KSM justifies violating everything this country stands for. The arguments for torture dissolve in the light, which is why torture apologists want to keep them secret. The details have to be mysterious, so your mind can fill in the ambiguities with your own worst nightmares. You become pliable, accepting of evil, because you begin to believe that whatever this mysterious evil is, it can't be as terrible as the one you fear. This is ever the way that good people come to justify the unjustifiable. But we now know that torture was ineffective, it was unnecessary, it was illegal, and it was done in blatant violation of everything this country stands for. I don't care that KSM is an evil person, and I don't care that our torture methods weren't as depraved as those of al-Qaeda. I care about this country, and what I know is that the fight against terrorism cannot be won if we allow ourselves to sink to their depths, when we begin judging ourselves not according to the principles of the Constitution but to the values of thugs and murderers. If we have fallen so far that we judge ourselves by that standard, we will have lost.
-- A. Serwer
