President Bush on Monday defended U.S. interrogation practices and called the treatment of terrorism suspects lawful. “We do not torture,†Bush declared in response to reports of secret CIA prisons overseas.
And unless you’ve been living in a self-imposed media blackout, you know of the recent revelations that, in fact, we do torture.
The CIA used a widely condemned interrogation technique known as waterboarding on three suspects captured after the September 11 attacks, CIA Director Michael Hayden told Congress on Tuesday.
“Waterboarding has been used on only three detainees,” Hayden told the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was the first time a U.S. official publicly specified the number of people subjected to waterboarding and named them.
And then in recent Senate hearings, the legal advisor for the military claims he is “unequipped” to answer a hypothetical question about water boarding. You’ll have to watch it yourself to get the full flavor, it’s short at just over 1 minute.
There seems to be some confusion in the Bush Administration about what constitutes torture and when the borderline behavior is acceptable. To them, I propose this: If there’s a question about the relative nature of a practice being deemed torture, the people who are charged with making the call should be subjected to the practice firsthand. Since many of them are eye-for-an-eye christians anyway, this would be appropriate behavior.
In the meantime, I say to the humans who inhabit this country who are still capable of rational and independent thought, let’s not reprise this for four more years. Tweet
