George W. Bush denies the United States uses torture. Nobody believes Dubya, not even his surrogates in the media. You won’t find Rush Limbaugh or Anne Coulter or the various talking heads on FOX News arguing we don’t use torture. What they argue is that torture is effective. Poor Dubya. Maybe, like on the question of WMDs in Iraq, he is once again the victim of bad information. It is safe to assume, when your supporters in the media argue for the use of torture, it is because the Bush Admin-istration has sanctioned torture, so help me, Alberto Gonzales.
What we have here is not a failure to communicate, but another attempt to communicate falsely. Remember how we all laughed at the way Bill Clinton parsed the definition of sex? It’s according to what "is" is. Oral sex is not really sex. Well Dubya has out-Clintoned Clinton. It turns out the Bushies are the direct descendants of the Clintonistas, except we can laugh at lying about sex, but it’s hard to get yuks out of distorting the case for war and now the case for torture. In the universe Dubya inhabits, it all depends on your definition of torture.
If none of us sees or hears the torturing, is there really torture going on? Does water-boarding fit the president’s definition of torture? Why the secret CIA prisons if there is no torture? Why ship prisoners to other countries where we know torture is part of their interrogation process if it is not to allow them to torture? Why would Donald Rumsfeld need his legal lackey to find loopholes in the Geneva Convention if we weren’t interested in using torture as a policy? It is surreal that while Dubya denies we torture, the real political debate going on in the country is not over whether we torture, but whether torture is effective.
The Right’s arguments for the use of torture show how far we have already slid down the slippery slope of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. Their primary argument is torture is effective and necessary. They always bring up the doomsday scenario of the nuclear bomb about to go off in Los Angeles. We have captured the mastermind of the plot and only torture will make him crack. If this sounds like a scene out of the FOX TV series "24," it is because on television the terrorist always cracks just as Kiefer Sutherland applies a little electric shock to his chest cavity. Maybe the news division and the entertainment division at FOX are indistinguishable! The Right likes to point to the author of the necessary torture theory, that infamous egotist of the legal profession, Alan Dershowitz. Apparently conservatives have finally found a lawyer they can love. What common sense (and some Americans who have experienced torture) tell us is, since these terrorists seem willing to kill themselves for their cause, they are probably not going to blurt out the location of the nuclear device before it goes off. Chances are, we are told by those who know better, like John McCain, the torture victim is going to give false information to stop the pain. My feeling is, if the Right knew in that doomsday scenario Hollywood would also be vaporized by the bomb, it might feel differently about the Dershowitz theory.
The torture crowd also likes to point out Israel uses torture. It is instructive that the Right disdains using international precedent for banning capital punishment, but is not above using such precedent when it suits its own purpose. Then there is the argument McCain himself "broke" under torture. This argument has the attractive dual purpose of proving torture is effective and sliming McCain and his Purple Heart at the same time. Except McCain provided false and useless information aimed at stopping the enemy from torturing him, so the Right undercuts its own argument. Incidentally, McCain is a guy who refused the enemy’s offer for release until his buddies also were released, costing him a few extra years at the Hanoi Hilton. If you were in a foxhole would you rather be in there with McCain, Jack Murtha, Max Cleland and, yes, John Kerry or would you prefer Dubya and his Darth Vader-five deferment vice president?
The Nazis used torture. The Japanese under Tojo used torture. Josef Stalin used torture in his gulags. We were able to defeat Germany, Japan and outlast communism in the Soviet Union without resorting to torture. If the use of torture has any moral authority, why isn’t the president making the case instead of Rush Limbaugh? (Note: Rush would probably define torture as not having a maid to shop for prescription pain-killers).
Maybe Dubya isn’t in denial. Maybe he’s just ashamed.
