after arguing stridently against torture, he then offers:
"There may be an argument for exempting the CIA from the McCain amendment. If so, the president and vice president should publicly make the case. They should say why they believe treatment of prisoners outside the Geneva Conventions would provide vital intelligence to protect us. They should give examples of how such treatment has produced valuable intelligence... Sooner or later this nation will come to its senses and remember how important international law and the Geneva Conventions are to our standing in the world and the protection of our citizens."fair enough.
if they want to make their case, they should give examples where torture has 'worked', and they should also provide examples where it hasnt worked - and that includes not only the al-Libi nonsense - but also the reality of what torture is actually like.
Laura Rozen writes:
" I was in a torture chamber once, in the basement of a police station in Kosovo days after it was abandoned by Serb forces defeated by Nato. It was hideous as you would imagine. The British soldiers who were with me were equally shocked. A lot of the instruments and interrogation drugs I saw there also suggest they were not designed to cause organ failure or death in their victims, just pain and terror, as Mr. Cheney and his office mates suggest is what they are going for in terms of legal wiggle room. And like Mr. Cheney and his office mates, Mr. Milosevic and his Serb troops didn't seem to overly concern themselves with the Geneva conventions, until it was a bit late. Having laid my eyes on what such a scene looks like, I just associate such activities with the forces of not only the pathological and depraved, but those who are headed for defeat. If you've seen it, you realize in a way that's hard to explain, it's the tactics of the losers. If Cheney and his office mates haven't had the experience, perhaps they should. And I really don't think it's inconceivable that the remote possibility of the Hague may lie in some of their futures. Things change fast when they do, as history shows, and they could find their current willing protectors eventually chucked from office, and a whole new climate at home and abroad."Fortunately, we don't all have to get on a plane to Kosovo or Uzbekistan. As I mentioned yesterday, i received an email from the ACLU saying that the maladministration has until next Tuesday, November 15 to file (another) appeal to stay the release of the Darby photos from Abu Ghraib. If the maladministration wants to argue for torture, then let's lay out the facts, and call on them not to fight the release of these photos.
if the maladministration wants to argue for the need for torture, and all the wingnuts wanna play some ticking-time-bomb-game - then lets focus on these 84 photos and the 4 videos - and let's focus on how many of these poor tortured souls (and bodies) were ever guilty of anything, and/or if any of them ever coughed up anything more useful than blood and vomit.
the simplistic ticking-time-bomb scenario has a certain appeal for the incurious - but its intellectually dishonest to ignore the false-positives and the subsequent horror. and for the 'morans' who believe "physical abuse without intent to to cause permanent injury or loss to vital organs is not torture," let's show them the Darby pictures - which will prove that:
a) torture doesnt require loss of organs AND
b) we actually do cause permanent injury - including the most permanent of all.
surely, these photos are relevant in the midst of all the current noise about torture (and evil Cheney's role in the promotion of torture) - i cant for the life of me understand why nobody is talking about these photos.
Release the photos NOW.
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