When future generations look back in disgust on early 21st century America, columns like this will be held up as proof of the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the media elites of this era:
Now he is in American custody. What will happen? How do we get him to reveal his group’s plans and the names of his colleagues? It will be hard. It will, in fact, be harder than it used to be. He can no longer be waterboarded. He knows this. He cannot be deprived of more than a set amount of sleep. He cannot be beaten or thrown up against even a soft wall. He cannot be threatened with shooting or even frightened by the prospect of an electric drill. Nothing really can be threatened against his relatives — that they will be killed or sexually abused.
He knows the new restrictions. He knows the new limits. He may even suggest to his interrogators that their jobs are on the line — that the Justice Department is looking over their shoulders. The tape is running. Everything is being recorded. He is willing to give up his life. Are his interrogators willing to give up their careers? He laughs.
This business of what constitutes torture is a complicated matter. It is further complicated by questions about its efficacy: Does it sometimes work? Does it never work? Is it always immoral? What about torture that saves lives? What if it saves many lives? What if one of those lives is your child’s?
Where do you even start? Where do you even start?
Joshua
Wait, is this guy claiming that the WTC wouldn’t have been attacked if only we tortured a bunch of people beforehand?
Ash
What if one of those lives is your child’s?
Oh hell.
Mr Furious
Where do you even start?
You don’t. It’s a waste of fucking time. The die is cast on this issue, and we’re a worse country for it.
Kryptik
The WaPro(-Torture) strikes again!
God, what unsufferable hacks.
Svensker
You mean we can no longer even threaten people with electric drills? What will they outlaw next? Child rape?
Mr Furious
Oh, and that comment was without clicking through… Now that I have, I was not surprised a bit that it was the Washington Post. They are all-in on this.
Travis
Poor Richard Cohen. If only there were written reports from experienced, effective interrogators that don’t use torture that he could have used for reference. If only there was empirical evidence from our use of torture that produced useless confessions of nonexistent plots. If only there were books or articles on moral reasoning available to him.
If there were a special olympics for newspaper columnists, Richard Cohen would still lose.
August J. Pollak
What’s sad is before clicking the link, I saw the WaPo URL and thought “alright, is it Will or cohen?” Only six or seven years ago I never would have thought it’s the latter.
Keith
I would imagine that if a terrorist suspect knew our “new” regulations prohibit threatening them with a power drill, they would probably also know that our “old” regulations prevented the actual drilling of someone’s head.
mainsailset
Can’s start at the beginning so will jump in from somewhere along the line. Just how many of these people would be willing to put our country on the line and consider torture-gained information actionable? Would they send a loved one out as well as put our country at risk, not to mention say attack an ally because we waterboarded someone who told us of a plot being hatched in France or Britain?
Jake
Amazing the biggest proponents of torture and violence have themselves never put their lives on the line for anything or anyone.
JGabriel
Before you know it, you won’t even be able to bring a hammer down on a child’s testicles without a White House lawyer writing a memo to approve it first.
.
gopher2b
I wish they would have hearings on this. I would love to see FBI agent after FBI agent get up and testify that (1) torture does not work, and (2) befriending a prison does. Saddam Hussein can be Exhibit #A.
Morbo
@August J. Pollak: And don’t I just feel like a wild-eyed optimist for expecting it to be Krauthammer. I don’t usually think I need to become more cynical, but…
pharniel
@10 – yes. all of it. yes.
they’re basically just torture porn fanatics that bust a nut thinking about how we get ‘them’, where the person being tortured is a prop for their power fantasies.
until it happens to them. then they’ll scream bloody murder about Big Government and Big Brother etc. etc. etc.
they’re gigantic sadistic bullies, the kind you cheer for when they are horribly murdered by their victims in revenge dramadies.
Brandon
I almost clicked the link and then I saw it was a column by Richard Cohen and I decided, why bother. DougJ, you might be better off taking my tact regarding Cohen. Just like thread trolls, media trolls like Cohen are best ignored and deprived of oxygen. I was going to say that he stopped being relevant years ago, but then I asked the question, “when was he ever relevant?”
Keith G
I have added my 2 cents to the growing list of commenters showing distain for this idiocy.
4tehlulz
This column couldn’t serve al Qaeda’s interests more if it was written by Osama bin Laden himself.
rumpole
For raw stupidity pedantically expressed, there is no finer writer.
asiangrrlMN
I can’t even muster up the outrage because this is so par-the-course these days in the political Village.
Fuck. Just…fuck.
jibeaux
Well, I have always liked this one from Chief Justice Earl Warren…
It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties . . . .which make the defense of our nation worthwhile.
In getting the quote right, I found a lot of other good unsourced ones (the above one is in a court decision): Life and liberty can be as much endangered from illegal methods used to convict those thought to be criminals as from the actual criminals themselves. Many people consider the things which government does for them to be social progress, but they consider the things government does for others as socialism.
Leelee for Obama
When, in the future, Americans look back on this issue, as well as others, I hope they will know that this article was an outlier, in the same way they will know that the tea-baggers and Town Hallers were outliers, in the same way they will know that those who called President Obama a S-ist were outliers, in the same way they will know that evolution wasn’t ditched from curricula to satisfy radicals who wanted the Creation myth to be taught as science . I hope this with all my heart, because, if they don’t know all this, my Grandchildren and their children will live in an America that bears no resemblance to the Nation I still love. If they don’t know all these things, I hope they live somewhere else.
Demo Woman
Whether or not they gained information from torture is irrelevant. When the FBI, who had trained interrogators, were thrown aside for the CIA who was not trained, they endangered the nation.
What about the ticking time bomb? If it takes one to two months of torture to provide information, wouldn’t that be a tad late. Where’s Jack Bauer when you need him?
General Winfield Stuck
I read this piece of obnoxious drivel early this morn and it gave me a knot in the gut. Cohen has done some grade a wanking over the years but this was straight out of Dick Chinny’s book of muddle just enough to slither away uncaught for being held to account.
We hung Japanese Officers after WW2 for waterboarding POW”s . But these fools noodle it through the filter of American Exceptionalism, as though this demands a different standard of evaluation and judgment. It’s not that hard, or shouldn’t be, that waterboarding someone once, let alone 183 times is torture. Not to mention all the other thuggish shit.
I give Tweety credit for dismembering Duncan Hunter yesterday, with a lot of help from Rep. Wasserman-Shultz, on Hardball attempting to do the same as Cohen.
I hate these sadistic motherfuckers with a passion, and even more their enablers and apologists on my teevee set.
PaulW
Where to start? How about suing the WaPo for FRAUD?
To anybody with a Washington Post subscription, please for the love of God look into filing a lawsuit. The Washington Post is ignoring nearly every ethics requirement of journalism, providing poorly researched articles, and offering up truckloads of disinformation. All in the attempt to suck up to their neocon wingnut overlords.
This isn’t about free speech. It’s about lousy customer service. It’s about a poorly-run business that’s killing itself with incompetence and terrible product.
vacuumslayer
I hope the next time some dumbass Americans get caught in Iran or North Korea, the folks in those countries don’t have such “deep thoughts” about torture.
NutellaonToast
Couldn’t Ishmael even be a cab driver or someone I can relate to? It’s really hard to get revved up about
exacting revengegetting information from a figment of Richard Coen’s imagination.Stefan
Imagine the following column being written about a career criminal in police hands, and tell me why it doesn’t lead to the conclusion that, if Cohen believes we should allow the military and CIA to torture, we shouldn’t allow local police departments to torture as well……
Call him Ishmael.
Call him a Crip or a Blood or a Latin King or anything else you want, but understand that he is willing — no, anxious — to live a life of crime. Call him also a prisoner, and know that he works with others as part of a gang. Ishmael is someone I invented, but he is not a far-fetched creation. You and I know he exists, has existed and will exist again. He is a professional criminal.
Now he is in LAPD custody. What will happen? How do we get him to reveal his criminal gang’s plans and the names of his accomplices? It will be hard. It will, in fact, be harder than it used to be. He can no longer be waterboarded. He knows this. He cannot be deprived of more than a set amount of sleep. He cannot be beaten or thrown up against even a soft wall. He cannot be threatened with shooting or even frightened by the prospect of an electric drill. Nothing really can be threatened against his relatives — that they will be killed or sexually abused.
He knows the new restrictions. He knows the new limits. He may even suggest to his interrogators that their jobs are on the line — that the LAPD brass and Internal Affairs and the District Attorney’s office are looking over their shoulders. The tape is running. Everything is being recorded. He is willing to give up his freedom. Are his interrogators willing to give up their careers? He laughs.
Michael D.
I would like to ask Cohen, Krauthhammer, and others if it’s ok to torture a woman or child in the proverbial “ticking time bomb” scenario.
joes527
@gopher2b:
Useless.
“But if it would save one life…” is kryptonite for fact based discussion.
blogenfreude
I started with this, but it almost certainly won’t work:
That this sort of thinking is tolerated in this society is damning. Torture is illegal – Saint Ronnie signed a bill that said so, and multiple treaties say so. It doesn’t work – a guy present at KSM’s interrogation said so (hearing w/ Sheldon Whitehouse). We are better than this, or so I thought. Mr. Cohen, you are an insulated and sick little man, and your medieval views are disgusting. You need to address this.
4tehlulz
@Michael D.: Silly Michael, those aren’t women and children; they’re individuals withholding information regarding terrorism and/or terrorism-related activities and/or personnel.
Stooleo
I haven’t read the WaPo since Froomkin left. It really needs to just go away.
Deborah
@Travis:
You convince the captive that the battle is done, it’s lost, and they’re removed from anything further that’s happening. Might as well cooperate. If you know this, and I know this, why the hell can’t the WaPo (I guessed which paper it would be! Wheee!) hire someone to look at WWII history?
As for saving my own child….that story about the bomb counting down next to a daycare center is dumb. a) If you know almost where it is, and you know when it will go off, and you know the person in captivity absolutely beyond the shadow of any doubt has the intel, why don’t you expand your hyptothetical to know exactly where the bomb is? You’ve hypothetically granted yourself all the other intel. b) In real life, the captive is going to hold out until the bomb goes off. Yes, yes, on 24 and Alias the captive always gives up the intel in a timely fashion so that the hero can sprint off and de-activate the timer at 0:00:01, but why? He should have held out a mere 2 seconds longer.
gnomedad
Soldiers put their freakin’ lives on the line, but CIA interrogators will be totally intimidated if their subject suggests they are making a bad career move.
Steve LaBonne
Just another symptom of a society in terminal moral and intellectual decline. If Cohen wants to see a real threat to the survival of the US he should look in the mirror.
jwb
@Michael D.: More to the point, I would rather ask them if it’s ok to torture a WaPo columnist in a ticking time bomb scenario.
4tehlulz
>>that story about the bomb counting down next to a daycare center is dumb
Timothy McVeigh disagrees with that assessment, though I doubt Mr. Cohen would support waterboarding Timothy McVeigh.
Stefan
And now from our Iranian colleagues:
Call him Ishmael.
Call him a terrorist or a seditionist or anything else you want, but understand that he is willing — no, anxious — to give his life for his cause, which is to overturn the legitimate election victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and install a pro-Zionist, pro-American regime. Call him also a captive, and know that he works with others as part of a anti-Iranian team, all of whom are prepared to die, willingly, in order to overthrow the glorious Islamic Republic and deliver us to the hands of our American and Zionist enemies. Ishmael is someone I invented, but he is not a far-fetched creation. You and I know he exists, has existed and will exist again. He is the enemy.
Now he is in Iranian custody. What will happen? How do we get him to reveal his group’s plans and the names of his colleagues? It will be hard. It will, in fact, be harder than it used to be. He can no longer be waterboarded. He knows this. He cannot be deprived of more than a set amount of sleep. He cannot be beaten or thrown up against even a soft wall. He cannot be threatened with shooting or even frightened by the prospect of an electric drill. Nothing really can be threatened against his relatives — that they will be killed or sexually abused.
He knows the new restrictions. He knows the new limits. He may even suggest to his interrogators that their jobs are on the line — that the international community is looking over their shoulders. The tape is running. Everything is being recorded. He is willing to give up his life. Are his interrogators willing to give up their careers? He laughs.
This business of what constitutes torture is a complicated matter. It is further complicated by questions about its efficacy: Does it sometimes work? Does it never work? Is it always immoral? What about torture that saves Iranian lives? What if it saves many Iranian lives? What if one of those lives is your child’s?
Comrade Darkness
Where to start?
How about go back and read the descriptions of the very successful nazi interrogators. They knew what they were doing. Used social engineering and psychology to get exactly what they wanted. It’s not like they had an qualms about hurting people either, but funny that when they wanted information, that wasn’t what they did.
dmsilev
@Morbo: Nah, wouldn’t be Krauthammer. These days, he’s obsessed with proving that Obamacare will consist primarily of ninja squads that will lurk in the bushes and shoot poisoned blow-gun darts at grandma.
-dms
someguy
I like the Republican position. They are in favor of torture, and in favor of defeat in Afghanistan.
I think it’s a winner. I don’t see how they could possibly go wrong at the polls with this.
The only thing they need, IMHO, is more Schiavo. Speaking of which, Daddy Schiavo died this week. No word on whether they had to starve him out first. Sounds mean, but I presume he was braindead too, based on the litigation he filed.
Ajay
Am I the only one who thinks Cohen is making a case that its justifiable to do torture on American soldiers caught in act of war. There is no reason to have accountability as its the prerogative of those holding the captive.
r€nato
CNN has a front page story about this woman in Iran
who faces the death penalty after she confessed under torture to taking part in the murder of 3 relatives. She now says she only admitted to culpability in order to stop the torture.
I wonder what wingnuts would have to say about this case with regards to the use of torture in order to elicit confessions.
If they’re not hypocrites, then they should approve of Iran’s actions. Amirite?
Bill E Pilgrim
One of the best TT cartoons ever just up, and as is often the case, perhaps the most eloquent commentary on the whole thing.
http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2009/09/01/tomo/
DuggleBogey
There’s only three things wrong with torture:
1. It’s illegal.
2. It’s immoral.
3. It’s scientifically proven not to work.
Other than those things, torture is great.
Leelee for Obama
{{Timothy McVeigh disagrees with that assessment, though I doubt Mr. Cohen would support waterboarding Timothy McVeigh}}
I agree with this, but my question is, why?
Is it because McVeigh was an American?, Or because it would be unconstitutional?. Or because it would be unlawful under Treaty? Or because McVeigh was white? Or because it was all of the above?
So many questions, no answers.
kay
There’s a solution to all this angst. Write new laws.
If the pro-torture faction the media are not willing to write this stuff honestly, and lobby for a new law regarding torture, they should be ridiculed for indulging in all this meaningless drama.
Enough already. Torture is unlawful. We have a process for bringing it within the law, and I can only assume that all of these media shills are sincere, and law-abiding. Time for them to put up or shut up.
We’ve been letting them babble on for two years and none of them are willing to demand laws and treaties be repealed or amended.
That’s the next step, and if they won’t take it, they’re just blowing smoke.
Zifnab
I just imagine Cohen staring at his flaccid penis while typing this.
I mean, holy hell. We’ve been flipping mob guys and other organized criminals for years without resorting to the Jack Bauer Option. You’d think before 2002 the CIA and the FBI were completely incapable of fighting crime until the Bush Admin came along and took the gloves off.
Once again, Cohen plays concern troll and goes on a shrill spittle flecked diatribe about everything he doesn’t know. How can cops interrogate someone if they’re not allowed to shove barbed wire up a guy’s anus? What will the NSA do if they’re forbidden from tapping your phone without a FISA warrant? When did throwing someone gently against a pillowy soft padded cell wall after allowing them a generous 6 hours of sleep and a dish of delicately prepared Chicken Cordine Bleu become a crime?!
Hey, Cohen. You’re a “journalist”. Why don’t you FIND THESE THINGS OUT. Fucking lazy ass bitch.
Zifnab
I just imagine Cohen staring at his flaccid wang while typing this.
I mean, holy hell. We’ve been flipping mob guys and other organized criminals for years without resorting to the Jack Bauer Option. You’d think before 2002 the CIA and the FBI were completely incapable of fighting crime until the Bush Admin came along and took the gloves off.
Once again, Cohen plays concern troll and goes on a shrill spittle flecked diatribe about everything he doesn’t know. How can cops interrogate someone if they’re not allowed to shove barbed wire up a guy’s anus? What will the NSA do if they’re forbidden from tapping your phone without a FISA warrant? When did throwing someone gently against a pillowy soft padded cell wall after allowing them a generous 6 hours of sleep and a dish of delicately prepared Chicken Cordine Bleu become a crime?!
Hey, Cohen. You’re a “journalist”. Why don’t you FIND THESE THINGS OUT.
JGabriel
Michael D.:
We already know the answer to that. Ask John Yoo.
See also Torchwood, Season 3. So sad that the Russel Davies has so thoroughly capitulated to CIA propaganda.
.
GregB
Well, we’ve recently had two incidents where Americans were held in custody by the two remianing members of the axis of evil.
Both have been released and I can’t seem to recall that in either case, torture has been alleged.
Mission accomplished. People can expect better treatment from the North Koreans and the Iranians than from the US.
Cohen is a moral degenerate and I told him so in my e-mail to him.
rz
The arguments in favor of torture are overwhelming. One wonders why we actually ever stopped using it?
r€nato
The evidence is abundant that torture is almost always useless for gathering useful intelligence. But even if it did work, I wouldn’t care. In fact, it would be worse if it did. Because torture would not stop with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. It would soon be extended to anybody captured by US forces. And in time, prosecutors in the US would demand the right to use torture… of course, ‘in select, highly limited circumstances’. And who could possibly be in favor of criminals’ rights???
Leelee for Obama
In addition, does anyone find this pile slightly more nauseating due to today being the anniversary of the Nazi/Soviet invasion of Poland? Blarrgh!
Stefan
Call him John.
Call him a terrorist or a air pirate or anything else you want, but understand that he is willing — no, anxious — to give his life for his cause. Call him also a captive, and know that he is a US Navy pilot who was shot down in a criminal bombing raid on the People’s Republic of Vietnam. John is someone I invented, but he is not a far-fetched creation. You and I know he exists, has existed and will exist again. He is the enemy of our homeland.
Now he is in Vietnamese custody. What will happen? How do we get him to reveal the American military’s plans to bomb our factories and schools and homes and kill our families? It will be hard.
This business of what constitutes torture is a complicated matter. It is further complicated by questions about its efficacy: Does it sometimes work? Does it never work? Is it always immoral? What about torture that saves Vietnamese lives? What if it saves many Vietnnamese lives? What if one of those lives is your child’s?
Da Bomb
@Stooleo: Even when Froomkin was there, the WaPo still needed to go away.
I wouldn’t wipe my cat’s ass with that newspaper.
spavis
You know what would save a lot of lives? Better drivers. better licensing. Enforcing speedlimits. There’s a lot of real boring shit we could do to save people every damn day. But we’ll crawl through hellfire to save 1 person from being killed by terrorists. And by doing that the terrorists win. Whether by car accident or car bomb is still amounts to a dead person. And it’s a hell of a lot easier to save people from dying in car accidents so why don’t we give two shits?
El Cid
There was no real history before 2001.
Yes, we have a sort of genetic level memory of how Ronald Reagan created this nation thousands of years ago by driving out the hippies and personally slaying the Soviet Nicaraguan menace, and how his tears at the beauty of an America morning carved the Grand Canyon.
But this nation only began 8 years ago when Dick Cheney had to figure out how to Keepusafe.
These lessons about torture and rights and stuff might be easy to figure out if we had been around with, like, written or even recorded history and shit, for maybe a few decades.
Instead we had to start from nothing and Dick Cheney and Beltway punditarians waging a struggling to keep our brand new nation from attack.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
Where do you even start? Where do you even start?
Well, personally, I’d like to start by having this guy strapped down in a cell with someone screaming “Tell us the plans, Ishmael!” and bringing out the electrodes.
He might see some of the flaws with his scenario and ideas. Or, then again, he might still be too dense to get it.
jon
We put some soft walls in our detention centers, in case we were no longer allowed to throw them against the hard ones. But then the liberals throw us this curveball! Now what the fuck are we supposed to do?
Dave
Shorter Cohen:
“If you can’t rape kids and crush their testicles, how can you keep America safe?”
gnomedad
@joes527:
Excellent meme. Consider it stolen.
Stefan
This business of what constitutes torture is a complicated matter. It is further complicated by questions about its efficacy: Does it sometimes work? Does it never work? Is it always immoral? What about torture that saves lives? What if it saves many lives? What if one of those lives is your child’s?
This business of what constitutes rape is a complicated matter. It is further complicated by questions about its efficacy: Does rape sometimes work? Does it never work? Is rape always immoral? What about rape that saves lives? What if it saves many lives? What if one of those lives is your child’s?……
Bulworth
“This business of what constitutes torture is a complicated matter.”
No, no, no, no, no. And no. The religious right has been telling us for decades that there are moral absolutes. There is right and wrong. There is no “complicated”. It is all very clear.
Scott
After all that, Cohen even complains that jailing Judith Miller for contempt of court was torture.
Cohen doesn’t have the morals of a rabid dog.
Leelee for Obama
What just occurred to me-thanks to Spavis reference to car accident deaths, it that 18,000 to 20,000 Americans die each year due to lack of health care access. Imagine if we decided to torture Republicans until they voted for Single-Payer. Like some used to say in some Asian war I barely remember-grab ’em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.
Alyson
Start with “Call me Ishmael.” Clearly Cohen doesn’t comprehend the allusion.
asiangrrlMN
@Leelee for Obama: Goddamn it! You got it. This is what the Dems need to do–start parroting this crap in the case of healthcare and–no, it wouldn’t work because IOKIYAR or however that acronym goes.
rec
Not even a soft wall??
Leelee for Obama
@Alyson: Apparently, Cohen doesn’t do nuance either. Also.
arguingwithsignposts
Long thread, so I’ll just jump in here and predict two Cat 5 hurricanes descending on WaPo sometime today:
Hurricane Andrew and Hurricane Glenn.
If I were the editorial department, I’d evacuate the building.
anonevent
You start by torturing Cohen into confessing that he r apes little boys.
Leelee for Obama
@arguingwithsignposts: This for the win! Cohen will need an orthopedic jock-strap when those two get done with him.
low-tech cyclist
Y’know, Cohen wouldn’t bother me nearly so much if the MSM didn’t keep pretending that he’s a liberal of some sort.
Mark
I know that this isn’t very PC, but here goes:
The common thread among Richard Cohen, Thomas Friedman and all of the other pundits who are usually liberals but support things like torture, the Iraq war and bombing Iran is that they are all strong supporters of Israel.
What is it about Zionism that clouds the minds of such otherwise sane people?
joes527
It is kind of hard to believe that Jesse (the body) Ventura is a voice of reason in this discussion.
Leelee for Obama
@Mark: All true, but Israels’ high court told their security and intelligence ppl that torture was illegal and immoral. Why would these guys think that we should do it to protect Israel?
r€nato
@Mark:
maybe because they imagine that torture would be used exclusively against Muslims?
DBrown
Yes, since cheney is now in custody, torture is proper and legal … wait, the A/O wasn’t talking about cheney. Damn. Now that low life american terrorist would sing a far different tune if his ass was being water boarded.
Leelee for Obama
@joes527: Jesse is the voice of reason quite often. He’s odd, not crazy!
r€nato
@Leelee for Obama: it’s a fact that American Israelophiles can often be more extremist than Likudniks themselves.
r€nato
…in fact, Israel itself does not use torture against Palestinian terrorists. Shouldn’t that tell us something?
Bill E Pilgrim
@low-tech cyclist:
Y’know, Cohen wouldn’t bother me nearly so much if the MSM didn’t keep pretending that he’s a liberal of some sort.
That’s an integral part of the house of smoke and mirrors we call our national discourse.
It’s the “even (Camille Paglia, The New Republic, Richard Cohen, whoever, insert Potemkin liberal name here) agrees with Rush Limbaugh on this one” motif.
The word “even” should come with a disclaimer when any of these clowns uses it.
4tehlulz
@r€nato: That Israel is anti-Israel.
Leelee for Obama
@r€nato: My piont exactly-Israelis are under the threat of terrorism every day, and they don’t torture. QED.
Leelee for Obama
@Leelee for Obama: Piont is obviously a foreign word that means point in English. Edit capability is so last month.
liberal
@r€nato:
I find that hard to believe.
Even if not, they do other pretty revolting things, like getting snitches by extorting abductees.
maya
Call me Ishmael?
So, who in this whale tale is Moby Dick? Wait. Wait. It’s coming to me. ooh,ooh, I know this. Damn! I just had it on the tip of my tongue………..
General Winfield Stuck
Torture is not complicated. It is the starting point, whereupon inflicting a degree of physical or psychological pain on the recipient makes them willing to satisfy the demands of the perpetrator to make whatever action causing said pain to stop. You could further quantify or qualify this into categories of torture respecting the type and level of pain infliction, ie, severe, moderate, light, but it still would constitute torture.
There are types of coercion that come up to the line, but don’t cross it IMO, such as the scene in the Don Cheadle movie Traitor, where the Guy Pierce character has caught a failed suicide bomber and threatens to publicize that the terrorist is still alive and is in custody co-operating with authorities. Thereby making an offer that can’t be refused.
liberal
@Mark:
First, be prepared for an onslaught of allegations that you’re an anti-Semite or, if Jewish, a self-hating Jew.
Second, this kind of thing is a human thing, not a Zionist thing. Good recent example: Zbignew Brzhinski [spelling?] was relatively good in the past few years as a commenter on matters involving Israel, Iraq, etc. But on Russia/Georgia/etc, he’s terrible. I wonder why that is? /rhetorical question
Napoleon
Please tell us in advance when you are linking to WaPo, I really don’t like giving them (and Cohen) hits.
Roslyn
God, the shame, the shame, of living in a country where we can’t kill or sexually abuse someone’s relatives to get information.
swift
As one of the world’s foremost experts on the issue of torture and morality, I applaud Cohen and find his work commendable.
Tsulagi
Yeah, that one’s pretty good. Birther/deather level intelligence in a suit publicly proving his concentrated stupid. Still playing tunes to the Purple Heart bandaid warrior class. The thought will never pass through the airspace in his head what we may have gained and learned if we had used intelligent, proven interrogation techniques like these guys…
Nope, much better to race toward the highest common stupid denominator to make RSSF teabagger types feel good. They crave their starbursts.
IndieTarheel
@Leelee for Obama:
Of course, all of the above, with emphasis on the last.Also, WOLVERINES! and SHUT UP, THAT’S WHY!This has been another episode of SATSQ, brought to you by the makers of Mr. Prolong, better known as Urge Overkill.
someguy
That’s about right. Under the Geneva Conventions, pretty much any coercive questioning is torture, and any use of “physical techniques” is torture as well. Any denial of basic rights – this would include constitutional rights – also constitutes a human rights violation under international law.
Take a good look at the moral highground, receding into the distance folks. It’s gone for good. Not like we could do much more than hourly renting there anyhow, what with internment of the Japanese, our warcrimes in VietNam, and smallpox infested blankets. But at least we had the illusion.
twiffer
let’s pretend that torture actually works sometimes. even in that alternate reality, if someone is willing to die to further a cause, why would torture get them to betray it? am i crazy, or is torture somehow worse than death?
El Cid
Everybody dies. Why does everyone freak out if a murderer makes it happen sooner?
The Grand Panjandrum
@Leelee for Obama:
And a new euphemism is born for having someone by the balls! Thank you for that.
@r€nato:
You could call it Reformed Smoker Syndrome because people who have quit any addiction are generally the most outspoken advocates, in the same way converts to a religion are often the most rabid.
Scott
Why oh why won’t some smart TV host bring in a bunch of these torture apologists, let them blather for a few minutes, then bring out the waterboard and invite them to climb on board?
Come to think of it — invite, hell. Bring out some armed guards, strap ’em down, and tell Richard Cohen he won’t be let up ’til he confesses to flying planes into the World Trade Center.
Xanthippas
Richard Cohen: asking questions that have been asked and answered everywhere in the media and the blogosphere for years now.
You would think writing one or two columns a week would permit one the time to pay attention to the public discourse.
Leelee for Obama
@IndieTarheel: Is that stuff available online? Is it mailed in a plain-brown wrapper? Is it only with a prescription? Inquiring minds want to know!
Leelee for Obama
@The Grand Panjandrum: You’re welcome! It does make one wince, n’est pas?
Zifnab
@someguy:
The idea is that the America of 2009 isn’t the America of 1970 or the America of 1800. Frankly, there’s not much we can do about small pox infected blankets and Japanese internment and Agent Orange except offer restitution to the survivors.
But there’s a difference between acknowledging mistakes of the past and tossing up your hands because of the sins of your fathers. We don’t marry our sisters, we don’t cure syphilis with leaches, and we don’t torture, because these things don’t work out well in the end. A nation that descends back into superstition and barbarism reaps all the gains that third world country status provides.
Brachiator
@r€nato:
Actually, this case is happening in Iraq, where presumably the US has some pull.
And yet there is little interest coming from the US.
I don’t think you can single out wingnuts here as being particularly insensitive.
To be brutally honest, I think the sense of outrage over torture inflicted by US agents is often matched by a total lack of interest over human rights abuses that take place elsewhere.
Even more unfortunate, some opponents of torture don’t care much about the lives or fates of the people who were victims of torture. They’re hot to want to pursue Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others, but after this their passion for justice cools.
Here’s a news item:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8231247.stm
But I recall a number of people who suggested that any concern over the Iranian election protests was pointless, Andrew Sullivan’s little folly.
Torture is bad. We don’t torture. Now, what?
The Grand Panjandrum
@Zifnab:
Better you, than me. (AND, it is almost lunch time here so thanks for that image.)
Comrade Darkness
@El Cid: It’s like numbering checks you are saying. We started counting with 2001 just to make it seem like we had a history, but the details can’t actually be recalled.
kay
“I am torn between my desire for absolute security…”
I think that’s where this starts. I have never in my adult life kidded myself that I was “absolutely secure”. Not before September 11, and not after.
I can’t find common ground with people who believe that “absolute security” is possible, or even preferable.
I just think that’s a fairy tale. No wonder they went too far. The goal is unattainable.
rock
So, as I understand it:
1) Universal health care coverage = fascism, destroys liberty, endangers nation
2) Ability to detain and torture anyone suspected of being an enemy of the state = necessary to save people’s lives
And close to half the people in this country, if not more, don’t think that’s mixed up? I don’t know what say.
The Grand Panjandrum
@Brachiator: It isn’t that we don’t care about human rights elsewhere, the outrage is loudest against US agents, because of what they did was done in our name.
Xanthippas
That’s a very silly comment. Many commentators here and elsewhere have expressed concern over the oppression of Iranian dissidents. I think it’s rather obvious why we’d be more interested and outspoken in the bad behavior of our own public officials.
Zifnab
@Scott: They do this regularly. The general consensus by reporters is that water boarding sucks and is highly unpleasant.
But you can dispel the myth that water boarding ain’t so bad and you don’t really move policy. The “ain’t so bad” rhetoric is just a cover for the real issue – namely that there’s nothing you can do to an alleged criminal that he didn’t deserve. Our system is perfect. We always get our man. And we don’t torture anyone that doesn’t have valuable information that can ONLY be unlocked with torture.
Until you convince the pundits that a) the government must account for making mistakes in capture and interrogation and b) even the most guilty of the guilty have a level of human rights, you’re going to hear these torture defenders up there pleading the case for water boarding and testicle smashing and raping and beating and dog biting and depravity. “It’s not that bad” doesn’t mean it’s not that bad for the pundit himself. It means “there’s nothing you can do to a man accused of terrorism by the US Government that he doesn’t deserve.”
MikeJ
@Brachiator: I don’t recall anybody saying it was good that Iran had a crooked election, merely that changing your livejournal template wasn’t going to fix it.
As for people who care more about the bad things the US does than the bad things other people do, well yeah, that’s me. I’m against human rights abuses anywhere, but only those done by the US are being done in my name, and those are the only ones I have any hope of stopping. Do you think we should invade Iran? If a US invasion did topple the current regime do you think there would follow more or fewer human rights violations?
Jen R
I would start by pointing out that Richard Cohen obviously thinks professional interrogators are too incompetent to do their jobs and get information by lawful means.
I know at least one Army interrogator who’s probably spitting nails right now. Not that I’m going to ask him if he’s seen this, because why inflict this asshole on decent people?
IndieTarheel
@Leelee for Obama: Start here.George Clinton was most prescient.
Zifnab
@Xanthippas: But are people offended because of the torture itself, or is this just a symptom of IOKIYAR, and it’s corollary – it’s evil if an Iranian does it?
Are people genuinely concerned about human rights, or are they just looking for an excuse to put an “enemy” nation in the black hat.
Jen R
Also, god damn, has Cohen been taking writing lessons from Peggy Noonan?
4tehlulz
@rock: The obvious solution to fighting terrorism is to offer universal health care to terrorists. The fear of the communifascist death panels will force them into cooperation, without a drop of water, or blood, spilled.
liberal
@Brachiator:
Huh?
First, we’re outraged by torture conducted by US agents precisely because they are agents, supposedly acting on our behalf. In many if not all these other places, that’s not true.
Second, while human rights abuses elsewhere are terrible, in general the danger is that the cost of mass expression of outrage is the very real risk that the outrage will be channelled into some war conducted, again, by our agents on our behalf. Or did you miss the run-up to the invasion of Iraq?
There’s a nominal benefit—maybe we can do something to help the victims. But usually it doesn’t work out that way, and can in fact backfire.
While non-government groups/individuals announcing their sympathy for, say, Iranian victims of the Iranian state is less apt to backfire than US gov pronouncements, it’s a tricky line, at best.
Finally, the best way to mitigate these horrors in the long run is to normalize relations with these “bad” countries. Or do you really think that Cubans are better off with the embargo, or that Iranians are better off with the current relationship between the US and Iran? Going on about victims in, say, Iran, isn’t going to do much in the long run, and will possibly make matters worse. Pushing to normalize relations, on the other hand, will in the long run stand a much better chance to make Iran less authoritarian. I don’t see how spending energy here in the US to denounce what are obvious human rights abuses will advance that agenda.
daveX99
I perhaps see a way to compromise with our Neo-Conservative fellow patriots. If we were to make the laws so that all CIA interrogations of terrorist suspects were required to be held in a big blow-up bouncy house, I might be okay with that.
liberal
@MikeJ:
LOL.
The Grand Panjandrum
@kay: Yes! How is it possible to obtain, then maintain absolute security without giving the governemnt draconian law enforcement capabilities that could be then turned on its own population? Balance with regard to individual liberty and security is critical. But we could trust Bush and Cheney!
rec
@The Grand Panjandrum:
It’s not hard at all to obtain absolute security. You just do it backwards. Choose a period where no terrorist activity happened (or none that involves brown people) and then everything you did during that time made everybody absolutely secure.
RSA
Oh, Richard, Richard…
If this suicidal terrorist Ishmael, the centerpiece of a ticking time bomb scenario, “exists, has existed”, then why the fuck did you have to invent him for your column?!
Andrew J. Lazarus
How many lives were saved by Auschwitz? Oh, the simpletons who arguing the extremes: we must kill all the Jews, or we must not kill any of the Jews. Hail the Village’s Middle Way!
Xenos
This line by Cohen sends my blood pressure right through the roof. What, I can’t possibly be honest? We are all nobody? George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and every flag officer in every service branch in WWII were nobody? Anybody who considers torture absolutely, categorically unacceptable is FUCKING NOBODY??
How dare Cohen hide his cowardice by smearing just about every great American that has yet lived!
Mr Furious
If this suicidal terrorist Ishmael, the centerpiece of a ticking time bomb scenario, “exists, has existed”, then why the fuck did you have to invent him for your column?!
Game. Set. Match.
swift
You’re all missing the point here. Torture is the only reliable way to quickly get a man to tell you whatever you want to hear to justify the stuff you want to do anyway.
Dom Phenom
@Keith: @Stefan:
hit the nail on the head. my first thought with many of the pro-torture arguments is why their proponents don’t take the next step and apply it to ordinary criminals – their arguments, if honest, would apply with equal force. the only reasons i can see why they don’t take it that far are:
1. even torture advocates realize that there is something wrong with advocating for torture of all suspects in violent crimes
2. torture advocates think of suspected terrorists as somehow superhuman monsters that can only be broken with the most extreme methods
3. twist on number 2, that dark skinned non-christians who don’t speak english are superhuman monsters that can only be broken with the most extreme methods
either way their arguments are as disingenuous as they are despicable. ugghh.
Leelee for Obama
@swift: Nice nutshell!
Phoenician in a time of Romans
What is it about Zionism that clouds the minds of such otherwise sane people?
Because Israel has demonstrated themselves to be the big swinging dicks of the Middle East, and these cretins desperately want to identify with phallic adequecy.
ChrisB
@Zifnab: The other thing is that when many people think of torture they think of it being applied once or twice and then it’s done.
They don’t think of it being done again and again and again and again and again. With no prospect of it stopping. When you’ve been beaten down repeatedly in many more ways than one. When you start to lose hope. It’s not just the pain of a single session or two.
On a lighter note, up above Scott noted that Cohen went on to say that a prosecutor “managed to put Judith Miller of The New York Times in jail — a wee bit of torture right there.”
For whom?
Dave S.
@RSA: That blockquote would sound just about right coming from a telescreen.
Cohen’s desire for “absolute security” immediately recalls Franklin’s maxim on liberty vs. safety.
If I remember correctly, Ishmael is considered the forefather of the Arabs. Nice touch there, Cohen.
ricky
Let us take Cohen to the next logical step and adopt some effective tools to stop illegal immigration. Who wants to send money home to a kid with crushed nuts?
chuck
Richard Cohen is a terrorist. Because I said so.
It is now perfectly okay to torture him to death.
Travis
@Dom Phenom: Well said. It’s like some witches brew of “24”, assorted hero movies, and the deep panic of 9/11 has induced a kind of childish insanity in certain minds like Cohen’s and Cheney’s where any action taken in order to “win” is acceptable, pre-justified even.
We don’t get to be the good guys because we’re American and it says that we’re the heroes in the script. We’re the good guys because we adhere to a code of morality. When we don’t, we’re the bad guys. It’s not hard to understand.
Cerberus
@Brachiator:
That’s a rather stupid comment. Civil libertarians or more accurately liberals have always been the first US voices to complain about human rights abuses overseas, both when committed by allies and by enemies. What they don’t agree with is the bullshit ju jitsu by opportunist thugs who try and shame liberals over the human rights abuses of our enemies to try and silence criticism of human rights abuses by our friends or country.
Especially when the only reason that the war-mongers even know about the abuses is because of tireless activists fighting for global equal rights. Remember how the sorry state of rights for women was a big selling point on Afghanistan? Remember how that was used as a cudgel against liberals by the MSM? Feminist activists were the first to report it, way back when Afghanistan was still an ally and are the only people actually still fighting that battle and reporting on it as all the war mongers settle into their post-invasion glows.
So no, Brachiator, you won’t shame those of us who have been reporting on Iran’s horrendous human rights abuses back when it was just filthy commies being thrown in irons, because our dutiful efforts have fallen in your inbox and you think it’ll give you street cred. They torture in Iran, you don’t say?
Just because we don’t think a giant war will magically stop that problem especially when we’re torture happy ourselves doesn’t mean we don’t recognize that fact. And it doesn’t help global efforts to stop the practice when the world’s most militarized nation is trying to protect its torturers.
BeccaM
Evil. It’s just flat out pure distilled evil.
It takes a sociopathic mind-set to write what Richard Cohen did, or someone so detached from the sickening reality of what it means to torture someone that he might as well give up any claim to decency, morals, or ethics. Or humanity.
Cerberus
@Dom Phenom:
Honestly, I don’t think they even care about the information on any level, which is probably why the debate seems as bizarre as the one over health care. Torture advocates think they’re in a movie and in a movie, you can beat up and kill anyone you like as long as you stick to bad guys who naturally have no human dimension or emotion unless it’s their tragic flaw in a giant core of evil.
As such, the point of torture is to torture evildoers and thus be the good guys, because in all of the action movies and comic books, it isn’t stopping the bomb or getting the intel that’s the real mark of winning the big fight, it’s stamping out either by killing or beating to a pulp the obvious villain. When that happens, safety magically occurs with only some symbolic clean-up by the valiant police force or turning the key to stop the timer. It’s an afterthought.
So they bring it into the real world, partly because they want to, partly because they’ve always wanted an excuse to wail on darkies and thus win the 60s for the “right side”. See also the need to piss on the hippies afterwards for protesting.
Leelee for Obama
@Cerberus: As a 60s Hippie, may I say “Well said, cerberus.” I think this country will begin healing when my generation has Alzheimer’s in record numbers and is reduced to toothless pillow fights in nursing homes.
HeartlandLiberal
What is most disheartening, disgusting, frightening, sick, and sad is those who in the pages and pages of comments advocate and support torture, and attack us liberal wussy anti-torture leftists.
These are the people who go to Sunday School and Church and thump their Bibles.
And I am the Agnostic.
Stop and think about it, and you will figure out why I gave up all pretense of faith in any religion in my teens.
bryan
John asks, Where to start? How about where I did — Richard Cohen. Instead of writing some snarky comments here, I chose to write him a lengthy letter explaining just how misguided he is as a “journalist.” Too often, many commenters simply post their responses in places that don’t really aim to address the problem. If you have a beef, go to the source.
Snarla
If it really would save Americans, shouldn’t a CIA agent be willing, nay happy, to risk his career? So what’s all the whining about? You want to torture people for being post-adolescent males in the wrong country at the wrong time and get a medal for it, too?
Well, too bad, because the interrogators who offered cookies got better results.
Debbie(aussie)
Isn’t this guy a ‘leftie’? With friends like that who needs enemies. What a totally stupid a-hole.