I can’t disagree with Marc Thiessen on this: we lost the torture debate completely.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, launched a six-year, 6,000-page, $40 million investigation into the CIA interrogation program, with the goal of convincing Americans that a) the program did not work and that b) enhanced interrogations were wrong and should never again be permitted.
She failed on all counts.
Just before Christmas, a Post poll revealed the American people’s final verdict. The vast majority agree with the CIA that these techniques were necessary and justified. A majority think that Feinstein should never have released her report. And — most importantly — 76 percent said they would do it again to protect the country.
Americans were asked, “Looking ahead, do you feel that torture of suspected terrorists can often be justified, sometimes justified, rarely justified or never justified?” Note that the pollsters used the loaded word “torture” (even though the CIA contends that the techniques did not constitute torture), which should have biased the question in favor of the critics. Instead, 17 percent replied they would support using the techniques “often,” 40 percent “sometimes” and 19 percent “rarely.” Only 20 percent said the techniques should “never” be justified.
The fact is, in actual practice the techniques were only used “rarely.” Of the tens of thousands of individuals captured since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, only about 30 were subjected to enhanced interrogation of any kind, and just three underwent waterboarding. So “rarely” is the answer that most closely approximates what actually took place. That means 57 percent of Americans would actually be willing to support the use of enhanced interrogation techniques more frequently than they were actually employed.
Not much else to say. They’ve had more than thirteen years to sell the “would you do it to stop the next ticking time bomb” scenario to America, and we bought it wholesale. At some point we’ll use these techniques again, and we’ll cheer when we hear about it.
If we hear about it. The lesson here seems to be to make sure hearing about it never happens when we do torture the next time, because we will.
JMG
We are a nation of panicky, hysterical cowards. Cowards are cruel by nature. But the next step will be the release of videos by some group or other showing the torture of a member of the American military or civilian using CIA methods and bragging about it.
leeleeFL
One despairs. Sometimes I just have to take some time off from the never ending circus. This is probably a good time. Damn, it boggles the mind, doesn’t it?
ellie
This fucking country.
Iowa Old Lady
IMHO, the big supporters of torture advocate it mostly because they like it. It calls to some people in the same way porn does, by reaching the lizard brain.
Hawes
And this is why the Obama administration never went to trial on these sadists. Because they would have been acquitted by a “jury of their fears.”
Punchy
Is it too impossible to believe that just as the CIA got bored with spying overseas and decided to start doing so domestically, that these “enhanced blah blah whatevs” are soon coming to your neighborhood police depts? After all, if s/he’s in police custody, s/he must be a dangerous criminal in cahoots with a massive bombing plot, right?
We already know that Scalia doesn’t believe torture violates the Constitution….whats the chance 4 others on the bench think likewise? 40%? 70%?
WereBear
Yes, it’s very depressing. On the other hand, we didn’t get a debate. We didn’t get the word out. What was trying to be got across was ruthlessly crushed, shouted over, and ignored.
I’m just reading memoirs of a video store clerk who studied anthropology, and both of us can’t figure out why a good 2/3rds of humanity won’t read a giant signboard right over their heads to get the information they are going to whine about not knowing the next day.
Maybe if we can crack that…
donnah
It’s Us vs Them at all costs, and the costs are astronomical. Torture should never be an option because it doesn’t work, and the fact that the majority of the American public sanctions it, and agrees with Dick Cheney…well, I am deeply sad for this country.
WereBear
@Hawes: Brilliant!
And, sadly, yes.
Bystander
Remarkable how similar torture is to human sacrifice. No wonder the zealotry runs so deeply among its acolytes. The puzzle is why this cowardly streak runs in the US with a history of rejecting royalty, the tribal shaman, and consciously embracing the notion that all people are created equal. IOW, why is there a Bill Kristol?
David Fud
@Hawes: It is a rational play not to bake in the standard of torture, letting it sort of free float and have an air of disapproval rather than going to trial and confirming to all the world that we 1) can’t stop this criminal behavior; 2) are all scared of our own shadow; 3) prefer to elect the lizard-brains so that we don’t have to worry our beautiful minds.
It is enough to make one despair.
It seems that lead poisoning did in a lot of the baby boomers long ago. I can think of no other reason that many members of that generation are so irrational and have led us down this path while aspiring to be like the “Greatest Generation”. You would think the cognitive dissonance would explode the brain, and yet here we are.
Here’s my preemptive comment: Get off of my lawn, you olds!
lonesomerobot
Americans are pussies. Time to start fresh, because this country is a complete shithole.
Skippy-san
It is because the American people think it will never happen to them. Just like they think they will never get sick, never need insurance, never need to know about what happens in the military ( as James Fallows so ably pointed out). Everything will be hunky dory. They know for sure they will be rich like those who are screwing them now-so they want the same breaks the rich get because someday it will be theirs.
And in the meantime they will wonder every day why the rest of the world ignores what we say and scoffs at the concept of an “exceptional America”. It is to weep.
The folks at International Living are on to somethng suggesting that retiring overseas is the way to go.
lonesomerobot
@Skippy-san: American Exceptionalism is the same as Cheerios Exceptionalism, if you only ever ate Cheerios and decided it was the best cereal in existence, without ever trying another kind.
SP
It really can’t be overstated how much, for a TV show, 24 fucked up this country.
Cluttered Mind
I have to agree with WereBear here, we didn’t have a debate to lose. One side of the argument was “Torture good, questioning torture treasonous” and that’s all we heard for eight years until Obama meekly offered “look forward, not backward” as a counterargument. We never had a national debate about this because no one in Washington or in the media with the power to start one was interested in doing so. All we got was one side saying that torturing bad people was the best thing ever, and years later the other side chimed in with “let’s sweep it under the rug”. In light of that, the public’s views are not particularly surprising. Most people absorb news through osmosis, just what they casually hear from people or from the TVs tuned to news channels that they pass by during the day. That’s one reason why the right wing noise machine is so effective, because it understands that in order to get the message to people who don’t generally listen to messaging, you have to scream it as loud as you can 24/7.
No one was interested in doing that to counter the “torture is awesome” messaging, so over the past decade and change it sunk in rather deep. This isn’t surprising nor is it an indictment of the country as a whole. It’s a serious example of how much the Democratic leadership and the media have failed the country, though.
Full metal Wingnut
@WereBear: What’s the book called?
Elizabelle
“The American People” — the wusses who accept torture, under whatever circumstances they accept — did not reach their decision by conscious thought.
Lizard brain at work. Lizards have perfected the art of communicating with it.
Betty Cracker
Of course it’s sickening that so many people support torture, but there’s nothing remotely surprising about it, nor is it unique to the United States or any particular generation. Anyone who claims it is buys into a fantasy every bit as precious and mythical as the wingnut longing for a 1950s paradise that never existed.
Amir Khalid
I don’t think I’ve seen anything in the Washington Post as obscene as this column.
OzarkHillbilly
We are so Awesome ™
Gator90
I’ve seen few things as grotesque and depressing as the torturer’s victory lap.
libarbarian
Sorry, but you are just wrong about the rarely part. Way more that 30 people went through systematic sleep deprivation and use of “stress positions”. Those two together are torture enough.
Belafon
The thing is, I don’t really think we were ever actually against torture. I suspect we tried it a few times, which is partially why we know that they don’t work. What failed was that, for the first time, we had someone in as president during an attack on the country that had no problem justifying it as a valid technique.
As someone said, we are cowards. We think we need to be prepared to shoot anyone that walks by us. That’s not bravery.
Bill
The CIA’s own data indicates torture provided no benefit, and may actually have impeded useful intelligence gathering. What exactly is it the American public thinks is good about that? Do we not believe it’s a useless practice? Do we just like the idea of causing suffering?
When I look at the uniformity on something as abhorrent as this I can’t help but feel despair. I just can’t get my head around people who want torture, yet most of my neighbors apparently think it’s just fine.
JGabriel
Zandar:
B-b-but, North Korea is worse!
JGabriel
@Bill:
I’m right there with you.
Keith G
No. I’m sorry, but I do not view the news as dreadful and/or depressing as others up-thread indicate.
I view this a just a fact of the human condition. It’s going to take time, strong unwavering leadership, and consistent messaging (or cataclysm) to move the opinion numbers. All societies tend to engage in magical thinking until they learn better lessons. We haven’t had enough experience dealing with torture to have the magical thinking about it knocked out of us.
We would have had a better shot had Obama decided to go after the criminals who tortured other human beings in our name.
He did not.
I understand why. Sometimes political leadership require very hard choices.
So we get to live with whatever positive benefits accrued from Obama’s discretion on this issue as well as the negative.
If this country is a shit hole as lonesome robot opines above, it is in part due to leadership, past and present, which has not required us to continually focus on harder choices. But I do not think is place has a unique claim to shit hole-ness any stronger than most other human communities. We just have more lessons to learn and maybe we need more and better “teachers”.
MomSense
@Belafon:
No, I don’t think we have ever been against torture. We may not always call it torture but much of our history suggests that we are willing to do horrific things to people especially if we can justify it, dehumanize the people we torture, and benefit from it.
JGabriel
@Gator90:
…dance.
kindness
You’ve forgotten one scenario.
What happens when the US doesn’t win a conflict and the other side tries captured US personnel for torture in a court of law, wins and then hangs those US personnel pointing at what the US did after WWII with German & Japanese officers?
CONGRATULATIONS!
Yeah. This country has lost its moral compass big time. There’s really not much else to say.
@WereBear: Totally disagree. People aren’t stupid. Everyone’s had a chance to think about this. The debate has been going on for over a decade. And most people have come to the conclusion that it’s just fine by them.
If you feel “ruthlessly crushed, shouted over, and ignored”, it’s because, as the numbers show, that the vast majority of people in this country are more OK with torturing someone accused of a criminal act to death than they are with $2 gas.
Also see: police brutality, lack of giving a shit about.
All part of the same disease.
WereBear
@Full metal Wingnut: True Porn Clerk Stories.
It’s very good!
Gene108
@Punchy:
Growing up in the 1980’s, when crime rates were rising year after year, a good many people blamed the problem the police had in dealing with crime on the Miranda decision and felt if the cops could bust a few heads, like in the good old days, when crime was not as much of a problem, things would be better.
As long as people see a trade off between safety and excesses of the state that so not directly affect them, people will not care what the state does to keep them safe.
Senyordave
@Amir Khalid: It is an obscenity that Thiessen has a column in the WaPo. I canceled my subscription in large part because of his column. Thiessen was a long-time aide to Jesse helms, for whom he wrote a column in the WaPO when he died, eulogizing Helms as a “great man”. Anyone who would consider Jesse Helms to be a great man is a POS.
wilfred
Prosecuting people who authorized and carried out torture is the only way of preventing it from happening again. That’s the simple truth of it.
It will happen again not because people want it, but because there is no penalty for doing it.
JGabriel
Keith G:
The human race has had enough experience with it, as did our Americas founders – who added the eight amendment to the US Constitution – and our slave population.
There is plenty of experience in our own history to learn from about torture.
Maybe, as a country, we’re poorly educated … or maybe we’re just sadists. I don’t know. Maybe both.
Joseph Nobles
Forget about it, Zandar. It’s Guantanamo.
Michael Bersin
American exceptionalism. Yeah, right.
Robert Bolt – A Man For All Seasons: A Play In Two Acts:
“…William Roper: So, now you’d give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country ‘s planted thick with laws, from coast to coast – man’s laws, not God’s – and if you cut them down – and you’re just the man to do it – d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake… ”
Almost seven years ago:
A Small Clique Of Legal Extremists… (February 28, 2008)
Jesse
The results are very depressing. But the final paragraph surprises me. There were only 30 cases? I thought there were known to be hundreds of cases of torture, if not thousands. How many were there at Abu Ghraib alone? Are those being counted here? Or are cases like that being somehow excluded?
cahuenga
Jeb vs. Hillary. I just can’t believe it… It’s really happening.
Comrade Dread
It’s only a matter of time before those techniques come home to roost and the police start to adopt them. Hell, we already let them strangle unarmed men to death for allegedly selling loose cigarettes.
We’re a proto-fascist state waiting for a Hitler to happen.
NCSteve
The only thing more ill-advised than saying “Dick Morris is right!” is saying “Mark Theissen is right!” No. By definition, no.
WereBear
Ah. And that’s where our perception differs.
It looks like stupid, but it really is the simple habit of never using one’s mind unless absolutely, immediately, necessary.
I always think of the Dunkin Donuts incident; back when Mr WereBear and I still ate donuts. As usual, it was a long line, and I spent it figuring out which donuts I wanted for my varied dozen, and where they were located. When it was my turn, I directed the clerk to the most efficient way of compiling the pastries.
She turned to me, beaming like a lighthouse. “That’s the fastest I’ve ever done that!”
I’m not a time & motion expert. I’m just a humble office worker/cat behaviorist. Why was I the only person in this clerk’s experience to spend their time on line figuring out what to do next?
Comrade Dread
@Jesse: I’m guessing they probably ignored the cases we ‘outsourced’ to other countries.
Cacti
For those who wondered why no member of Bushco was ever prosecuted by the Obama admin, you have your answer.
Holding the Bush Admin criminally culpable would never happen, because it would require a majority of Americans to do some self-reflection, and acknowledge uncomfortable things about themselves.
We don’t do introspection in this country.
Keith G
@JGabriel: Some of our allies in Northern Europe are better than us on this.
I think it is due in part to their more recent and more brutal experience with man’s inhumanity to man. Make no mistake though. Those lessons did not reach fertile ground throughout all of their populations nor are the lessons not showing signs of fading just a bit.
Edit… Meant to add that since humans do not exist in a emotional or intellectual stasis, we have to continually be reacquainted with better ways of thinking about our common humanity.
patrick II
I think this whole matter shows how much leadership counts. We had cowards for president and vice-president when 9/11 happened and their twisted leadership led the whole country down the road of cowardice and fear. A different president might have shown us bravery and principle like FDR in WW II, or Washington in the Revolutionary War when they made torture beyond the pale.
The harm Bush and Cheney did to the soul of this country goes beyond what they did to the body.
Cacti
@patrick II:
While no one can say for certain what a President Gore would have done, I feel fairly safe in thinking that he wouldn’t have started a torture program or invaded Iraq.
Elizabelle
@patrick II:
Terrific comment.
Just Some Fuckhead
How is finding out a majority of Christian America will torture innocents to achieve some superfluous objective “losing”?
In fact, it means I won the morality debate.
ribber
The one thing I think never got much airplay in this is how the Iraqi army saw us at the beginning of the invasion. Whole divisions surrendering, because at the time being a POW of America was more favorable than being a soldier for Saddam. Our soldiers faced less resistance precisely because we did not have a reputation for mistreatment. And now that is gone.
Keith G
@Cacti:
Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations.
That is not a reason why such a prosecution should not have been undertaken. The spectacle of such an aggressive prosecution, as ugly as it might have been, could have provided important lessons to many in our society.
Cacti
@Keith G:
And monkeys might have flown out of my butt.
Keith G
@Cacti:
Yes, no one knows what Gore would have done, but he was the only Democratic Senator to stand on the floor of the Senate and speak in favor of the first Gulf War. He was not immune to neo con thinking,
Seanly
We’ve been programmed by years of cop & spy shows to accept the efficacy of torture. Many of these shows use psychological and physical torture by the authorities to extract information.
I don’t have a link as this is probably 25 years ago, but the Atlantic had a great article about the abuse of civil rights in movies & TV. I know many people will say “oh, it’s only TV”, but we’ve been force fed a diet of excusing police brutality, torture and ineffective interrogations for decades. It’s part of what we expect and assume. We Americans are no better than the goons & thugs we love on TV and cinema like Dirty Harry, Jack Bauer and almost every police show. Even the tricks & manipulations of detectives on L&O:Criminal Intent could probably get a lot of the outbursts thrown out.
The only anti-torture show that has aired on American torture was Chain of Command on STNG in 1992.
For the record, the only correct answer in the poll was “never justified”. It isn’t something to quibble over – it’s flat out wrong, illegal and unAmerican (at least the America I was brought up to believe in). If we would be offended and outraged by our own behavior if it was done to us or to our soldiers, then maybe it is something we shouldn’t be doing.
Keith G
@Cacti: Important breakthroughs in history usually happen when the “impossible” is tried.
Highway Rob
@patrick II: I agree with everything you said, and yet for reasons unknown to me I can’t resist pointing out that FDR’s bravery in WWII included Japanese internment camps. Undisputed top-five president, possibly top three with Lincoln and Washington, and he still had red ink in his ledger on human rights.
And Cacti, President Gore would’ve been tied up in knots by a Republican legislature that would not have hesitated to blame him (and his predecessor) for the intelligence failures that led to the attacks.
Denali
I used to believe that people would rise up to condemn torture; that was wrong. I used to believe that if the truth came out about 9/11, people would accept it, they won’t. Its too hard to accept. I used to believe that people would condemn the Bush administration for invading and destroying the people and heritage of another country for no good reason until I figured out that the real reason was revenge for 9/11. I used to believe in the concept of democracy until I figured out how gerrymandering worked and how much people were influenced by the big money and the very limited media we have now. I wish I still believed in the possibility of change.
GregB
Fuck Kiefer Sutherland. I’ll throw a drink in his face if I ever see him.
Yeah, we’re the evil empire. Full of cowards, monsters, Klansmen and future Nazis.
El Cid
@Iowa Old Lady:
This, and that it offends a lot of people they hate.
SeaBee
“even though the CIA contends that the techniques did not constitute torture”
Oh, well if the CIA, an agency that explicitly traffics in misinformation and obfuscation, said it, what’s not to believe?
When it comes to politics and politicians, 99% of the time I come down on the side of stupid, not evil.
Without a hint of hyperbole, I firmly believe that Marc Theissen and the rest of these disgusting sycophants are evil.
Evil motherfuckers.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Keith G: The important lesson it would have taught people in society is that they should torture more. The only thing worse than not prosecuting was getting actual acquittals, which is what would have happened.
Calouste
@Bystander:
Well equal, except for the whole slavery business. And mass murdering native Americans. And not giving women the vote or many rights at all. Other than that your American mythology is almost identical to reality.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@SP:
I think you and Seanly have a good point — “24” and other torture-featuring TV shows weren’t just entertainment, they were propaganda. When even a Supreme Court justice thinks torture works because he sees it on his teevee every week, what chance does an average citizen have of withstanding the propaganda flow?
The only show I’ve seen where torture is not only shown not to work, but is something done for sick jollies is “Game of Thrones,” and that got way too intense for me to keep watching. Other than that, it’s a parade of torture working like a charm, every time, to get accurate and useful information.
dmbeaster
The effers knew that the torture would be unacceptable to most Americans unless largely kept secret and sanatized.
Remember the reaction to Abu Ghraib by both the torturers and the public. Only a minority found it acceptable (Limbaugh called it frat pranks). The torturers had to lie about it – a few bad eggs, and no, CIA types did not inspire the soldier guards to torture (despite contrary evidence that it went down that way). Why the difference then? Pictures. Which is why the CIA concealed and then destroyed all tapes of torture. I wonder how current polls would fare if the questions followed a viewing of the grissly reality and the pathetic info actually obtained.
The real lesson was known at the time – conceal facts, lie and manipulate the info.
I remember reading some wingnut lament about how brave soldiers who heroically died were not being properly celebrated, the implication being that this was due to the wat opponents. I responded to the wingnut who sent me this tripe with a list of all the measures taken by the Bush administration to prevent any awareness or public honoration of war deaths. They were already practicing information control, and corporate media went along. The real lesson is that lying to the American public frequently works.
KG
@donnah:
Traditionally, torture was used to obtain a confession (see the Spanish Inquistition, or even John McCain’s own experience). And, if you ignore the fact that those confessions were often false, then it was quite effective. But it shouldn’t matter whether torture works or not. It is morally, ethically, and legally wrong – that is why it shouldn’t be used. Opening the door of “it doesn’t work” gives proponents the ground to bring up just one example where it allegedly did, and in the insane world we live in today, one example is enough to discredit you.
We should be arguing that we are better than that. If nothing else, shaming our fellow citizens into civilization
Keith G
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: That is something to be considered.
Liberty60
We lost only because it was Those People who were tortured. If and when a white Christian male were on the receiving end, it would be different.
And I wish I could say this is a departure, but when you read about the horrific crimes committed during the racial terrorism during the Jim Crow years- lynching, humans burned alive, property theft, beatings at the hands of the police etc., its clear that torture has a long pedigree here.
Rafer Janders
@Jesse:
Thiessen is lying. We’ve tortured thousands.
Kylroy
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): FWIW, Burn Notice has verged on pedantic in pointing out that torture doesn’t work. But yeah, generally a parade of torture being both effective and a sign of dedication in our media.
Belafon
@lonesomerobot:
Please explain how you would do that, and how you would find a better class of people.
Rafer Janders
@Keith G:
The difference in Europe is that, within living memory, the people in Europe themselves, their friends, their families, lived with either having been tortured themselves or the threat of torture if they stepped out of line. They’re against torture now because they knew they could have been its victim.
In the US, on the other hand, the majority of people have never had to fear torture. It was alway done to “the other” — Indians, slaves, African-Americans, prisoners, etc.
Start randomly torturing tens of thousands of white middle-class people, and you’ll see opinions on torture shift, and fast.
gene108
@Keith G:
Would result in President Obama being criminally prosecuted and most likely jailed, the next time Republicans win the White House, because if there is one thing Republicans understand it is revenge.
They savaged President Clinton because they wanted a Democratic President to suffer from the same taint of corruption that Republicans had endured from Watergate and Iran-Contra.
Repatriated
Part of the problem with the poll referenced in the article is that it was framed as being a choice between believing the CIA or believing the Senate, and it was cast as a matter of defending against terrorism. On issues people don’t think about in depth, credibility is generally based on popularity, and Congress by nature automatically has a huge handicap in that regard. And on defending against terrorism, the CIA are seen as having expertise in that area.
If the poll had primed the respondents with statements defining torture as illegal under US and intenational law, and pointing out these were actions we’d executed Japanese leaders for after WWII, and not confined it to “defending against terrorism,” the results would probably have been significantly less disconcerting.
raven
@gene108: And because he was a stupid ass that couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.
JMV Pyro
@Liberty60:
Agreed. We’ve always tortured in one way or another since our nation was founded. This disease is far older then just 9/11 or even the crime increase in the 1980s, as any look at the history of Native Americans will tell you.
Despite what many of the people here are saying, this fight isn’t over and I’m not going to give up because of a poll that I don’t even know the methodology of.
Repatriated
The media has a lot to answer for in this regard as well. By treating this as a partisan rather than a moral issue, and granting advocates of the program a platform with which to defend it rather than considering them as potentially complicit in crimes against humanity, they legitimized that viewpoint.
SatanicPanic
Alright I’m going to admit to being someone who would have agreed that sometimes torture could be justified. So what? This is a parlor game question- you can justify almost anything when it comes down to it. Just don’t do it. It’s what evil governments use to make people tell lies for them. That alone should be reason enough to ban it.
Elie
@Keith G:
I agree with your comments.
People also have to keep in perspective that for example, in Germany, Angela Merkel just lectured her country on their anti immigrant, increasingly racist stances against Muslims. Its international — committing violence to others using flimsy motives. It takes all forms.
That said, the Democrats did the right thing in releasing the report and talking about it… we have to keep trying ..
KG
@SatanicPanic: if you think torture could be justified in some situation, define the situation, or at least an example
ETA: I am genuinely curious what circumstances people who think torture can sometimes be justified are
Goblue72
@patrick II: that would be the President who interred loyal citizens of Japanese descent in concentration camps. Such bravery.
brantl
Americans, as a whole, are not nearly as decent, or “exceptional”, as they like to pretend. Not by a very long shot. This excrescence that has been done in our names, has for the most part, been done by people having the US average for morality. As a nation, we suck..
trollhattan
@Bill: Yup. The actual professionals have stated many times useful information results from establishing relationships. Who can know what useful intel we missed out on as the result of our embracing torture?
SatanicPanic
@KG: The ticking time bomb scenario. Sure, it’s ridiculous and probably will never happen anywhere, ever, but people don’t think that way. They hear never and they reject the question because never say never. It’s a silly way to phrase it and you’ll never get a majority to agree.
Repatriated
@brantl: We don’t suck more than anyone else in the world, on the whole. It’s just that we’re not the exceptional people we like to think of ourselves as being.
Linnaeus
I feel much the same way as a lot of the other commenters here do: the US isn’t an exceptional nation, isn’t the “greatest country in the world”, etc. I think there is a deep sickness in American culture.
That said, there are some issues that, thankfully, aren’t (or should not be) a matter of public opinion. Torture is one of them. So while I’m dismayed by the number of my fellow citizens who appear (at least in the short term) to be pro-torture, I also remind myself that there are any number of issues in our nation’s history on which the majority held less than savory views.
Just getting the report out was a victory of sorts. Now it’s out there. It can’t be hidden, it can’t be swept under the rug, it can’t be lied about it anymore. It’s a tool for future education, and that can only help.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Keith G:
Given that S.J. Res 2 was sponsored by Warner, and had five democratic senatorial co-sponsors, I doubt that your statement is factual.
Linnaeus
@SatanicPanic:
Hell, some folks don’t even need the ticking time bomb. If it’s directed at the proper folks, it’s all good for whatever reason.
WereBear
Yes, we had slavery, but we also had an abolitionist movement that helped eradicate it. In contrast, there wasn’t anything organized to protest what we did to the Native Americans. That was “war” and anything goes.
We continue to evolve. The kind of thing that went on in Game of Thrones was normal.
We’ve moved beyond that, and will continue to do so. But I agree that the comfortable will have to be a lot more afflicted than they currently are to have the kinds of inquiries we’re discussing.
It happened far away and the poor sap was not “one of them.”
Villago Delenda Est
@JMG: THIS THIS THIS.
This is not the “Home of the Brave”.
This country disgusts me. Most Americans, it seems, are utterly unworthy of the great Enlightenment experiment that was started over 200 years ago.
Mammon and Moloch worshiping scum, for the most part.
SatanicPanic
@Linnaeus: Well I’m not agreeing with that. I’m just saying that once you add the word “never” it becomes an intellectual exercise, because people will find a way around that.
KG
@SatanicPanic: fair enough. I’ve never thought the ticking time bomb case made much sense, and have argued against it for years. If you know there’s a bomb in a city, there’s a lot to consider:
why aren’t you trying to evacuate the area?
what happens when the prisoner lies and sends you on a wild goose chase?
what happens if there really isn’t a bomb?
what do you accomplish if the prisoner holds out until the bomb goes off?
And when people point out it happened on 24 (or some other show), I point out that I was saw a movie that involved people using a hot tub to travel through time… doesn’t mean it’s real
Villago Delenda Est
@raven: Exactly. The stupid motherfucker handed them an opening.
Repatriated
@SatanicPanic: I have to agree with that. That’s another flaw in the poll methodology, but one that’s difficult to avoid without making the wording of such a question very awkward. How are you supposed to qualify “never” in such a way as to prevent it being seen as an intellectual exercise?
MomSense
@Villago Delenda Est:
Including some of the Americans who started the great Enlightenment experiment over 200 years ago.
Linnaeus
@SatanicPanic:
Oh, I didn’t think you were agreeing. Just pointing out that the bar is fairly low for too many Americans, so even an instrumentalist argument about torture won’t reach a lot of people.
Villago Delenda Est
@MomSense: The 3/5ths rule is proof of that assertion.
SatanicPanic
@KG: I’m not arguing that it’s likely or even worth planning for. Just taking issue with the phrasing of the question
Repatriated
@MomSense: We’ve spent two and a third centuries trying to live up to their grandiose rhetoric about equality and justice. Though we’ve succeeded to a degree that would probably appall some of them, we’ve also failed to a degree that would appall others among them.
SatanicPanic
@Linnaeus: Absolutely. I prefer arguing “Do you want the government to have the ability to make people LIE to you?”. Though I’m not sure that would work either. Basically, we just can’t let Republicans become president, that’s the only way to stop torture from happening.
Repatriated
@Linnaeus: The problem is that the instrumentalist argument is the only one that can work with people who lack a moral objection to it, whether or not they are swayed by it.
Keith G
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): I am sorry if I mis-typed. My recall on this might be shaped by my memory of fellow Democrats being quite put out at the time by Gore’s negotiating with the Senate GOP to slot his speech time in a prime spot.
brantl
@raven: That wasn’t why they wanted to do it to him, it was why they could.
Snarki, child of Loki
You want to put a stop to torture? Really put it back in that box of “stuff that should NEVER be done?”
It’s surprisingly easy. Unpleasant, but easy.
Just use all those CIA-honed torture techniques on a felon in Federal custody for a heinous domestic terrorism attack: TERRY NICHOLS.
He has yet to reveal the RW co-conspirators involved in the OKC bombing.
Once the hard-line radical conservatives find themselves in the crosshairs of coerced testimony, they’ll find some reasons not to torture. Not before.
FlipYrWhig
Too many people are paying too much attention to the word “torture.” The important word is “terrorist.” Call anyone a terrorist and you’ll get massive, overwhelming support for anything you propose to do to him.
As with the death penalty, the most persuasive moral case to be made to Joe Schmoe who otherwise leans “yes” is not “you just don’t do it because it’s wrong even if the guy is guilty,” but rather “how can you really be sure the guy is guilty?” Torturing someone innocent, that’s the nightmare, even for Jack Bauer. That’s how you change opinions on the subject. YMMV.
Linnaeus
Maybe not quite the same thing, but IIRC, didn’t the CIA torture one of its own informants?
Rafer Janders
@SatanicPanic:
Rape is never OK.
Rafer Janders
@SatanicPanic:
Child abuse is never OK.
Rafer Janders
@KG:
To add:
What if the person you’re torturing doesn’t actually know where the bomb is? What if you’re torturing the wrong guy?
Repatriated
@Rafer Janders: @Rafer Janders: True. The problem with those statements is that some people will weasel on the definition of the terms.
Archon
@Highway Rob:
I always wondered as a thought experiment what America would have done if it were at war with a powerful black African nation instead of the Japanese Empire. Imagine if a couple of “back to Africa” fifth columnist African Americans were suspected of supporting that nation in a time of war.
Considering that German POW’s were treated better in prison camps then the local black population (and even sometimes better then blacks in uniform) we can safely surmise that what the Japanese went through would look like a 4 year Holiday Inn stay compared to what we would have done with black Americans in a similar situation.
That doesn’t diminish what we as a nation did to Japanese Americans or FDR’s complicity in it but considering America’s racism towards non-whites, (especially blacks) Japanese internment could have been ALOT worse.
gogol's wife
@Cacti:
I’m pretty sure 9/11 would not have happened. And I’m absolutely sure the response would have been totally different.
Marmot
Sigh. The Dems never put up meaningful resistance through the whole dirty saga. Certainly not when they finally had the means to.
Feinstein herself voted for immunity for spy-aiding telecom companies, as part of the FISA reauthorization, so her indignation at this aspect of Repub policy — torture — seems feigned.
I realize she may’ve made the best of a bad deal, but couldn’t she have at least said so?
Johnny B
Every time an American President tries to give a speech on human rights before leaders of the G-8, I hope Putin grabs his glass of water, tilts his head, and pretends he’s being water-boarded, then belly laughs for all to hear.
Let’s be clear on what this means. A majority of Americans support torture. Therefore, it doesn’t matter if there are laws against torture or whether those laws constrain an American President from engaging in torture. Those laws will never be enforced because the public does not care.
Of course, history shows that a nation comfortable with torture generally finds new and exciting ways to expand its use. How long before a Presidential candidate or a member of Congress suggests that state and local police forces should be authorized to use “enhanced interrogation techniques” for criminal suspects? How long before Congress and state legislatures start enacting laws giving increasing criminal and civil immunity to those employed as state or local police officers so they can use “enhanced interrogation techniques” and other brutal tactics against civilians without fear of legal reprisals?
Does anyone think that the U.S. Supreme Court would not uphold such federal and state statutes, even though they most certainly will result in violations of the 4th, 5th, and 8th Amendments of the Constitution?
bjacques
If you want to burn some social bridges, you can always describe to torture fans how their daughters could be used to get them to confess to, say, using witchcraft against President Hillary. Or just for a laugh, because even torturers need to unwind after a tough day.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Kylroy:
I keep meaning to watch that show, because (like all right-thinking people) I love Bruce Campbell. Glad to know the show manages to steer away from that BS.
Hungry Joe
@KG: Exactly. The whole “ticking time bomb” scenario doesn’t hold up if you stop to think about it for … oh … thirty or forty seconds. If you found out there’s a ticking time bomb, why weren’t you able to find out where it is? How can you know that the person you’re torturing knows where it is? Why did the terrorists leave the bomb ticking for so long — so a Sutherland type has a sporting chance to find and disarm it? Has there ever been a single real-life case in which someone — under torture or not — revealed the location of a ticking time bomb?
In the most extreme parlor-game scenario, you (somehow) KNOW there’s a ticking (!) nuclear warhead set to go off in a major city, and (again, somehow) you KNOW that the guy in the cell knows where it is. And he won’t talk. Fine. Torture him. Then go to trial for torture and make your case to the jury; then, when convicted, to the judge. This might actually happen once every 100 or so years … but probably it won’t. Failing all that, don’t torture anyone. Ever. EVER.
WereBear
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): It’s a really good show. Manages to discuss spycraft and psychological issues from his past pretty seamlessly, and still be fun and adventurous.
And Bruce Campbell!
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@FlipYrWhig:
This right here. It was the same excuse that was used for interning Japanese-Americans, though the preferred term at the time was “saboteurs.”
Convince people that an out-group is planning to physically harm them and they’ll be willing to take any action against that out-group, even if the allegations are totally baseless. IIRC, there were more German-Americans who voluntarily helped the Axis than Japanese-Americans. Even Tokyo Rose was more of a prisoner than a collaborator.
michael talley
Lack of imagination. It’s just a short walk from torturing prisoners in overseas black sites to torturing prisoners in the local precinct station. Maybe a broom handle instead of a water board.
Oh wait. What’s that you say?
Citizen Alan
@Snarki, child of Loki:
Hell, I’ve said from the beginning that if Obama couldn’t close Gitmo, he should have sent Scott Roeder down there and waterboarded him until he confessed the name of every Operation Rescue person who helped him kill George Tiller. THAT would have gotten the GOP to turn around on torture in a heartbeat.
andy
An NRA-cerified shooter mowed down a bunch of toddlers and the country collectively shrugged and yawned- why would anybody care about torture? (though it’s interesting how the gunfondlers scream like a rotten kid about to get the worst whipping of his life- i guess even the worst of us have consciences no matter how hard we suppress them).
Hell, we already don’t care how high we stack the skulls as long as the piles are overseas and out of sight.
JGabriel
@gene108:
I don’t think that Republicans even understand revenge that well. If they did, they wouldn’t serve it hot so often.
It’s not revenge they love or understand — it’s sadism. Revenge is just the excuse they use to justify it.
dp
I think that the 2d amendment is the only one of the Bill of Rights that could be ratified today.
Calouste
@Hungry Joe: The Provisional IRA in the later years of their bombing campaign routinely called ahead of bombings so that the area could be evacuated. In their largest attack, the 1996 Manchester city center bombing, they used a 3,300 pound car bomb to do about $1 billion worth of damage, and even though they gave more than an hour and a half advance notice, the bomb squad didn’t have time to defuse the bomb.
So even though the police knew exactly where the bomb was, and they got a 90 minute warning, they still couldn’t do anything about it, except evacuate everybody. (There were 200+ injuries, but no casualties.)
dubo
When our debate moderator, the media, gives the opposition 100 hours to make their case unchallenged, and gives us 0, yeah, we’re going to lose the debate
tam1MI
@JMV Pyro: The difference between conservatives and progressives these days is that conservatives fight and progressives whine. Here the fight over torture has barely begun and already people are throwing in the towel.
Repatriated
@tam1MI: Agreed. It took 3000 deaths and a lot of media exposure to get us to this point; it’s going to require a concerted pushback to get us out of it.
lonesomerobot
@Belafon: My fault; I left out the key piece of info: I meant that I will start fresh. This country, as it exists now, has proven many times over that it just isn’t worth the effort any more. Thomas Jefferson believed that we would have been overhauling the Constitution about once a generation. We’re seriously due, but it won’t happen. Oligarchy has prevailed.
So, aside from some cataclysm that shatters the country into separate regional sovereign states — and you hope you’re living in one of the better areas for that (as a current resident of the South, I am not) — I view the best option as living overseas. Vermont was looking good until the [Democratic – yay team!] Governor there nixed single payer. Nevertheless, I am a dual citizen and New Zealand is an option. That would be New Zealand, deemed the second least corrupt country, behind Denmark.
So there you go. To recap:
America = shit hole
Starting fresh = living overseas
Also I would think the citizens of Denmark (and, in general, the other Scandanavian countries where citizens are routinely identified as ‘the happiest’ on the planet) might qualify as a better class of people.
Or, any country where the majority of citizens does not condone torture, and does view health care as a right.
Chris
@SP:
24 didn’t start the fire, as the saying goes, but it went further than any other show in stoking it.
Quoting LGM: Any discussion of 24 and how it changed from the first season (and particularly how it in turn changed the public perception, and government use, of torture) should include this New Yorker article on Joel Surnow and the show’s team; they heard directly from interrogation experts who told them that torture doesn’t work, and ignored them.
@Kylroy:
I will eternally be gratefully to that show for that one sentence “torture is for sadists and thugs.”
That and Westen’s general fondness for NOT jumping on his M-16 and opening fire at the first sign of trouble. The whole show is a callback to the classic heroes whose preferred MO was to outthink their opponents rather than outshoot or outmacho them… which used to be pretty common (Rockford, Magnum, MacGyver), but has become an endangered species today.
SRW1
If s/he can be located for an interview by CNN, Beelzebub will smirk triumphantly how cheaply this American soul was to be had.
And no, the price wasn’t almost three thousand lives on 9[11. It was way cheaper than that. It was the delusion that torture works.
John M. Burt
I wish I knew how to quit you, America: http://john_m_burt.blogspot.com/2006/05/i-wish-i-knew-how-to-quit-you-america.html
But I love you.
God help me.
Denali
I forgot to mention that I used to think that if Americans found out that their Government was listening to their conversations, emails, and texts they would take to the streets in anger. I was wrong.
Now I just wonder if the Bill Cosby, Alan D and Prince Andrew are being used as examples to show how easy it is to take down a public figure.
sm*t cl*de
If you find yourself having a “torture debate” — that is, if your news media become apologists for torture that’s already occurred — then you’ve already lost it.
Cain
I suppose it was also okay for Jesus to also be tortured before hung on the cross?