On Torture

It worked. So says intelligence director Dennis Blair, according to a NY Times article. Yeah? So what? A lot of things work. If you want to get rid of someone, murder works. If you need money, robbery works. If you need information, torture works. Sometimes. It's still illegal and immoral.

Read Dr. Phillip Butler's opinion at Military.com. Dr. Butler is a combat veteran who spent 8 years as a POW in Vietnam. He writes:

Resorting to torture or stressful coercion of prisoners only makes us out to be the biggest liars in history. We profess to be the most democratic and humane country in the world. But this current national "debate" and our recently exposed actions in Cuba, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries where we have resorted to illegal rendition of prisoners only tells the world that we are deceitful, dishonest, inhumane and immoral.

How is it possible that Ari Fleischer, Michael Mukasey and Joe Liberman aren't vehemently opposed to torture techniques such as waterboarding and sleep deprevation? There's only one thing to say:

Here's a synopsis of what I've gathered from media sources so far:

1. In the years following the Sept 11 attacks, the US military engaged in waterboarding and other tactics which are generally considered torture.
2. It was initially believed that these were unauthorized, rogue actions and not sanctioned by the Bush administration.
3. Memos were recently declassified that clearly show that the Bush administration approved of the torture activities. The memos were authored by John Yoo and David Addington and submitted by the OLC Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee.

The question now is how to handle those who were involved. There are two, possibly three, categories into which these people fall:

1. The military personnel who directly carried out the torture
2. The lawyers in the Office of Legal Council (Bybee, Yoo, Addington, possibly others) who gave advice to the US Attorney General which indicated that the torture activities were legal.

The third category about which I'm not hearing much is the group of leaders who read the legal advice and gave the orders to go forward with the torture based on the advice.

In any case, I think the lawyers certainly need to be held responsible for the bad advice that they gave. That's what these lawyers are paid for - to give counsel on what is legal and what isn't. When they make a blatant mistake on a critical issue such as torture, they need to be held accountable for that error. When the advice concerns such an important issue, the counselors need to be especially diligent and prudent in their understanding of the issue and in their legal research. When they failed at that, they were negligent. The only question is the extent of their liability. I'm not a lawyer myself, so I don't know if there was any criminal action on their part, or whether it was a breach of professional conduct. In either case they should also be held accountable and liable for their actions and advice.

As for the military personnel who carried out the torturous activities, I don't see why they also shouldn't be held responsible for their actions to some extent. Although they themselves may not have had the legal knowledge to know whether the torture was permissable, "I was only following orders" is never ever a defense to a war crime. These soldiers should have realized that what they were doing was questionable and questioned it. If we find that they did question it and that they faced punishment unless they carried out the orders, I would be lenient. But if they just mindlessly went forward with sleep deprivation and waterboarding of the suspected terrorists, that's a different story. They should be prosecuted like other war criminals based on their actions and the situation. Rep. Jan Schakowsky spoke out about this as well.

Read this Newsweek article from back in 2004 in which memos are revealed that indicate that the Bush administration was more interested in saving their own skin than whether the treatment of the prisoners was humane and moral. Reading that article made me sick.