Letters to the Editor
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You know there was a woman
who took about nine months to die after 9/11. Dowsed with flaming jet fuel, she suffered from her burns and unimaginable physical agony for so long before she finally succumbed.
It is hard for me to to say that, should we have reason to believe that waterboarding a particular outspoken terrorist would help prevent another such incident, we should not do it. I think it is simplistic to just dismiss Giuliani on this count. Are we so moral and righteous, exposing our fellow citizens to this terror - as they hold hands and jump together to escape the flames, have we forgotten the sound of the falling bodies already? "Jumpers. We got jumpers," the firemen said, just before the WTC collapsed upon them. Here we sit, on the moral high ground, saying no, no waterboarding, anyone who endorses it is evil.
It's not that easy to make these decisions.
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The 'Ticking Bomb' Scenario is a dangerous fantasy
I never write 2 letters on the same thread but I think it is important to respond directly to Rich_Gibson:
"So in my view the rather trivial answer to the Ticking Bomb scenario is a simple appeal to the cliched truths of honor, duty, and country.
Am I missing something important here? Is there something I am missing?"
And indirectly to Thingswesaid:
" think it is simplistic to just dismiss Giuliani on this count. Are we so moral and righteous, exposing our fellow citizens to this terror"
The 'Ticking Bomb' scenario, despite its seductive simplicity and seeming moral clarity, unfortunately fails on several levels.
1. It is a Hollywood fantasy: Does anyone know of a real-world case where hundreds or thousands of people were saved by the coercive interrogation of a suspect minutes or hours before a planned attack? I don't and I am not sure that it ever actually happens. As the author of the weekly 'Ask the Pilot' column, Patrick Smith, astutely points out, the fatal flaw with current airline security is that by the time the committed terrorist reaches the airport with device in hand it is too late. The plot must be stopped long before then.
If, heaven help us, some real fanatics (Islamic or otherwise) ever got their hands on a nuke it is game over time folks. A group that sophisticated and resourceful would make sure that it members either didn't get caught, or that the capture of any single individual would not be enough to thwart the operation. Even worse, they might feed us some poor sucker to be tortured and mislead the authorities with misinformation.
2. How would we ever know? We accept the inhumane actions of the hero in movie or TV ticking bomb scenarios because we KNOW he is right: we can see the inner thoughts, motivations, and every nefarious act of the bad guys. But in real life situations, when would ever have that level of certainty? The Ticking Bomb scenario assumes that:
- A nuke or WMD has been stolen
- We know the group who took it
- We know their plans and timetables
- We know that our suspect is a member of this group
- We know that he/she has accurate information concerning the planned atttack
Given the imperfect nature of intelligence, it is extremely unlikely that we will ever have the level of certainty that TV and movie heroes enjoy. Thus, we must torture multiple suspects, and we can't be too choosy about who we pick because the stakes are so high. We must interrogate them to the point of extreme pain or near-death because we MUST have the information. And these people WILL talk, believe me, and we will have countless squads of intelligence and law enforcement people running all over creation to stop the plots they dream up in their desperation to avoid the torture.
And finally, what do we do with these wretches when we are wrong?
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Yeah, because people like Giuliani are totally free of prejudice, now
"Thus, we must torture multiple suspects, and we can't be too choosy about who we pick because the stakes are so high."
Yup. See, folks like Gibson and thingswesaid are cool with torture because they most likely aren't kind of people Giuliani and his ilk will single out for this kind of treatment. Anyone who lived in and around NYC during his mayoral tenure knows all too well that it was practically open season on black folks. As far as Giuliani was concerned, all blacks were criminals or accessories, and the number of police-abuse cases and shooting of unarmed black men reflected how his attitude infected the NYPD. Do you two _really_ want to see someone as racist and paranoid as Giuliani able to have people tortured just on his say-so? Because if you think he's not crazy enough to have whatever segments of the population routinely treated like this out of sheer spite, you're either ignorant or dreaming. Hell, as crazy as he was running NYC, he was going after anyone who objected to his policies in the slightest after a while.
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Watered-down torture
Mr. Conason, I'm so glad you're calling Rudy "Il Douche" Giuliani (because he'd really love to be Mussolini but doesn't quite have the stones for it) and others out on waterboarding. I've made similar complaints for years about it...
then pouring water over his nose and mouth to make him feel as if he is drowning.
As I've written elsewhere, I think they should call it "controlled suffocation" or "simulated drowning" or something more evocative than "make him feel as if he is drowning" (which is how it usually gets termed -- and which, apparently, confuses all the creepy fascist wannabes who are all too eager to rubber stamp the procedure).
I remember the rule of thumb with obscenity -- the sort of "I know it when I see it" line of legal reasoning. A similar thing really applies to torture -- if you're not willing to undergo the procedure, then it's torture.
Let's see Mukasey and Giuliani willingly undergo a waterboarding, so then they're completely clear on what the process involves. But they'll never do it, even as they profess confusion about the technique (I can only wonder at their confusion: Warm water or cold water? Pitchers or firehoses? Cotton towels or silk? 45-degree angle or 30-degree angle? Is the victim restrained with leather, or metal?)
And the fact that: 1) they'd never willingly experience it; and 2) nobody would want to subject public officials to the technique (or any Americans, for that matter) -- well, that's your torture test, right there.
It's torture. The way to fight torture is to pay attention to it -- it's such an evil that they try to not talk about it, try to wrap it in euphemisms, try to justify it. The ticking time bomb scenario's just the rhetorical trick they use to get the free pass to torture, which is what they want, most of all.