A tortured debate over the 'torture memos'

Boston Globe ^ | 4/22/09 | Jeff Jacoby

[MartinaMisc]

ON THIS PAGE a few years ago I wrote several columns arguing that torture was never acceptable - not even "as a last and desperate option" in the war against jihadist terrorism, a war I strongly support. At a time when not only conservative hawks but even some notable liberals were making the case for using torture to thwart Al Qaeda, I contended that the cruel abuse of terrorist detainees was something we could never countenance - not just because torture is illegal, unreliable, and a threat to the innocent, but because it is one of those practices that a civilized society cannot engage in without undermining its right to call itself civilized.

Rereading those columns amid the tumult over the Justice Department "torture memos" released last week, I see little that I would change. I am still convinced, as I wrote in 2005, that interrogation techniques amounting to torture "cross the line that separates us from the enemy we are trying to defeat."

Yet the Bush-era memos strike me as much more thoughtful than most of the moral preening and tendentious grandstanding they set off. Congressman Jerrold Nadler, a senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, apoplectically declares that the memos not only authorized torture "without a shadow of a doubt," they "gave explicit instruction on how to carry it out." The New York Times pronounces them "a journey into depravity." A petition at Democrats.com urges the appointment of a special prosecutor for "torture . . . and other heinous crimes of the Bush Administration."

[Carley]

Evidently common sense and self preservation is not Jacoby’s strong point on this issue.

His original opinion is ludicrous following 9/11 and the fact that the terrorists departed from Boston. What would have thought if Boston had been their destination instead of their departure point.

Nice that he’s had a change of heart. Self righteousness is empty.

[DB]

All I can say is drop a terrorist with knowledge of a planned imminent attack in the hands of any of these sanctimonious twits and see what they do. See how they like making the hard choices of not getting their hands dirty and letting thousands of innocent people die as a result verses doing what is necessary. These people are evil in the extreme and deserve little legal protections.

My contempt for those who scream they want to prosecute everyone that kept us safe over the last 7 years is extreme. I will not tolerate one fact to face. It is an outrage.

[VRWCmember]

It seems to me that the worst examples of torture in this whole episode are exemplified by the continued torture of the English language by the left-wing terrorist sympathizers in the media. For example, how many times has the word “torture” been associated with the Abu Ghraib scandal — which while an abuse of the prisoners there — was really comparable to the fraternity hazing rituals that the plebes on many college campuses endure and could not really be labeled as “torture” by anyone with a modicum of linguistic integrity in his being. As for the interrogations at Gitmo, the “enhanced” techniques used on the likes of KSM were harsh and discomforting, but still do not rise to the traditionally held meaning of the word “torture”.