BallotVox

Torture

If you type “torture” plus “election” into Google News today, nothing much comes up. “Interrogation” plus “election” doesn’t yield much either. This is puzzling, since America’s interrogation tactics arguably affect its reputation profoundly. You’d think this might be more of an issue on the campaign trail.

Torture/interrogation plain and simple, though — minus the election part — is certainly in the news: A recent Justice Department report documented new instances of harsh interrogation methods used at Guantanamo. Last month, ABC News reported that President Bush knew his top officials approved specific interrogation techniques. Meanwhile, Robert Gates just announced that Guantanamo can’t close any time soon.

The matter of torture/interrogation is also reverberating in citizens’ conversations online. Ann Raber found this provocative photo taken by Robin Dude in Bellingham, Washington. The woman is an acquaintance of Robin’s who spends up to an hour at a time on her knees in this homemade costume:

[Robin Dude / Flickr]

Hanlon’s Razor believes America’s standing has tanked because of the way the Bush administration treats detainees. He thinks we need to step back from arguing exactly what constitutes torture and what doesn’t:

Focus has been placed on waterboarding specifically for far too long. It has shifted the debate away from its core […]

Waterboarding is just the most prolific example of a method of “interrogation” that the administration seems to have no qualms with using as liberally as they can get away with. Whether they waterboard every time is irrelevant. If it’s waterboarding, beatings to “non-vital” areas, stress positions for inhuman lengths of time, sleep deprivation, or extreme temperatures, it’s torture. Trying to argue why this or that isn’t really torture because it can’t kill you or it’s not as bad as something else is missing the point entirely.

The point is that we as Americans should not consider the physical and mental abuse of other human beings an acceptable action. For any reason. Period.

Gene ‘O is a lefty activist from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, who likes dark beer, blueberry farming, and teaching. He’s not sure how to make our anti-torture laws stick (hat tip to Ann Raber):

There’s been some discussion lately about how to get people outside the blogosphere to engage the torture issue. The NYT had an editorial on torture recently, and Tristero is wondering what sort of laws we might pass to prevent this from happening again. I don’t have an answer to that, because we already have laws to prevent it from happening. Seems to me that the trick is to elect people who will interpret the laws we have according to the standard meanings of words, and severely punish government officials who break the law.

A liberal blogger from Calgary in Canada wonders how either Democratic candidate would interpret those anti-torture laws; and can’t figure out why no one seems to be pressing them on it:

[H]as anyone asked Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton how they will go about fulfilling their promises to close Gitmo considering these prisoners are basically men without a country now? […]

I forgot that the US public is too wrapped up in election fever right now while it tries to survive the war-created recession and ridiculous gas prices to pay attention to a little thing like the human rights of people its government has shipped off to some prison in Cuba to rot forever. And protesting and impeachment are just so passé. The Dems are so busy, after all. […]

And yet there are still those who believe the Democrats will actually do something quickly about what’s happening there (just wait until they win the White House back…next year…maybe…they say) […] All of the candidates crow “the US does not torture” as if it’s true and these people are America’s next best hope? And their supporters actually let them get away with saying that without challenging it?

It certainly would be reassuring to hear some loud-and-clear specifics from all of the candidates.