Soapbox

Torture isn’t Punishment

I confess myself still in a bit of a daze, reeling from the implications of the 2003 Justice Department memo finally released. Reading about it is the mother of all "I want my country back" moments. It is hard to know where to begin, as horror is piled upon outrage.

International laws and treaties against torture don’t apply , Justice Department attorney John Yoo assured the eager president, because even if they did, who and what army would come after us to enforce it? No one. Don’t worry George- it’s Ok to hit the little kids for their lunch money, because we’re the biggest bully on the playground and no one is going to stop us.

Abuse isn’t torture if it isn’t done in malice, Yoo said. So as long as the torturers claim that they didn’t want to waterboard their innocent prisoners, but they felt they had to in order to "defend the U.S." then it is OK. I just heard a chilling clip of John Yoo debating with a constitutional scholar who argued him that by Yoo’s own reasoning, it is not illegal to crush a child’s testicles to get his father to talk.
"Well, I think it all depends on why we do that" Yoo replied.
Think about that a moment.
It all depends on why you crush a child’s testicles…

I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. This is even worse than saying that the ends justify the means: Yoo argues that the intention justify the means. And clearly the defense secretary and the President of the United States took that assertion and ran with it. All the way to Abu Ghraib, I would guess.

Yoo went on to assert that in time of war, the will of the president (or the "perogative of the Sovereign" as Yoo termed it) trumps everything else– even the constitution. Even the will of the American people. Which makes that "sovereign" term quite apt, doesn’t it? Though maybe "dictator" would be even more appropriate.

And the most disgusting assertion, and one that I think John McCain should be asked to address, is the claim that the 8th amendment against cruel and unusual punishment doesn’t apply to us since 9/11 because TORTURE ISN’T PUNISHMENT.

In a sick, twisted way, I can see some truth in this. We were not torturing our prisoners to punish them, because in order for that to be true, they would have to have done something to be punished for. And since we now know that some of the people the United States tortured weren’t guilty of anything… apparently, it’s all good.
Except for the children whose testicles get crushed. Not so good for them.

Jesus wept.