Techniques to Aid Authoritarians: The Supposed Statute of Limitations on Outrage
In the Fast and Furious and IRS scandals, the Administration has purposefully dragged its feet on disclosures. The strategy is to let as much time pass so that when bad revelations eventually come out, the heat from the original scandal is gone. Defenders of the Administration will then argue the revelations are "old news", as if there is some statute of limitations on outrage. This strategy has driven Republicans crazy.
So what do Conservatives do when the torture report comes out after months and months of foot-dragging trying to prevent its release? You got it, they scream "old news". Scott Johnson:
I confess that I do not understand the rationale supporting the publication of the Democrats’ Senate Select Committee study of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program. On its face, it seems like ancient history (of a highly tendentious kind) in the service of a personal grudge. It is not clear to me what is new and it is not clear that what is new is reliable, given the absurd limitations of the committee’s investigation.
By the way, I want to make one observation on this line from attorney John Hinderaker:
Similarly, the report confirms that the Agency’s enhanced interrogation techniques were used on only a small number of captured terrorists, 39 altogether. These enhanced techniques include the “belly slap” and the dreaded “attention grasp.”
Most important, it appears that waterboarding really was the most extreme sanction to which any of the terrorists were subjected (and only three of them, at that). Given all the hoopla about CIA “torture,” one might have expected to learn that far worse happened at the Agency’s dark sites. But, as far as the report discloses, the Agency stuck almost exclusively to its approved list of tactics, all of which the Department of Justice specifically found not to be torture.
Were some of the captured terrorists treated roughly? Absolutely. Their lives must have been miserable, and deservedly so. Some of the 39 were placed in stress positions for considerable lengths of time, doused with water, fed poor diets, left naked in cells. In one instance, a terrorist was threatened with a power drill. In another case, an interrogator told a terrorist that his children may be killed. There were two instances of mock execution.
A few observations:
- The fact that they were "terrorists" seems to justify the mistreatment for him. But how do we know they were terrorists? Because the Administration said so. There was no due process, no right of appeal, no ability to face witnesses, no third party review, none of that. A branch of the Administration grabbed the guy, said you are a terrorist, and started torturing them. I am not saying that they did this without evidence, but I am sure Mr. Hinderaker know from his own experience that every prosecutor thinks every person he or she tries is guilty. That is why both sides get to participate in the process.
- "Terrorist" is an awfully generic word to give us automatic license to torture people. My sense is that there are all kinds of shades of behavior lumped under that word. Conservatives like Mr. Hinderaker object, rightly, to a wide range of sexually aggressive actions from unwanted kissing to forced penetration being lumped under the word "rape". But my sense is we do the same thing with "terrorists".
- In my mind the casualness with which he can accept these kinds of treatments for people he does not like is morally debilitating. It is a small step from accepting it for one to accepting it for many. It is like the old joke of a debutante asked if she would have sex for a million dollars and saying "yes", then getting asked if she would have sex for $20 and responding "what kind of girl do you think I am?" We've already established that, we are just haggling over price.
- For those on the Right who say that all this stuff about due process does not apply because the "terrorists" were not citizens, then welcome to the Left! Individual rights are innate -- they are not granted by governments (and thus by citizenship). The Right generally says they believe this. It is the Left whose positions imply that rights are favors granted by the state to its citizens.
