On Oct. 6, The New York Times reported that President Bush reacted to a Congressional uproar over the disclosure of secret Justice Department legal opinions. These documents endorse the harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects by defending the methods and declaring that the "government does not torture people" (we outsource!). It is a sad testament to the sheer bald-faced dishonesty of this administration that the debate has shifted from "Do we torture?" to "Is it okay that we torture?"
The answer to the latter should be a resounding "no."
Over the course of this seemingly interminable presidential campaign, the Republican candidates in particular (with the notable exceptions of Senator John McCain and Congressman Ron Paul) have largely stuck to their guns (and, presumably, waterboards) when questioned on U.S. treatment of detainees.
During the May 16 Republican debate, Rudy Giuliani insisted that interrogators should be able to use "every method they can think of." Reps. Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo agreed, and Mitt Romney, not to be outdone, said, "Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is, we ought to double Guantanamo."
Nevertheless, President Bush claims that America does not practice torture (who needs practice? Our guys are professionals!), and instead has narrowly defined U.S. actions as "enhanced interrogation techniques."
During the 1998 hearings in Congress concerning Bill Clinton's sexual improprieties with Miss Lewinsky, conservatives (and most liberals) looked askance at the president's careful mincing of words; in particular, they were unimpressed by his reliance on elaborate definitions of words like "is" to technically acquit himself of wrongdoing.
The torture debate is Bush's "it depends on the meaning of the word 'is'" moment, except that this time the private parts under scrutiny belong to a suspected terrorist and are attached to a car battery in Gitmo.
Whether the president of the United States covered up a game of hide-the-salami with an intern is one thing; whether he authorized the use of internationally banned torture on enemy combatants is quite another.
Although multitudes of experts on interrogation techniques have come forward to label the techniques torture (many of them bearing a striking resemblance to "harsh interrogation techniques" that the United States has objected to in the past), the president continues to insist that his administration does not condone torture, just like he insisted that Rumsfeld was here to stay, that there was no warrantless wiretapping program, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, that Scooter Libby had done nothing wrong, that the insurgency was in its last throes and that Brownie was doing a heckuva job.
This is not America. This nation has for years been a beacon of hope for the oppressed and the forgotten, and the ideals on which it was founded resonate across the globe. At the signing of the Geneva Conventions in 1949, the United States was one of the few nations that could truthfully stand up and say with a strong voice and a clear conscience that our country does not, never has and never will torture another human being.
Sadly, the days are now gone when that phrase included the words "never has." But American citizens and true patriots should be prepared to fight to defend "does not" and "never will."
