On the Justification of Torture
October 4th, 2007 by Steve
Doublespeak is language deliberately constructed to disguise or distort its actual meaning, often resulting in a communication bypass. Such language is often associated with governmental, military, religious and corporate institutions and its deliberate use by these is what distinguishes it from other euphemisms. Doublespeak may be in the form of bald euphemisms (”downsizing” for “firing of many employees”, “enhanced interrogation techniques” for torture) or deliberately ambiguous phrases (”wet work” for “assassination“, “take out” for “destroy”). –Wikipedia
The New York Times has an excellent piece today outlining and detailing the White House conspiracy to implement torture as public policy. Here’s a sample:
Mr. Kelbaugh said the questions were sometimes close calls that required consultation with the Justice Department. But in August 2002, the department provided a sweeping legal justification for even the harshest tactics.
That opinion, which would become infamous as “the torture memo” after it was leaked, was written largely by John Yoo, a young Berkeley law professor serving in the Office of Legal Counsel. His broad views of presidential power were shared by Mr. Addington, the vice president’s adviser. Their close alliance provoked John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, to refer privately to Mr. Yoo as Dr. Yes for his seeming eagerness to give the White House whatever legal justifications it desired, a Justice Department official recalled.
Mr. Yoo’s memorandum said no interrogation practices were illegal unless they produced pain equivalent to organ failure or “even death.” A second memo produced at the same time spelled out the approved practices and how often or how long they could be used.
When I saw former Congressman Bob Barr and Yoo debate this topic at CPAC, I blogged the following at the time:
Yoo’s initial premise was that there have been precendents for using the Bill of Rights as toilet paper. He provided a chronological list: The Alien and Sedition Act, habeas corpus suspension during the Civil War, WWI, WWII, yada, yada, yada. By this line of reasoning, wife beating, slavery and even genocide can be excused. Lest you think this a case of political exaggeration, remember Michelle Malkin’s book “In Defense of Internment.”
Of course, Yoo didn’t think the Patriot Act should be repealed, suggesting that this current war against the nameless, faceless Jihadists requires a balance between civil liberties and security. “Our civil liberties are not subject to a balance,” was Barr’s response when he had the floor next.
The conversation turned to torture. Apparently hoping to soften the imagery, Yoo didn’t use the word “torture” in his defense of this barbaric act. He suggested that we are in a different kind of war and we have to use different mechanisms to protect our security. He said that we shouldn’t have to read terrorists their Miranda Rights. Because Yoo tried to softsoap the subject, this left Barr a great opportunity, of which he took advantage.
Because of noise at the next table, I missed some of what Barr said, but it was along the lines of “Never before have we toyed with wordsmithing various definitions of torture. This is a slippery slope that we need to pay attention to.”
While Barr recieved more applause during the introductions, the audience response was about the same for Yoo and Barr though the debate. At the end, Yoo recieved significant applause for his defense of torture. Once again, I was reminded of why I’m embarrassed to have ever been a member of the Republican Party. As a veteran of over ten years in the Army, knowing that half the people in the audience cheer torture cheapened the feeling of pride I felt whenever they honored those who have proudly worn our country’s uniform.
I had forgotten that Yoo chose not to use the word “torture” at CPAC until I stumbled into Andrew Sullivan’s blog entry about the Times article. I’ll should first provide that Godwin’s Law was probably initially promoted so that valid comparisons of current events to Nazi Germany wouldn’t be cheapened. This is indeed such a case.
Sullivan wrote:
We know this because the law is very clear when you don’t have war criminals like AEI’s John Yoo rewriting it to give one man unchecked power. We know this because the very same techniques - hypothermia, long-time standing, beating - and even the very same term “enhanced interrogation techniques” - “verschaerfte Vernehmung” in the original German - were once prosecuted by American forces as war crimes. The perpetrators were the Gestapo. The penalty was death. You can verify the history here.
By viewing the history which Sullivan provides, one can see how the Bush administration pretty much followed the play book established by Nazi officials shortly before the beginning of WWII:
The phrase “Verschärfte Vernehmung” is German for “enhanced interrogation”. Other translations include “intensified interrogation” or “sharpened interrogation”. It’s a phrase that appears to have been concocted in 1937, to describe a form of torture that would leave no marks, and hence save the embarrassment pre-war Nazi officials were experiencing as their wounded torture victims ended up in court. The methods, as you can see above, are indistinguishable from those described as “enhanced interrogation techniques” by the president. As you can see from the Gestapo memo, moreover, the Nazis were adamant that their “enhanced interrogation techniques” would be carefully restricted and controlled, monitored by an elite professional staff, of the kind recommended by Charles Krauthammer, and strictly reserved for certain categories of prisoner. At least, that was the original plan.
Also: the use of hypothermia, authorized by Bush and Rumsfeld, was initially forbidden. ‘Waterboarding” was forbidden too, unlike that authorized by Bush. As time went on, historians have found that all the bureaucratic restrictions were eventually broken or abridged. Once you start torturing, it has a life of its own. The “cold bath” technique - the same as that used by Bush against al-Qahtani in Guantanamo - was, according to professor Darius Rejali of Reed College,
pioneered by a member of the French Gestapo by the pseudonym Masuy about 1943. The Belgian resistance referred to it as the Paris method, and the Gestapo authorized its extension from France to at least two places late in the war, Norway and Czechoslovakia. That is where people report experiencing it.
Sullivan’s comparison of the two almost parallel histories might be fascinating if I wasn’t so sickened by the fact that George Bush is currently in office. To make matters worse, the overwhelming majority of Republican presidential candidates, like Yoo and his Nazi predecessors, support the same heinous practices while refusing to call them torture.
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GordonUnleashed » Blog Archive » More on Pro-Torture Republicans wrote on 10/4/07 at 8:05 pm :
[…] of justifying torture while refusing to actually use the word, let’s look back one blog entry at something Andrew Sullivan wrote: The very phrase used by [President Bush] to […]
GordonUnleashed » Blog Archive » Republican Apologists for Torture wrote on 10/8/07 at 2:00 pm :
[…] Me: Doublespeak is language deliberately constructed to disguise or distort its actual meaning, often resulting in a communication bypass. Such language is often associated with governmental, military, religious and corporate institutions and its deliberate use by these is what distinguishes it from other euphemisms. Doublespeak may be in the form of bald euphemisms (”downsizing” for “firing of many employees”, “enhanced interrogation techniques” for torture) or deliberately ambiguous phrases (”wet work” for “assassination“, “take out” for “destroy”). –Wikipedia […] I had forgotten that Yoo chose not to use the word “torture” at CPAC until I stumbled into Andrew Sullivan’s blog entry about the Times article. I’ll should first provide that Godwin’s Law was probably initially promoted so that valid comparisons of current events to Nazi Germany wouldn’t be cheapened. This is indeed such a case. […] […]
Steve wrote on 10/9/07 at 11:58 am :
Test blog comment