Torture as a Limited Hangout
Is it my imagination or does some of the faux media outrage over the use of torture seem somewhat stilted?
Don’t get me wrong, I believe that the use of torture by the United States was in violation of international and domestic law, morally reprehensible and despicable, and clearly one of the most flagrant abuses of power that arose from the Bush administration.
But, I can also remember as the 2008 presidential election neared, wondering if the future administration would seek investigations into what concerned most Americans most. It seems to me that the issue of torture, as heinous a crime as it is, was incredibly less ‘criminal’ than the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of world citizens as a result of a needless war in Iraq based on what appeared to be intentional distortions in intelligence data.
Remember the Downing Street memo? Remember the yellowcake from Niger and the outing of American agents? Remember Colin Powell in front of the United Nations hawking satellite photos and mobile bio-weapons labs and anthrax in little vials? Remember Dick Cheney warning of mushroom clouds and reconstituted nuclear weapons programs, citing stories in the New York Times that he himself had planted? Do you remember the claimed ‘20 minute warning time’ associated with Iraqi missiles aimed at the US? Remember the smallpox program Saddam was purported to have?
And now, six years after the American public was terrorized by propaganda based on the most dubious of intelligence claims, and the American public was virtually stampeded into an unnecessary war that resulted in perhaps hundreds of thousands dead, we are told that the pivotal actionable legal issue of the day is ‘interrogation techniques?’
It appeared to me that the issue of ‘torture’ was foisted on us as the central issue in the lead-up to the election. For sure, the issue is an important one. But, it is also a manageable one for the previous administration. It very easily pits partisan hacks against each other in a debate that can never be solved. On the one side we have laws broken. On the other side we have claims that the safety of the public was at risk, and the men who committed these atrocities were attempting to protect us.
This is known as a limited hangout defense. It’s the old switcheroo. It is the legal equivalent of pleading guilty to a lesser charge – but with extenuating circumstances. One need only trot out Dick Cheney to exploit people’s fears once again, and create a faux debate about public safety vs. international law.
And forgotten in this debate are the calls for accountability and investigations into possible war crimes and mass murder.
To those of you who voice frustration over Obama’s choice to prosecute or not prosecute the architects of water-boarding, I share your frustration, but I remind you that hundreds of thousands of people are dead as a result of unanswered questions associated with Iraq, 9/11, Anthrax and a host of other issues - like war profiteering, fraud and dictatorial powers that, to this day, still remain unanswered. The question is not whether Obama should seek prosecutions of waterboard advocates. The question is whether we should hold him accountable for pursuing ALL the answers for the clusterfuck that was the last 8 years – and whether we should allow him to continue the escalation of military interventionism in Eurasia without those clear answers.