Torture Does Too Work

The New York Times tells us that in December 2004, the Justice Department was publicly denouncing torture as 'abhorrent' , and the Bush Administration was making noises that sounded like they were backing off of their previous declaration that Bush could order brutal torture anytime he pleased, just because he was the Decider. All that changed, however, mere months later when Abu 'No Pain, No Gain' Gonzales rolled into town and slapped the badge of A.G. on his chest, and the Justice Department issued quite another opinion, this one not quite so public.

This secret opinion was, according to the Times,

"a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures. Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard. The classified opinions, never previously disclosed, are a hidden legacy of President Bush’s second term and Mr. Gonzales’s tenure at the Justice Department, where he moved quickly to align it with the White House after a 2004 rebellion by staff lawyers that had thrown policies on surveillance and detention into turmoil."

What a surprise. How very different of this Administration to pretend to do one thing, and secretly do another. They are just bound and determined to hang on to their beloved torture, no matter what the rest of America thinks, and if they have to lie to do it - so what?

Opponents of torture (i.e. pretty much everybody else) point out that torture doesn't work.

Although I am also an opponent of torture, I would beg to differ. Granted, it doesn't work if you are trying to get at the truth. I'll give you that.

But it works beautifully if your real goal is to get your torturee to say what you want him to say!

After all. isn't this how the Bush Administration has operated since Day One? Everything they have been able to do has been implemented with the help of 'cherry-picked intelligence'.

If you have a thousand credible Iraqi scientists saying there are no weapons of mass destruction and nothing in the works for developing a nuclear bomb, and one drunken nutball saying the opposite, who do you go with? Why, the nutball, of course!

And if you want evidence of Al-Qaeda, or spying, or terror plots, what better way to get the information you want than by torturing someone? They'll say exactly what you want them to say! It may not be the truth, but who cares?

Torture works marvelously well if that is your aim.

And that's why this Administration doesn't care what you or I or anyone else thinks about it.

We're not the Deciders, as Bush so very frequently reminds us. So for all you Ph.D. types who think you're all big ol' smarty-pants,

"I want to remind you who the adviser is and who the president is. [...]I got a lot of Ph.D.-types and smart people around me who come into the Oval Office and say, `Mr. President, here's what's on my mind.' And I listen carefully to their advice. But having gathered the device (sic), I decide, you know, I say, `This is what we're going to do.' And it's `Yes, sir, Mr. President.' And then we get after it, implement policy."

"And it's `Yes, sir, Mr. President.'"

Sounds like torture to me.

Update: Oooops, I was wrong, wrong, wrong!

The ever-eloquent and silver-tongued Miz Dana Perino sez so.

"It's not true," sez she.

"Why not?"

"Cuz."

"Cuz why?"

"Just cuz."

"Just cuz why?"

"Just cuz America doesn't torture, that's why."

"Have you read the memo?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't need to."

"So how do you know we don't torture?"

"Cuz. Whatever we do isn't torture, cuz we don't do that, stupid."

"*sigh*"