We discussed for a long time in our editorial board meeting this morning what John McCain's position on waterboarding is. McCain voted the other day to sustain the president's veto of the Congressional bill banning waterboarding.
Here's where McCain comes down on waterboarding:
1. McCain believes waterboarding is torture. In October of last year, he rebuked Rudy Giuliani for waffling on whether or not waterboarding is torture:
“All I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today,” Mr. McCain, who spent more than five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, said in a telephone interview.Of presidential candidates like Mr. Giuliani, who say that they are unsure whether waterboarding is torture, Mr. McCain said: “They should know what it is. It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture.”
2. In this clip from a presidential debate last year, Romney said that he doesn't believe in torture, but says we shouldn't tell our enemies what we are or aren't going to do -- which is why he declines to say if he thinks waterboarding is torture. McCain, in high dudgeon, upbraided Romney for declining to call waterboarding torture, and said that "How anybody could think that that kind of thing could be inflicted by Americans on people who are held in our custody is absolutely beyond me."
Romney went on to say that his point is that the president shouldn't say which particular techniques he would and wouldn't authorize. McCain shot back, "Then you would have to advocate that we withdraw from the Geneva Conventions... ." He went on to say that allowing waterboarding is "in violation of laws that we've passed. I would hope that we understand, my friends, that life is not '24' and Jack Bauer." He goes on to praise the interrogation under rules of Army Field Manual, and says that torture is "what America is all about [and] a defining issue."
3. After he voted against the bill that the president would eventually veto, McCain issued this statement trying to reconcile his past positions with this veto. Money quote:
The conference report would go beyond any of the recent laws that I just mentioned – laws that were extensively debated and considered – by bringing the CIA under the Army Field Manual, extinguishing thereby the ability of that agency to employ any interrogation technique beyond those publicly listed and formulated for military use. I cannot support such a step because I have not been convinced that the Congress erred by deliberately excluding the CIA. I believe that our energies are better directed at ensuring that all techniques, whether used by the military or the CIA, are in full compliance with our international obligations and in accordance with our deepest values. What we need is not to tie the CIA to the Army Field Manual, but rather to have a good faith interpretation of the statutes that guide what is permissible in the CIA program.
OK, here's what I don't get: McCain has been unequivocal in stating his conviction that waterboarding is torture, and is illegal. He also traded on his public reputation for probity on this question to lay into his GOP presidential opponents who were anything short of forthrightly condemning waterboarding. He even said in that debate that the Army Field Manual ought to be the standard, and said he doesn't understand how anybody could want an American to torture.
So now he comes out to vote against a bill that would actually have banned waterboarding. How does he justify it? With what strikes me as incomprehensible legalism. Seriously, can someone please explain how McCain's rationale makes sense? Because I'm not seeing it. I think he's flip-flopping -- and on an issue that he's not given any of his opponents any wiggle room on.
It's hard for me to grasp why McCain would go soft on torture after he had the GOP nomination sewn up, when he held on to his unpopular (among Republicans) stance back in the fall, when it could have cost him something. What am I missing?
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Per Rod: "If I were in that situation, I'd sure want torture to be used. But look, if someone molested my children, I'd want to put a bullet between his eyes. What I desire in a certain situation does not make it right."
Thank you, Rod, for answering the question, even though you had to be forced to do so under threat of steaming hot boudin fumes, and even though you cling to your tortured interpretation of MY Catechism.
"Torture" is not defined therein to encompass what I and millions of others in this country would permit: U.S.-style waterboarding under a time bomb scenario to prevent the murder and maiming of thousands/millions of innocent men, women and children and untold suffering for lifetimes. Contrary to your assertion, the purpose of waterboarding is not to obtain a confession (forbidden by the Catechism); it is to obtain information which would allow the good guys to prevent the bad guys from an obscene act of terrorism that would make 9/11 pale in comparison. Accordingly, you have no grounds to fall back on the Catechism to support your almost suicidal position. You may as well assert that it is torture to give a frightened child a rabies vaccination.
Under the conditions of a just war, proportional defensive actions by a sovereign against an unjust aggressor, with an expectation of success, hardly can be termed wrong. I.E., if the Catechism does not exclude maiming and blowing to bits aggressors on a battlefield to defend our lives, then it obviously does not exclude far, far less forceful means to defend the lives of thousands/millions of innocent non-combatant citizens under narrow circumstances. You won't admit the rationality of that argument, so further debate is pointless with someone who thinks the Catechism models itself on the battle of Snoopy and the Red Baron.
I used the term " Rod's buddy, Saddam" to make light of your public criticism of and refusal to see the necessity of the Iraq war; a war to remove the Mother of All Tortures, who threatened us with the same WOMD he used on his own people and Iran, and who sought nuclear weapons, and who shielded and financed terrorists, and who threatened our country's economic lifeblood in the Gulf, and who for 12 years lied and broke his promises to let the UN freely inspect his weaponry.
I apologize in that you took it seriously. I do not apologize for taking strong exception to the manner in which you joined the gutless wonder, anti-American Democrats to knock the President (the most moral man you will ever live to see in the White House) and my country, and to your seeming obliviousness to potential $100 per gallon gasoline, $50 per gallon milk, etc. Even William F. came around to my point of view.
So, my friend, we will just have to disagree.
"Torture is the infliction of pain -- physical, mental, emotional -- on the victim in order to accomplish some goal important to the torturers." Franklin
Fuzzy thinking, old friend, viz: Soldering is the infliction of pain --physical, mental, emotional -- on the enemy in order to accomplish some goal important to the solder. Point is, you definition of IMMORAL torture is also the definition of some very MORAL actions, even doctoring.
"So, I challenge you to address this: the victims of American waterboarding are not going to get a PC disclosure." Franklin
Golly, that changes everything! I thought a soldier had to give an aggressor a PC warning before he shot the aggressor's ascot off.
"...torture as a method of acquiring reliable intelligence is suspect at best." Franklin
All I know is that it worked like a charm on the 9/11 SOBs. Hell, they are still talking.
"We have no evidence our torture actually worked btw." Steve
Who cares? We don't torture.
"Saddam tortured. We torture...There is a fair amount of info suggesting that things got carried away at Abu Ghraib." Steve
I kinda like having a young woman put her panties over my head and tell me act like a dog. Some guys in my old fraternity paid good money to be tortured like that. Get real, Steve, Al-Qaeda types must love to read your comments. They probably are rolling around their caves in laughter.
"Of note, the guys who are actually fighting in the war are generally opposed to torture at least because its counterproductive." Steve
Finally we agree. Bless them. I, too, am opposed to torture.
"Lastly, who gets to choose whom we torture?" Steve
We don't torture---do you still beat your wife? If you mean who would get to decide whom we waterboard, it is the CIA, under very strict conditions, not our fighting men and women.
Ladies and germs, I am tired of this. It is fruitless. Over and out.
UN definition of Torture "Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."
The 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia doesn't seem to have a definition, but "severe pain or suffering to obtain information or a confession" seems to be what would fit their section on the Inquisition. Their article is mostly pro-Inquisition, somewhat to my embarrassment. However torture that threatens life or limb was apparently seen as unacceptable to the Medieval Popes.
I guess the question would be whether waterboarding is "severe pain or suffering." In certain cases of respiratory disorders I think it could threaten a life and therefore be verboten by the moral standards of the Roman Inquisition. In other cases I don't know what the verdict is on severity, but if it makes a person believe they're going to die this sounds plausibly severe.
Now whether torture can be justified to get information, it might in some utilitarian way. I just don't quite see how it can be done so morally. I was amenable to the idea that extreme situations might necessitate it, but this doesn't really seem to be enough. For one there's the matter of reliability. Medieval Inquisitor Nicolas Eymeric reportedly declared that torture was deceptive and ineffectual. In fact it was generally done when they already had all needed information and just desired the person to confess. (For repentance or some other reason) Our understanding of psychology and the brain should likely render it obsolete. In addition there is the possible harm to the torturer. Opening up that "door", for whatever reason, is opening up people to the sadistic sides of their nature. The uncertain benefit coupled with the moral danger makes it essentially unjustifiable.
Granted this is speaking in moral terms as I see it. What about seeing it in a secular-nationalist or utilitarian sense? Here things get murkier. Still the extra psychotherapy bills and unreliability of answers might make it unjustified. There's also the hope that they will treat your people the same in response. If you have no such hope than from a secular-nationalist viewpoint the reasoning against it might be weak. After all even if it's unreliable punishing the enemies of the nation and appearing brutal might be in the interest of the nation's power. Therefore waterboarding or other tortures become tolerable. (Hence the biggest hawks on this were secular-nationalists like Giuliani)
BTW: I know this went on too much about the Inquisition, but I can't find my copy of the Catechism and the Catholic Encyclopedia most mentions torture in contexts of Inquisitors or Christian martyrs.
In case you look in on this thread again, Cleveland, I must with a bit of a frown reject your analogies completely. Torture is inflicted on a prisoner. Acts of war are perpetrated under very different circumstances. Please don't wander off into poetic usages, because I have quite a reservoir of personal data that teaches me the precise differnces between causing pain, injury and death in battle, and using torture on prisoners. I don't arrive at that conclusion arbitrarily. I am completely corroborated and confirmed in my conclusions by the Geneva Conventions.
Not wanting or meaning to put words in your mouth, my friend, here is the admission I would like to see from you: I know what torture is, I know its purpose, and I condone and justify its use by the US. We should, I respectfully submit, dispense with the is/is not torture argument, because what I see you writing is that there is some torture that is wrong, and some that is justified.
Franklin, there is no sense replowing old ground with you regarding the "truth" of what "torture" is, so I'll let Rod's words speak for me. In the following quotes from his Sunday DMN article, he was speaking in general terms, not specifically about torture, but I hereby make his words my own about what torture is for different people under different circumstances:
"'Truth is subjectivity,' said Soren Kierkegaard, the Christian existentialist philosopher. His point was not that truth is relative but that the kinds of truths for which a man is willing to live and die can only be known personally. Reason can never be discarded, but ..."
"Maybe that's why 'Judge not, lest ye be judged' is not just a wise maxim, but perhaps the summit of moral wisdom."
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