Via ThinkProgress, Vanity Fair has a new article out on torture that is definitely worth a read. In it, Phillippe Sands attempts to trace to origins of the use of torture by the United States, starting as early as 2002 with some of the first detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
Sands' article is filled with many breathtaking and appalling stories. For example, in December of 2002, Donald Rumsfeld signed a document approving the use of various interrogation techniques. As Sands describes it,
Under his [Rumsfeld's] signature he also scrawled a few words that refer to the length of time a detainee can be forced to stand during interrogation: "I stand for 8–10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?"
The document that Rumsfeld signed approved the use of various techniques, including "stress positions, isolation, hooding, 20-hour interrogations, and nudity."
Sadly, none of this is much of a shock from an administration that has all but admitted to using waterboarding, and other very intense forms of interrogation, which by most accounts, including my own, amount to torture. However, the part of this article that really infuriated me was this passage.
"This year I was really a player," Feith said, thinking back on 2002 and relishing the memory. I asked him whether, in the end, he was at all concerned that the Geneva decision might have diminished America’s moral authority. He was not. "The problem with moral authority," he said, was "people who should know better, like yourself, siding with the assholes, to put it crudely."
Feith is basically saying that if you question the use of torture, then you are an asshole and are siding with the assholes.
Well, if believing that the United States should respect the Geneva Conventions, if for no other reason that to help protect our own troops that may be captured and detained by an enemy in the future, then I guess I'm an asshole.
If believing that the use of torture flies in the face of international law, the Geneva Conventions, and the Army Field Manual, as well as goes against everything the United States stands for and should stand for, then I guess I'm an asshole.
If believing that the use of torture diminishes the United States' reputation in the world, a reputation that already took a beating following the invasion of Iraq, then I guess I'm an asshole.
If believing that the use of torture does not provide good intelligence, that torture only makes the person being tortured say whatever it is that they think you want them to say, then I guess I'm an asshole.