Never has an "undisclosed location" seemed like such a perfect option. I don't care if it means a billion dollar bunker or a remote island lair, I just wish Dick Cheney would stay off my television.
Not because I think he has a winning position, but because he's literally making me sick to my stomach.
When I was in high school, I had a job taking pictures for the local weekly. One windy day, a water tower under construction collapsed inward, killing three of the men working to complete the structure. I was called out of science class to rush over to the site and report on what was happening. I climbed up the ladder, clipped in with a safety line on one side and full of the confidence that comes with being sixteen. An old Pentex camera drummed against my chest as I climbed. The freshly painted rungs of the metal ladder were slick with rain.
At the top of that ladder I stepped into the bowl that made up the base of the unfinished water tank. There were two bodies. One man had been simply pulverized by the weight of a falling steel panel. Another had been caught at the edge of one of the large, thick, curving sheets of metal. He'd been sliced through almost as neatly as a dissection specimen in a museum. I can still remember the way that all his teeth were visible -- on the side of his head that was still intact -- right back to the last blood-stained molar. There was plenty of blood. Firemen sent up stretchers for the bodies and wrapped them in sheets. Before either of them had reached the ground the sheets were soaked through and a red drizzle fell on those waiting on the ground.
The third guy wasn't there. As it turned out, he'd been driven down the hole at the center, despite a safety guard that was supposed to stop that kind of accident. To find him they had to open a panel all the way at the bottom of the tower.
Not one of the pictures I took that day ran in the local paper. But the coroner appreciated my work. It was absolutely one of the most shocking and disturbing things I've ever seen.
But it still did not sicken me as much as Dick Cheney's recent appearances in defense of torture. Not only is Cheney's view vastly upsetting, but he has much of the media -- and nearly all the conservatives -- talking in his terms. Was it effective? Did we save lives because we used these techniques?
That we're having this discussion at all is more revolting than anything at the top of that old disaster of steel and torn flesh. The Constitution of the United States specifically forbids torture as a means of punishment. The framers of that document don't mention using torture in extracting a confession. Why not? Because they didn't think they had to. Because they took it as a given that any civilized people, people who would not stand for torture of the guilty, would never contemplate that it might be legal to torture those not yet convicted of a crime.
And here is Dick Cheney, telling us that it's all right to torture men not only before they've been convicted, before they've been tried, before they've even been charged. Not just all right, but necessary.
There is a word for people who have not been convicted in a fair trial. Innocent is that word. It doesn't matter if you are Ramzi Yousef, Ted Kaczynski, or Ted Bundy. Until you have been convicted of a crime, in the eyes of the law you are innocent. That's not true everywhere in the world, but it is in America. That is the American system of justice.
That principle is the one that the men who created this nation struggled to uphold. The nation that holds to that high standard is the cause for which Americans in uniform have died for two centuries and more.
If we do this, if after facing down every enemy from our birth pangs to the Gulf War, we accept that we must now bend that principle to secure our safety... then we are no longer that place. We might be safe, but we will not be Americans. If we buy Cheney's argument, even for a minute, we're not just crossing a line. We're accepting that there are no lines. No laws, no morals, no principles that are stronger than fear.
If we even consider that safety outweighs all we'll be... something else. Chenians, maybe. Cowards, certainly. Not Americans.
If it ever comes to a country that accepts torture, I would much prefer to be on the receiving end rather than stand among those that condone such practices.