The NY Daily News has decent news coverage, good entertainment and sports, and mixed op-ed talent. It has depressingly kneejerk conservative (a few exceptions, including the Padilla Case, aside) editorial comment. Today's piece was sickening. My comments are in brackets.
A large part of the problem is the loaded word "torture." It's a horrible word. One recoils from the sound of it. The skin crawls. Torture. It's true: What kind of monsters practice "torture"? But let's be clear what torture is. Chain saw, that's torture. Wood chipper, that's torture. Gleeful medical experiments, that's torture.
Sleep deprivation, that isn't. Sensory disorientation, that isn't. Making someone stand up for half a day, that's discomfort. Putting a hood on him, that isn't torture either. These are interrogation techniques. Entirely useful in the case of, say, some top Al Qaeda operative who knows all about next week's sarin attack on the subways.
[The appeal to domestic terrorism -- using an example committed by a Japanese non-Al Qaeda group at that -- is typical. It might, of course, justify domestic torture. Does stepping on U.S. soil change things that much, after all? Likewise, how many of those "interrogated" knew anything related to this sort of thing? Finally, the actual benefit of such "interrogation" techniques is unclear.
Oh, but are we talking about "torture?" The "techniques" chosen is disgustingly incomplete. What about nudity and sexual abuse? What about breaking chemical lights, spilling their contents on the detainee? What about threatening family members? What about use of dogs? What about numerous suspect deaths, including a few clearly illegitimate, others under investigation? Is this torture?]
Ah, but along come the likes of Sens. Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden, ever determined to paint the Bush administration as naught but beastly for desiring to defend American borders and protect American citizens. If Martian invaders landed in New Jersey and started melting cities with death rays, Kennedy and Biden would call for congressional hearings to make sure that captured Martians had blankets, sandwiches, cell phones and rec room privileges. God forbid the Army should ask them any questions.
[If we do not allow the items I listed above, will this mean we would not be able to "ask them any questions?" No. Pathetic.]
Al Qaeda and associates, they might as well be Martians. World War III is nothing less than the War of the Worlds, and these are enemies such as we have never faced before. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld would be a fool not to approve a specified list of interrogation techniques. President Bush would be asleep at the switch if he did not ask his lawyers to assess the theoretical limits of his executive authority and constitutional options. And whoever's grilling Khalid Sheikh Mohammad would be unfit for the job if he did not at least threaten to plonk Mohammad's head into a pail of water from time to time.
[This continues our story of "and you too can have more reasoning abilities than newspaper editors," even if "you" can't read its fluff pieces on "Rico," the dog that can understand two hundred words. Rico also can reason better than these people. The suspect reasoning of the government's lawyers, not the reasoning itself, is at issue. Reasoning that is deemed especially troubling given what happened, as expressed by various articles in this very newspaper, including one with a nude prisoner on the cover. Finally, they did more than threaten.]
It's all too convenient a cliché, awful to say, but it's still a fact: 9/11 changed everything. If we must gravely reexamine the national soul and decide that in such times as these it is not necessarily all that appalling to make some mutt's life tough in order to get an answer out of him, well, there we are. If that's what it takes to extract some scrap of information that will prevent American deaths in some unthinkable firestorm - what exactly is the moral problem here again?
[The cat is now out of the bag. We are not talking about persons here, but dogs, dogs that by the way might not be guilty of anything. Therefore, even if there is a chance to extract a scrap of information (we never can tell when this would occur, so it is but a chance) that will prevent "American deaths," concern for treatment is so ridiculous as to be a subject of scorn. 9/11 changed everything, including apparently our nation having a soul.
It is a perversion of that term to describe a regime that isn't even concerned about what is being done here. That day did not deprive us of our humanity, or make abuse a good thing, or stop it from having blowblack. "Everything" did not change -- the rules need to be modified, but rules remain all the same. I end by answering hyperbole with hyperbole -- did black become white? Night become day? No. So, everything did not change, and suggesting it did is either very arrogant or an act of misguided despair. In fact, it threatens our "national soul."]