For The Torture Apologists

by Dee Newman

As I wrote back in 2009, I’m sure, there are those who would love to watch Dick Cheney waterboarded until he cried “Uncle” and confessed that waterboarding is torture. But, most of us who recognized that the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” authorized by the Bush/Cheney Administration was actually torture have no interest in vengeance or retribution. What we have is a fervent desire and interest in upholding the rule of law and in preventing our government from ever again torturing anyone in our names.

What we are hearing from the “torture apologists” today is merely the re-hash of the same old rationalizations we heard Karl Rove and other spew out on Fox News and other networks six years ago.

Unlike President Clinton’s affair with an intern, it seems, to the torture apologists, the issue of torture is not serious enough to warrant moral outrage or legal action. Unlike the Japanese soldiers we sentenced to death for waterboarding our servicemen in World War II, the torture apologists, believe to prosecute those in the Bush Administration for doing the exact same acts would be “irrational vengeance.” To the torture apologists the decision by Bush&Co. to use waterboarding is just a “policy difference” between one administration and another.

What these folks seem to not understand is that this is not just about “policy differences,” as they would have us believe. No, this is a hell-of-lot more serious. It is about morality, the rule of law and the leaders of our precious country violating not only the international prohibition on torture, but also a number of federal statues and the United States Constitution, sanctioning and carrying out inhumane and illegal acts of violence against others.

Furthermore, it is about the fate of Americans captured behind enemy lines in future conflicts. The Bush Administration’s use of torture dramatically increased the likelihood that our servicemen and women will be tortured in the future. Failing to hold them accountable for their immoral and illegal actions, has only intensify the risk to our servicemen and women.

But, more than anything it is about who we are – our character and integrity!

According to the apologists, (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary) waterboardering a person 183 times (six times a day) in less than a month is justifiable because they have convinced themselves it worked – that it kept our nation safe.

It always amazes me how rational people can rationalize anything. Apparently, the torture apologists 12-year-defense of the Bush administration has left them hopelessly attached to an immoral and illegal strategy of torture that they must now defend no matter how morally corrupt their efforts appear.

As Shepard Smith said six years ago on Fox News, (And, I paraphrase) It doesn't make any difference whether it kept us safe or not, THIS IS AMERICA! WE DO NOT TORTURE! no matter what.

The end can never justify the means even in a ticking-time-bomb situation, which we have never experienced. Two wrongs never make anything right.

I believe it is better to lose our lives than our values. That is what I call – true courage.

And, if you believe otherwise, you should, at the very least, have the courage to face the truth and consequences of you own actions in a court of law and let a jury of your peers determine your fate.

To continue to relentlessly defend the indefensible is not courageous – it is craven – so lacking in courage as to be worthy of contempt.

I have no desire for retribution. All I want is for those who authorized the so-called "enhance interrogation techniques" and their apologists to recognize and admit that what they did was WRONG!

Until they do the investigations should continue and they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.