When Lindsay Graham decided to support cap-and-trade — a position not even some moderate Democrats can stomach — I observed that this was not only bad policy but also bad politics. And sure enough, moves like that and his support for now Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor have spelled trouble for him. This report explains:
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s public support is collapsing in South Carolina — driven by a wholesale revolt among the GOP electorate and a steady erosion of his support amongst independents.
Already consistently loathed by a solid third of GOP voters, Graham’s recent leftward bent — including his co-authoring of a controversial “Cap & Tax” proposal supported by President Barack Obama and liberal Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) — has him locked in a “terminal free fall,” according one prominent Republican consultant.
“A chunk of the GOP has always detested him, but in the last month a damn has broken,” said the consultant, who was granted anonymity to discuss the impact of two recent polls that were conducted in South Carolina (one allegedly by Graham’s own advisors). “More Republicans now oppose Sen. Graham than support him. Independents are also deserting him in huge numbers.”
This contradicts the favorite narrative of Democrats and their media handmaidens, namely that in order to stay relevant, Republicans must compromise with Obama, move leftward, and adopt policies at odds with conservative principles. It turns out that doing so alienates not only Republican voters but also independents, who themselves are not enamored of Obama’s leftist agenda. Graham won’t face the voters until 2014, so he has time to recover. But his example may serve as a warning to other Republicans: mimicking Obamaism is a losing proposition.
Obviously, Mr. Sullivan has suffered some form of “torture” to reach his torturous conclusion(s).
Beyond what is severe mental pain or suffering, would waterboarding cause “prolonged mental harm”? I understand that waterboarding typically takes 15-30 seconds, at least from what CIA officers who have subjected themselves to it have stated. It’s certainly uncomfortable from what has been described, eliciting a drowning response without actually drowning you. Based on the statutes’s language, the transitory infliction of mental pain or suffering, even severe, is not torture. One can certainly argue both sides of the issue, and adduce all manner of expert testimony for or against, but the issue is not that clear-cut.
On the more general point, do you necessarily apply more traditional standards of the laws of war to an enemy that views mass murder as a good day’s work? Even Senator Schumer understood that you can’t speak in absolutes on this subject. Call waterboarding a necessary evil if you want, but compared to what?
Politics aside, I must say reading Mr. Podhoretz’s blog is torture.
I still remember being held briefly under water against my will as a small child by two witless teenaged camp counselors who evidently thought they were teaching me how to swim. I’d have to say the experience at least tended to discourage me from swimming until adulthood and may have contributed to occasional nightmares over the next three decades in which I imagined myself to be struggling under water and gasping for air. Nonetheless that does not qualify as torture under the statute, apart from the obvious lack of requisite intent, because it did not constitute “severe…suffering” in the sense of pain, just memorable panic. But as I implied when commenting on Max Boot’s post, I don’t think labelling something as torture or not ought to be decisively important. The question is whether we want to legitimize a given practice, knowing that might engender its promiscuous use over time, on the ground of overriding necessity. I am admittedly impressed by the reported effectiveness of a technique that (unlike what I experienced) even its victims surely know does not endanger their lives. But maybe we should be mindful of such seductions.
It is true that the law speaks of the “threatened infliction” of “severe physical pain and suffering.” But this is an extraordinarily broad phrase that could indicate that a nine-year-old bully who terrifies another kid on the playground by threatening to rip his arm off is guilty of torture.
It could, if the statute didn’t include a necessary condition: the victims must be in the custody, or under the physical control, of their tormentor, for a threat to be torture in the eyes of the law. Those who are at liberty can be assaulted or threatened, but not tortured.
That said: Andrew Sullivan, by this time, is capable of arguing that the comfy chair is a method of torture, and citing its recorded use by the Spanish Inquisition to extract confessions …
Thank you, we all know that the law is open to broad interpretation, something most neo-cons should be accustomed to being the newest version of the liberal movement. I find it amusing that those that call themselves “conservatives” can somehow justify any executive action performed that isn’t strictly outlawed by law…and even actions that are.
The bottom line is that if the law can possibly be interpreted to insinuate that water boarding is not torture, the discussion should not be centered around the interpretation. As members of US society, our next and immediate priority should be the passage of a new law to criminalize water boarding and characterize it unequivocally as torture. Because IT IS.
Since all you fine folks think that the deliberate infliction of suffering (and concomitent fear of greater suffering) is not torture and is legal and all that, and that it works and yield answers, shouldn’t you really be pressing for its use in criminal investigations? Not misdemeanors, of course. Just felonies, like murder. Or burglary. Of aggravated mopery.
In fact, since it’s all hunky-dory and a joke really, I really think it could liven up the moribund primary debates. Maybe we could apply it only to candidates who think it’s harmless when applied to others?
As Americans we should recognize that members of the US government simulating drowning to instill a fear of death in a prisoner is wrong. Whether or not we convince ourselves that it is criminal, it is wrong. It was wrong in 15th century Spain, it was wrong in Japan and Germany the 1940s, it was wrong in Cambodia in the 1970s, and it is unquestionably wrong now. Illegal or not, it is simply immoral and, until the past 6 years, un-American. Where’s the shame?
After you ask the suspect who knows where the suitcase nuclear device is planted in mid-town and he refuses to answer even when you’ve said pretty please, what do you do next to get an answer. Perhaps Mr. Terra will enlighten us.
So this is where we are in November 2007: Commentary, the National Review, and The Weekly Standard are all full fledged, loud-and-proud advocates of torture and executive branch dictatorship.
Podhoretz, pro-torture readers, all of you: you’re moral monsters. Laugh at this post if you like–and I’m sure you will. But you’re moral monsters all the same.
Call me crazy, but it seems like there’s a really simple answer to this question. How about we don’t make it the policy of the U.S. to engage in torture, and if an interrogator really really feels like they really really have to in order to stop a ticking bomb, they can explain that to a jury later? I’d think that in the moment, the interrogator could use their judgement, and if they don’t think they could publicly justify it at a trial, then they shouldn’t do it.
I love the “suitcase nuclear device” argument. Happens all the time. Police are constantly faced with the same old “ticking time bomb” dilemma, and are always having to torture to get the info and save the day.
I know that this happens all the time, because I see it on TV. And the amazing thing about our police and FBI agents and CIA operatives is that they are not only able to torture the location and defusing method from the mad bomber, but they always sense that they should cut the blue wire even though the tortured bomber says to cut the green one. And best of all, they always manage to accomplish it all in multiples of 30 minutes.
So what if it never happens in real life. TV is what matters.
What I find bizarre is the assumption that waterboarding and other forms of torture actually work. On what do the pro-torture crowd base this claim? Is there really any evidence that the Nazis or the Soviets had a lot of luck with this? Doesn’t history show that torture is useless for getting info? It seems to me that throughout history, the only success of torture has been to get confessions. That is, it is a political tool, not an intelligence tool.
Since torture obviously doesn’t work, I do not understand the motivation of those who call for it’s use.
If torture did work, we could argue whether it was worth the moral and legal consequences. But since it doesn’t, there’s no need.
End torture now. George Washington was right. Look, we’re *losing* the war against terror. It’s time we shifted to winning strategies – for a change.
Who says Michael Mukasey is a “man of good will”? Like you, he’s a torture apologist. That means he has all the “good will” of a pedophile. He’s a leper. A sociopath.
“Such statute language does not clarify; it muddies, as legal language often muddies. ”
Mr. Podhoretz, there’s nothing “muddied” about the plain and ordinary meaning of the English language. In fact (to paraphrase), the last refuge of a scoundrel is to attempt to muddy what is exceedingly clear. What you seem distressed by is the opposite — the law contains no loophole for your advocated policy.
Random persons issuing personal threats are not state actors nor persons acting under color of state authority (per the IMMEDIATELY preceding subsection (1) you conveniently snipped out from (2)). As such, they are not governed by the statute nor under most forms of international law (to which the U.S. is also bound). That you make your argument avoiding this indicates either exceeding ignorance of the law and of the English language or that you are not among those of “good will.”
What next: Commentary arguing that “the right to bear arms” or “due process” are “exceedingly broad phrases” that can mean anything (or nothing) to anyone?
To summarize the above comments, we first have the slippery slide argument, an argument which essentially concedes that you cannot legitimate criticize the point at hand without resorting to prognosticating about potential futures abuses. However the law makes fine distinctions every day, and I have yet to see the dreaded slide to Stalinism occur despite myriad evocations of this argument over the years in myriad contexts. When they start waterboarding people for shop lifting, I’ll eat my words.
Next we have an assertion that waterboarding is torture. Yet the US made the express reservation to international treaties that did not include the prolonged mental harm standard for a reason.
Next we have a sarcastic remark that all us fine folks who accept waterboarding in terrorism cases automatically want to apply it to basic crimes and that we don’t approach the issue with requisite serious. Personally I think it is serious. Just terrorism is moreso.
Next we have an argument that even after 9/11, Bali, the Madrid bombings, the London bombings, etc. that the threat is overblown and that how many ticking bomb scenarios do you encounter in real life anyway. Seems like quite a few actually. Taking the same literal tact, wouldn’t it be better to never even get to the point where the bomb is actual ticking? And does the bomb literally have to be counting down for the threat to be real?
Next we have an argument that waterboarding and torture doesn’t actually work. Now this is fair issue, but what evidence is adduced to corroborate this assertion? The CIA interrogators who used waterboarding credit it with breaking some of al-Qaeda’s most important leaders to important effect. Maybe this is nonsense, but shouldn’t some evidence be in order.
Finally we have someone calling the probable next AG of the US a pedophile and a leper. Nice to see reasoned debate for change.
Ian said:
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Um, no. If you think torture is useful, then you need to produce evidence to support it. Obviously, I can never prove a negative, I can never prove that torture doesn’t work – the debate would be only be settled by clear evidence that it *does* work. Lacking such evidence, we would have to conclude that it doesn’t.
Of course, those who practice Verschärfte Vernehmung always claim that they get results. The Spanish Inquisition “got results” all the time. But I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who thinks that confessions under made under torture are valid. So why would you think that intelligence gathered under torture is valid?
When you read the experiences of the tortured – from the autobiographies of Russian dissidents and American POWs, for instance – you see over and over that torture is effective as a way to make people sign confessions – but not as a way to get real intelligence.
However, I agree with Ian’s basic premise – we need real information to be able to make more intelligently about this issue.
At the moment, all I have is a “trust us, it works” and many thousands of years of evidence to the contrary.
If Torture is so useful, however did we defeat the Axis – and the USSR – without it?
Thanks for the summary on this, Ian. Is it not possible for the conservative, GOP members of this discussion to realize that the application of a policy that created a brief period of domestic political success (‘we are the GOP, we are the real America, we are number one, we win at any cost’) is going to lose eventually and that loss is a loss for everyone? I mean, everyone loses sometime, right? This is a fight you cannot win, this waterboarding business. America loses, period. Your fear of being impervious to any attack domestically will not stop at anything. This is why it seems so unhinged to the rest of us. It goes back to the earliest foundational ideas of the Republic and will not be allowed, in the long run, by the moral center of the country. The only way to continue the torture policy as it stands is to expand executive power against the will of the people, which in the end subdues the intention of aforementioned founding ideas, which was to rid us of tyranny. Your alliance to the wrong side of this dispute is an alliance to the wrong side of history. It is puzzling that your fear does not let you see that.
Reading Stacey Montgomery’s comment certainly is torture, let’s jail him.
Hallucination drug has been very effctive for information extraction, but Stacey Montgomery also think hallucination drug is torture.
Stacey Montgomery claim “I can never prove a negative”, but Ian wasn’t asking for proof, he was only asking for evidence.
I think the problem is that too many people here believe that waterboarding in no worse than the swirlies they received in school. We’re talking about drowning, not a squirt-gun fight. If you don’t believe it, then have someone tie your hands behind your back and hold your head underwater in the tub until you’ve begun to thrash like a boated fish. Repeat 4 or 5 times. Then tell me that water torture isn’t both severe and physical.
The problem with the ticking bomb is that anyone can say there is a bomb ticking, and then claim to have defused it to justify the “necessary” torture. Reminds me of the old camping trick of slapping someone on the neck, then claiming you were swatting at a hornet. Trust me, it was gonna sting ya!
So let me get this straight:
You acknowledge that “It is true that the law speaks of the “threatened infliction” of “severe physical pain and suffering,” but you claim that this phrase simply should be ignored because the language is “extraordinarily broad.”
Presumably, you think that the prohibition should not be “extraordinarily broad”, and that the explicit coverage for “threatened infliction” should be ignored.
Let’s all keep that in mind next time you praise a judge for strictly adhering to legislative text, or disparage a judge for excising statutory terms in order to serve his or her policy preferences.
Hypocrite.
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