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January 12, 2006

Tortured Reasoning

Everyone--and I mean everyone--knows that torturing human beings is wrong. That does not mean, however, that some won't attempt to rationalize the practice when their government, run by their favored political party, engages in it. We've all seen and heard plenty of "conservatives" defend our government's torture of suspected terrorists or of whomever else the government decides is a traitor. (They've pretty much given up on the facade of "the United States government doesn't torture people" now that it has become clear that it does so now and desires to do so even more in the future, regardless of the law.) How, one wonders, would these defenders of torture respond to this exchange, as detailed by William Norman Grigg?

"John Yoo [the 'chief architect of the "Bush Doctrine",' according to Grigg] publicly argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child of a suspect in custody – including by crushing that child’s testicles. This came out in response to a question in a December 1st debate in Chicago with Notre Dame professor and international human rights scholar Doug Cassel."

Cassel: If the President deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty.
Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

In short, the president can order the torture, in any fashion, of anyone he chooses.

Let's see the Limbaughs, Hannitys, and O'Reillys of the world defend this one. Then let's see them tell us how the U.S. is defending civilization from the barbarity of "Islamofascism."

Posted by Mike Tennant at January 12, 2006 11:02 AM

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