Monday, November 07, 2005

Tortured Logic

Wrapping up his incredibly awful tour of South America, today President Bush insisted, "There's an enemy that lurks and plots and plans and wants to hurt America again. So you bet we will aggressively pursue them but we will do so under the law. We do not torture."

I'd rant against the idiocy of his statement, but Andrew Sullivan has beaten me to it:
If "we do not torture," why the memos that expanded exponentially the lee-way given to the military to abuse detainees in order to get intelligence? The president's only defense against being a liar is that he is defining "torture" in such a way that no other reasonable person on the planet, apart from Bush's own torture apologists (and they are now down to one who will say so publicly), would agree. The press must now ask the president: does he regard the repeated, forcible near-drowning of detainees to be torture? Does he believe that tying naked detainees up and leaving them outside all night to die of hypothermia is "torture"? Does he believe that beating the legs of a detainee until they are pulp and he dies is torture? Does he believe that beating detainees till they die is torture? Does he believe that using someone's religious faith against them in interrogations is "cruel, inhumane and degrading" treatment and thereby illegal? What is his definition of torture?
I don't agree with Sullivan much, but he's got this one absolutely right.

4 comments:

Mr Furious said...

I don't agree with Sullivan much

I actually find that I agree with Sullivan fairly often. But, perhaps, I am just agreeing on a few topics that he hammers to death. Like this one.

Thrillhous said...

I think I'm in the same boat as you, Mr. F. Back when he was cheerleading for the Bushies with his "objectively pro-Saddam" crap I couldn't stand him, but ever since the GOP decided to use gays as their punching bag (well, ever since he realized that that's what they've been doing to gays all along), he seems to mostly harp on the really obviously bad things the bushies do. I'm definitely big tent when it comes to that.

Noah said...

Out of one side of Bush's mouth, we hear that we do everything to these detainees under law. Then we hear that we need to have the tools necessary to deal with this --insert threat comment from 2001 talking points here--. Which is it? Do we torture? Or do we act civilized? Congress seems to think we act civilized. Bush seems to think torture is okay. Yet another blanat show of how out-of-touch Bush is even within his own party. It's like he's so wrong now that he can't possibly correct himself, so he HAS to dig deeper. After all, I did the same thing to my parents when I was 10 and caught in a lie.

Otto Man said...

I love the disconnect of Bush saying we don't torture and Cheney aggressively lobbying Congress to keep the right to torture. If we don't do it, why bother fighting for the right?