"A tortured debate"

A tip o' the hat to Molly Ivins, whose column with the title above begins:

Some country is about to have a Senate debate on a bill to legalize torture. How weird is that?

Sadly, the debate is over, and the bad guys won. Surprise: there were no good guys!

This torture thing, like this war thing, is beyond my comprehension. Everyone goes about their business as if nothing's wrong, and Bush's ratings actually jump.

I'll be back on the war thing soon, of course. But Bush and "rebel" Republicans debating, and trying to reach a compromise on, the gutting of the Geneva Conventions, is pretty much beyond belief (in a world where every day's news keeps setting the disbelief bar higher). I like what Lindsay Beyerstein said about the absurdity of discussions on the issue of torture, which (if anti-torture) often focus on the practical drawbacks of torturing people. It's not that it's, like, categorically evil, it just might be, like, counterproductive:

It's sort of like writing rape-prevention posts about how you shouldn't rape people because it's not going to be as much fun as you think, or because you might drive your victim into the arms of radical feminists, etc. It seems either obscene or otiose to explain to would-be rapists why rape is a poor means to their ends. The moral argument against rape is so strong, and the consensus on the subject is so broad that it seems silly even to consider the instrumental arguments against it.

Chris Floyd can be counted on to cut to the emotional quick on many issues. On the subject of the disgusting torture "debate," he does not disappoint:

Let's be very clear.... What Bush has been talking about and protesting against were efforts to ensure that CIA interrogators could not torture suspects. Because of course they could continue to use ordinary methods of interrogation -- which experts uniformly agree produce better intelligence -- just as they have always been able to. When Bush and Tennessee cat-torturer [Bill Frist] talk about the "program of interrogation" continuing, they mean allowing the CIA to torture captives by various methods without being charged with war crimes and felony violations of American law. That is precisely what they are talking about, and nothing else. But you won't see it put that way on the pages of our most august journalist institutions nor on the broadcasts of our world-renowned network news shows.

And let us make one other point -- and in a most impolitic way, for the truth is often an impolitic commodity: John McCain is a goddamned liar. Yes, he himself suffered torture, yes he came through it, yes, we all admire his fortitude during that ordeal in his youth: but his record in later life, in politics, is that of a moral coward with good PR skills. (Not that it takes much skill to wow the poltroons who squat on the commanding heights of the corporate media world today.) And today, he has opened his mouth and emitted a damnable lie, to wit: "the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved.”

This is an untrue statement, analogous to saying the moon is located in his rectum or that he can bite through pig iron with his bare teeth. Every step the Bush gang has taken in this pro-torture, don't-prosecute-us campaign is designed to weaken the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions. The Conventions, which have been adopted into American law by Congress -- in bills sponsored and championed by Republicans -- are crystal clear on torture. There is no need to "preserve" their integrity with new legislation; there is nothing wrong with the Conventions that need to be "fixed" -- unless, of course, you wish to use interrogation techniques that any sentient human being would recognize as torture. In that case, of course you have to "fix" the Conventions by gutting their integrity, letter and spirit.

John McCain might be a moral coward in his old age, but he's not stupid. He knows all this. He knows that the Bush Administration has been trying to wriggle out of the Conventions since the earliest days of the "War of Terror." He knows that gutting the Conventions is at the heart of Bush's "interrogation program" which McCain and his "rebels" have just saved with their grand "compromise."

Therefore, we will say it again clearly, so that even the nabobs on the Washington Post editorial page can hear it: John McCain is a goddamned liar, and his "agreement" today serves some of the most evil principles ever supported openly by the United States government since slavery.

I might quibble with Mr. Floyd that the practice of torture has some competition in the "most evil principles" contest with the general acceptance of dropping bombs on, and strafing with helicopter gunships, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Iraqis and Afghans and (through our Middle Eastern Mini Me) Lebanese women and children--but it's part of the same fabric of savagery that our nation continues to perpetuate on the world.

Tortured to death by the CIA (l.), children shot by U.S. forces (r.).