It's Not in the 10 Commandments

Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post, in Bush's Tortured Logic, provides an excellent analysis of Bush's recent statement about torture. He inquired "Just what did President Bush mean yesterday when he said: 'We don't torture?'"

In answering that question, he quotes Bob Cesca from Huffingtonpost.com: "He's either outright lying or the administration has a very different definition of torture than the rest of the world. I would argue that it's both."

Also included in the article is the view of Andrew Sullivan: "If that's the case, why threaten to veto a law that would simply codify what Bush alleges is already the current policy? If 'we do not torture,' how to account for the hundreds and hundreds of cases of abuse and torture by U.S. troops, documented by the government itself? 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?"

In another Dan Froomkin column, Cheney's 'Dark Side' Is Showing, he adds this terrifying prospect:

Jane Mayer writes in the New Yorker that administration policies may preclude the prosecution of CIA agents who commit abuses or even kill detainees.

Mayer writes: "The Bush Administration has resisted disclosing the contents of two Justice Department memos that established a detailed interrogation policy for the Pentagon and the C.I.A. A March, 2003, classified memo was 'breathtaking,' the same source said. The document dismissed virtually all national and international laws regulating the treatment of prisoners, including war-crimes and assault statutes, and it was radical in its view that in wartime the President can fight enemies by whatever means he sees fit. According to the memo, Congress has no constitutional right to interfere with the President in his role as Commander-in-Chief, including making laws that limit the ways in which prisoners may be interrogated. Another classified Justice Department memo, issued in August, 2002, is said to authorize numerous 'enhanced' interrogation techniques for the C.I.A. These two memos sanction such extreme measures that, even if the agency wanted to discipline or prosecute agents who stray beyond its own comfort level, the legal tools to do so may no longer exist. . . .

Finally, in another article, a former CIA and counter terrorism agent, Larry Johnson, writes at TPM Cafe, Man on Fire--Not!, and discusses torture on a more philosophical level.

As he says, "We should never use our own fear of being attacked as justification to dehumanize ourselves and another human being in our pursuit of so-called truth. . . .Perhaps now we can begin to understand how Adolf Hitler could rally German Christians to do the unthinkable to Jews and Gypsyies in concentration camps. If you convince people that they are at risk unless they move to destroy those who represent a perceived threat, regardless of the methods and means, then you are on your way to atrocities."

As Trent Lott reminded the other day (in another context), "We have met the enemy, and it is us."