Gene Lyons, as he so often does, brings more insight into current issues than ten of the official Big Pundits put together (Torture serves tyrants, not democracies Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 12/14/05):
Torture isn’t about gathering intelligence, it’s about sadism, power and the manufacture of fear. That’s part of what Sen. John McCain means when he says that ending terror isn’t about them, the terrorists, it’s about us. Torture can’t protect a democracy. But it can eventually destroy one. Thinking otherwise is almost criminally naïve. Then there’s the case of Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent reportedly kidnapped by U. S. agents dressed in black, injected with drugs, given a forced enema, dressed in an adult diaper, handcuffed in a spreadeagle position, and taken to remotest Afghanistan and roughed up for months in a Kafka-esque case of mistaken identity. Embarrassed American agents told The Washington Post’s Dana Priest that the official who ramrodded the mission, a great favorite in the Bush White House naturally, had embraced a “Hollywood model” of operations guaranteed to generate bad publicity rather than useful intelligence. During her recent disastrous “Condi Over Europe” tour, the secretary of state heard a lot more about poor al-Masri than she wanted to. Before dismissing our allies’ complaints as the whining of Euroweenies, try this on for size : How would you react to German agents snatching Americans off the street and dragging them off to Third World dungeons?
Even though "popular culture" is an ever-elusive concept, he has some good observations, too, about the image of torture in American popular culture. He notes that the Associated Press poll that supposedly shows 61% of the US public approving of torture can't be adequately assessed without knowing details of how the survey was designed. Public opinion surveys on political issues like abortion or unemployment can draw on years of experience and many instances of polling over decades. Opinion a new issue is harder to accurately measure - and I'm pretty sure that "Do you approve of the torture the US government is practicing?" has not been a standard question over a long period of time in these studies.
Lyons also talks about the sophomoric nuclear-bomb justification for torture. Ray McGovern talks about the sophomore nuclear-bomb as well in McCain's Defining Moment TomPaine.com 12/13/05. His version, in which he goes on to express some of the same worries I've had about Maverick McCain and his well-publicized anti-torture amendment:
Supporters of the Cheney school of thought have been taking to the airwaves using the bogus "ticking-bomb doomsday scenario" rationale to, well, rationalize torture. And this seems to be having some impact. According to an AP-Ipsos poll conducted in late November, 61 percent of Americans surveyed believe torture is justified at least on rare occasions; only 36 percent said it can never be justified. A January 2005 poll conducted by Poltronics involving more than 2,000 telephone interviews found that 53 percent of Americans thought some torture is acceptable, with 37 percent opposed. That poll also found that 82 percent of FOX News Channel viewers said that torture is acceptable in "a wide range" of situations.
And so, incredible though it may seem, torture survivor McCain runs the risk of appearing soft on torture with the Republican base, whose support he will need if he hopes to win the Republican nomination in 2008. Accordingly, despite the strong support he enjoys among Senate colleagues and despite his uncompromising stance until now, there seems a good chance that McCain will acquiesce in compromise wording. That would enable the administration to assure CIA and contract interrogators that they will enjoy legal protection if they keep "the gloves off," as erstwhile CIA counterterrorism chief Cofer Black described the CIA's approach post 9/11. (me emphasis)
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