Gregory D.

Lee

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May 8, 2009

I Know Torture When I See It

Torture to one man may be an everyday event to another. A liberal who has collected welfare checks all his adult life and lounges on the couch drinking beer all day probably thinks getting up early to go to a job requiring hard manual labor is “torture.” Justice Department attorneys John Yoo, Robert J. Delahunty and Jay Bybee wrote top secret memos advising President Bush on the legality of enhanced interrogation techniques, and now liberals are demanding their prosecution.

The Random House dictionary defines torture as the act of inflicting excruciating pain, as punishment or revenge, as a means of getting a confession or information, or for sheer cruelty (emphasis added). Mr. Yoo and the others rightfully pointed out in their memos that the U.N. Convention Against Torture defined torture as the infliction of “severe pain,” a lower threshold. When I carefully read the memos, I was hard pressed to find any of the enhanced interrogation techniques meeting that definition. But I’m sure many liberals believe that all enhanced interrogation techniques result in severe pain to the recipient.

I hardly think that cramped confinement, “wall standing,” sleep deprivation or placing a caterpillar in a cramped box with the detainee qualifies as torture, no matter what definition is used. I would argue that the welfare recipient in my example above would prefer being subjected to these techniques for short periods of time instead of having to endure hard work for 40 hours a week, even if waterboarding was part of the deal.

I think that secretly flying Air Force One only 1,000 feet over Ground Zero, prompting thousands of terrified office workers there and in New Jersey to flee for their lives from skyscrapers, is definitely torture. That’s exactly what Air Force One did over New York City for a photo op near the Statue of Liberty. That event traumatized literally thousands of shell-shocked New Yorkers who will never forget the 9/11 attacks. They endured excruciating pain and suffering. It led many Obama supporters close to suicide when they saw the plane was being trailed by a fighter jet, making them think Air Force One had been hijacked with the president on board, and Al-Qaeda pilots were going to crash it into the Empire State Building. The thought of Joe Biden becoming president increased everyone’s torment. Now that far exceeds placing a harmless bug on someone.

The 9/11 attacks led to a global war on terror with many enemy fighters and planners being captured. They resisted their interrogators who had reason to believe these people knew details about additional attacks on America. That prompted the creation of the enhanced interrogation techniques detailed in the now-infamous top secret memos released by President Obama. Further attacks were prevented, and now the authors of the memos might be tried and eventually incarcerated. It has already caused irreparable harm to their professional reputations.

So now it has come full circle since 9/11. Prosecute the good guys, release the bad guys from Guantanamo and bring them to America. Even drop charges on some of them and let them reside in America because China “might” subject them to torture if they returned to their homeland. Unlike this White House, China would never consider sending a low-flying commercial airliner over their village to scare the hell out of them.

Like pornography, I know torture when I see it. So far, I’m afraid I don’t see anything remotely close to the torture our soldiers and citizens have been subjected to in the hands of Al-Qaeda operatives. Were the enhanced interrogation techniques deployed by CIA interrogators actually torture? I think that depends entirely on the life experience of the person subjected to it.

In any event, we shouldn’t go after the lawyers who gave an honest opinion on what interrogators could legally do. Otherwise, we’ll be hard pressed to find anyone in the future willing to give an honest legal opinion for fear of prosecution by a future administration.

Gregory D. Lee is a nationally syndicated columnist for North Star Writers Group. He can be reached at info@gregorydlee.com.

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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