None Dare Call it Torture

There’s a story told about President Abraham Lincoln. A group of citizens came to him early in his presidency, before the start of the civil war, and tried to get him to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln listened politely, and then posed a question to his visitors. “If you call a dog’s tail a leg, then how many legs would a dog have?” The group answered “Five.” “No,” replied Lincoln. “A dog has four legs. Calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg.”

If George W. Bush would have been president in 1861, he might have gotten his Attorney General to redefine the word slavery as “executions specifically with guillotines.” Then he would have said to the citizens, “This government does not enslave people. There are highly trained professionals holding these extremists and terrorists. We don’t practice slavery. There is no slavery. Slavery is not in our nature.” Bush would have called a tail a leg and pretended everything was alright.

A 2002 Justice Department memo said that torture only occurs when the prisoner experiences “pain associated with organ failure or death.” With this broad definition, anything that did not kill the prisoner was not torture. Though in 2004, the Justice Department posted a note on its web site that “Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values," in 2005 they approved the very techniques they had just declared to be abhorrent.

On October 3rd, a New York Times article revealed that in 2005 the Justice Department released an opinion that gave “an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.” Around the same time that Congress passed a law affirming that cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners was illegal; the Justice Department was redefining the terms by issuing blanket statements that none of the CIA’s techniques were cruel, inhuman or degrading.

By the stroke of the pen, the Bush administration changed the definition of torture. They authorized head-slapping, water-boarding, sleep deprivation, and exposing people to frigid temperatures. In the mind of President Bush, if he says torture is not torture, then America does not practice torture.

This is not the only time that the Bush Administration has redefined words to suit its purposes.

• For example, the Bush Administration does not want to say they send people to other countries to be tortured, so it’s called “extraordinary rendition.” Whether we do the torturing or we outsource torturing to others, it’s still torture.
  
• If the Bush Administration wants to strip a human being of his or her rights, they call them an “enemy combatant.” This is a made-up term that avoids affording the person the rights of a US prisoner or a prisoner-of-war. By creating a new set of words for people, the Bush Administration feels they can justify any treatment of human beings.
  
• According to the Bush Administration, by placing a person at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba the person is not on US territory, and yet he or she is not on the territory of any other nation. Where are they, the moon? The Bush Administration would like to make you think that these people have been taken off of the planet, but that is not true. People in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a US military installation, are on US property. The CIA also operates “black sites,” prisons where US laws supposedly do not apply. The theory that US laws do not apply is not true, no matter how the Bush Administration would like to define the terms.
  
• The Bush Administration has a habit of using “signing statements.” When the president signs a bill into law, if he decides that the law does not apply to him, he simply attaches a signing statement that says so. This is a clear violation of the separation of powers.
  
• The law said that the Bush Administration had to get a court order from the FISA court to spy on Americans. The Bush Administration decided that the law did not apply to them, so they spied on us anyway. Worse yet, Congress passed a temporary bill changing the law that Bush had broken, retroactively making the illegal act of spying on Americans legal.
  
• And all of this is protected by a claim of “state secrets,” a claim that was just supported by the right-wing friendly Supreme Court.

I am reminded of the comment of Special Counsel for the Army Joseph N. Welch to Senator Joseph McCarthy. “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” I am horrified by the brazen behavior of the Bush Administration and the seeming lack of public outcry. Have we no sense of decency?

If no one else will expose the indecency of the Bush Administration, then it’s up to us, the people. Here are three actions you can take today.

1. Join Amnesty International’s effort 86 Days to restore civility and the rule of law. October 17th marks the first year anniversary of the Military Commissions Act. There will be events held around the country starting on October 17th and culminating on January 11th, the anniversary of the first detainee held at Guantánamo Bay, 86 days later.
   
2. Flood the phones in Congress in support of the FISA Modernization Bill.
   
3. Press the presidential candidates to come out clearly in opposition to the use of torture – and be sure to make them define their terms!

Together we can make a difference. When others do not dare to do so, we will call torture just what it is: torture.