04.26.09
“It’s not torture if it works”
Teh Cheney is at it again. Rachel Maddow lets him have it with an investigative piece that cuts to the heart of the question of whether “torture works” and what that even means.
Of course, this completely ignores the fact that when someone says, “torture works”, there may be multiple unstated meanings of the phrase.
Some people are under the misapprehension that the only possible correct interpretation is “torture results in us getting evidence that is timely, correct, and usable”. They have to ignore the fact that we tortured people for years who could not possibly have had new information, some of whom we knew were innocent, and thus could not possibly have had any information. As far as usability, somebody please share hard information on the signal to noise ratio that demonstrates we could even tell the difference.
A more cynical and probably more correct interpretation is that torture gave a lot of sadists a sexual thrill at being able to hurt people who might otherwise have been brought to a rather mundane trial or released for lack of evidence. How boring that would have been!
And don’t get me started on the Bush administration’s attitude toward the concept of truth, that there is no absolute truth. “Truth” is just how you frame what you want people to believe in order to get what you want.
And they claimed liberals are relativists concerning the subjectivity of truth!
And a brilliant piece of satire on the issue of whether the effectiveness of torture should be a consideration.
My personal opinion is that the current administration is playing the public to make it appear that they are following popular opinion, rather than going after the previous administration, which could be (and would be) interpreted as a political act.
