Tortured Phrasing

Awhile back I noted that the New York Times still refused to call the "enhanced interrogation techniques" of the Bush Administration "torture" even though they clearly are torture as defined by U.S. law, international law, past American war crimes prosecutions, etc.

Today Andrew Sullivan – a Burkean conservative who has been outspoken in his opposition to the Bush torture regime – notes that the New York Times has no problem using the word "torture" when other countries do it. How ridiculously timid the Times has been over and over again the past eight years in the face of massive government criminality, as though the purpose of a free press is to do little more than repeat government propaganda.

Sullivan's initial post is here. His follow up is here.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald picks it up as well:

There's been a major editorial breach at The New York Times today...

[S]houldn't this be called "torture" rather than torture -- or "harsh tactics some critics decry as torture"? Why are the much less brutal methods used by the Chinese on Fischer called torture by the NYT, whereas much harsher methods used by Americans do not merit that term? Here we find what is clearly the single most predominant fact shaping our political and media discourse: everything is different, and better, when we do it.

The T-Word

At his press conference last night President Obama responded to a question about Bush Administration interrogation policies and whether those policies sanctioned torture. Obama said:

"What I've said – and I will repeat – is that waterboarding violates our ideals and our values. I do believe that it is torture. I don't think that's just my opinion; that's the opinion of many who've examined the topic.... I believe that waterboarding was torture."

This seems like an important development. As we now know from Justice Department memos, the Bush administration sanctioned waterboarding. If the Obama administration believes that waterboarding is torture, that would seem to obligate – not allow but obligate – the administration to investigate and prosecute. As this post by Glenn Greenwald explains, the Convention on Torture is American domestic law, and it requires state parties like the United States to investigate and prosecute torture that occurs within their borders.

Of course it's the Attorney General, not the President, that decides whether to bring charges for violations of federal law. But unless Eric Holder disagrees with the President about waterboarding being torture, it would seem that – whatever Obama's personal predictions about "moving forward" and not "looking back" – Holder doesn't really have much of a choice. He can investigate and prosecute or he can himself become a criminal. And when I say that, that's not a political statement, that's the law.

Surely Obama knows this. It makes me wonder whether he really wants this issue to go away. If he did, he would probably have avoided using the t-word – because that word has all sorts of legal implications.

The Truth Will Out?

It feels like the release of the torture memos may have created a new interest in exploring the war crimes that were committed in our name.

Over at Hullabaloo, dday says:

I don't think you can debate whether or not to have an investigation on the Bush torture regime anymore, because the investigation is happening.

The press, finally, seems to be digging in. The Washington Post reports:

Condoleezza Rice, John D. Ashcroft and at least 10 other top Bush officials reviewed and approved as early as the summer of 2002 the CIA's use of harsh interrogation methods on detainees at secret prisons, including waterboarding that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has described as illegal torture, according to a detailed timeline furnished by Holder to the Senate Intelligence Committee....

Rice gave a key early approval, when, as Bush's national security adviser, she met on July 17, 2002, with the CIA's then-director, George J. Tenet, and "advised that the CIA could proceed with its proposed interrogation of Abu Zubaydah," subject to approval by the Justice Department, according to the timeline. Rice and four other White House officials had been briefed two months earlier on "alternative interrogation methods, including waterboarding," it states. Waterboarding is a technique that simulates drowning.

Note that this occurred prior to the Bybee memo which gave legal cover to the torture.

Dday concludes:

It's clear the President doesn't want the responsibility for future investigations. He apparently quashed the idea of a Presidential-level Torture Commission. But he cannot stop the wheels now in motion. Congress will have their crack at an investigation, and the media will return to the issue. The Attorney General will have to make his own independent judgment. And the truth may yet out.

I hope so.

By Any Other Name

It's hard to describe just how badly the New York Times has failed our nation during the past eight years. Not to put too fine a point on it, but today, even after the release of Justice Department memos recounting, in excruciating detail, interrogation techniques okayed by the most senior members of the Bush Administration, the Times still refuses to use the word "torture" to describe those techniques. In the headline, torture is reduced to "harsh tactics." The article does slightly better, describing those techniques as "brutal."

The U.S. government has, in the past, prosecuted and convicted soldiers who engaged in waterboarding for torture. That technique has been understood to be torture for centuries. Why does the Times so carefully refuse to use that word in its reporting on the subject? The high level approval of torture will go down as one of the most ugly episodes in our nation's history and yet the nation's paper of record continues to euphimize it.

Supreme Law of the Land

As Spain moves forward with an investigation of torture by Bush officials, Glenn Greenwald reminds: prosecuting former Bush officials for torture is not just something the Obama administration should do, it's something the administration must do as a matter of law.

The Convention on Torture is a treaty that requires state parties to investigate and prosecute those who commit torture within their jurisdiction. The U.S. ratified this treaty. The U.S. Constitution's Supremacy Clause specifies that the Constitution, laws and treaties are the supreme law of the land. So the Convention on Torture is not solely an international agreement, it is also American domestic law.

While Villagers in DC view this as a matter of politics, it is also a legal obligation.