Talking Torture

The ACLU is running a series of posts on torture this week. Larison,  Greenwald and Joan McCarter have posts up. Here's Larison:

Should torture prove to be useless, as it typically does, the unnecessary nature of the practice becomes hard to avoid, which is why two different rhetorical tactics are employed. First, you will have the outright denial that torture is taking place (“we don’t torture,” Mr. Bush has said on more than one occasion) and then grudging acknowledgements that “extreme” measures have been used (“enhanced interrogation techniques”), and finally a justification of the actual inflicting of mental and physical duress on detainees. Mr. Bush’s cheerleaders on blogs and radio are quite explicit about this. Blogger Dean Barnett once wrote, “The torture opponents’ entire premise rests on the erroneous notion that one can successfully wage war without cruelty and savagery. I wish they were right. But they’re not.” Challenged by one of his listeners that he supported torture in recent weeks, radio host Michael Medved unflinchingly agreed that he did. What is first wrapped in euphemisms is then openly defended and even celebrated as necessary. Central to this is the denial of the rationality of the enemy, which is tantamount to a denial of their humanity.

What Medved and other torture advocates fail to do, moreover, is confront the fact that what they are defending is illegal and requires amending US law and withdrawal from the Geneva Conventions. Like so many "conservatives" today, they refuse to take full responsibility for their actions.