On torture

By Heraclitus

Here's an excellent column on why the United States shouldn't use torture, written by a former political prisoner in the USSR who was tortured. It's absolutely essential reading. The arguments are ethical and strategic, and deal with the influence of torture on intelligence gathering, on the reputation, and thus the stragetic interests, of the country practicing torture, and on the society itself, including especially those required to do the torturing. It's one-stop shopping for those who think our government should be different from those of, say, Stalin or Saddam Hussein. Yes, of course Bush is not Stalin, but many of the techniques he wants legalized were used by Stalin's secret police. These are the practices Cheney calls "cruel, inhumane or degrading" treatment, or CID.

But there is one statement that, for me, decides the entire question, and shows how shameful and loathsome every other argument in the "debate" is.

If America's leaders want to hunt terrorists while transforming dictatorships into democracies, they must recognize that torture, which includes CID, has historically been an instrument of oppression -- not an instrument of investigation or of intelligence gathering.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.)