Liz Cheney, Torture As A Family-Values Issue & Other News From The Dark Side

LIZ CHENEY SEATED BETWEEN SISTER MARY AND FATHER

There is something both appalling and wonderful about Liz Cheney emerging as a torch bearer for her war criminal father. Appalling because she is unqualified to speak about anything, let alone run for public office, but nevertheless has been elevated to big megaphone status. Wonderful because the Republican Party yet again proves itself far more interested in scratching the tummies of its shriveled and reliably right-wing base than trying to attract new voters with mainstream values.

Like daughter like father, La Cheney's hot-button issue is torture. But unlike that father, who as the most reviled vice president of modern times rationalized torture as a "necessary evil," she has transformed waterboarding, kicking and beating, sleep deprivation, prolonged shackling and sexual assault threats into a family values issue.

As perverse as that is, I suppose you could say that by Liz's lights not only does a woman not have the right to choose what to do with her own body but a suspected terrorist does not have the right to choose what is done to his body by dungeon masters who willfully ignore international covenants and the rule of law.

Kind of a neat symmetry, don't you think?

TORTURED RATIONALIZATIONS

In defending its conduct in court, Bush administration lawyers engaged in some pretty outrageous rationalizations. My favorite was their justification for the indefinite detention of alleged terrorists, which basically boils down to "We can do it so we do even if our claims are unverifiable."

This prompted a three-judge panel headed by David Santelle, one of the most conservative judges in the federal judiciary, to quote from Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark" in demolishing that claim:

"I have said it thrice: What I tell you is three times true."

But I now have a new fave that is buried in a 65-page ruling by District Court Judge Coleen Kollar-Kotelly in a habeas case resulting from Boumediene v. Bush. That is the case in which the Supreme Court ruled last year for no less than the third time (the first two rulings were more or less ignored) that the Military Commissions Act legislating a rump legal system for detaining and trying suspects was unconstitutional.

In a withering denunciation of the evidence presented to her court, Kollar-Kotelly wrote that "Far from providing the Court with credible and reliable evidenced as the basis for [Mahmoud] Al Rabiah's continued detention, the Government asks this Court to simply accept the same confessions that the Government's own interrogators did not credit, and to ignore the assessment of a government intelligence analyst [at Guantánamo Bay] that Al Rabiah should not have been detained."

TREAT 'EM DECENTLY & THEY'LL TALK . . .

The body of evidence -- ranging from interrogators for the U.S. during World War II to medical professions -- that treating a detainee decently is likely to yield far more information of value is incontrovertible.

Now comes John Wahlquist, a veteran interrogator who teaches at the National Defense Intelligence College. He writes that:

"President Obama's executive order on interrogation provides an excellent opportunity to end abusive practices and to propose a new agenda for intelligence interviewing that increases the capability to collect accurate information from enemy detainees effectively and humanely. Seizing this opportunity is essential to increasing the chances of success for counterterrorism operations worldwide and reducing risks to the lives of American service members and civilians, as well as detainees. Doing so enhances the broader national security agenda without sacrificing American values."

. . . DON'T & YOU'LL CAUSE BRAIN DAMAGE

There's another reason that torture doesn't work: It can damage the brain and that can lead to misinformation.

Shane O'Mara of the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience in Dublin examined legal memos released in April detailing the torture techniques used.

"They seem based on the idea that repeatedly inducing shock, stress, anxiety, disorientation and lack of control is more effective than standard interrogatory techniques in making suspects reveal information," O'Mara writes.

But he concludes that studies of stress hormones in similar situations suggest such techniques will damage the parts of the brain where memories reside, and lead to "confabulation" of reality with fantasy.

LOSING THE MORAL HIGH GROUND

Marine Brigadier General Michael Lenhart was the first commander of the brig at Guantánamo for terrorism suspects.

He was determined to follow the spirit, if not the letter, of the Geneva Convention, but in the bureaucratic jostling that followed, Lenhart's approach was supplanted by that of a hard-nosed Army general.

Retiring after a 36-year career, the now major general expresses deep disappointment about what happened at Guantánamo after he left.

"I think we lost the moral high ground," Lenhert said. "For those who do not think much of the moral high ground, that is not that significant.

Are you listening Dick and Liz? I didn't think so.