“That got us 9/11…”
Posted on October 26, 2007
by: Dr. Jerome Pestlebottom
So, earlier tonight I mentioned to my mother what Rudy Giuliani said in Iowa Wednesday night:
Asked at a community meeting here whether he considered waterboarding torture, Mr. Giuliani said: “It depends on how it’s done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it.”
He went on to say that the way the practice had been described in news reports — “particularly in the liberal media” — he did not believe it should be allowed. But he expressed doubts about whether it had been described accurately.
“America should not allow torture,” Mr. Giuliani said. “But America should engage in aggressive questioning of Islamic terrorists who are arrested or who are apprehended.”
“The line between the two is very delicate and very difficult,” he said. “But we can’t abandon aggressive questioning of people who are intent on coming here to kill us.”
Mr. Giuliani noted that torture violates the Geneva Convention. “There is a distinction, sometimes, when you’re dealing with terrorists,” he said. “You may have to use means that are a little tougher.”
Quite a few people have written short and to the point analysis of this:
What the United States is doing isn’t torture because it’s the United States doing it. I suspect this is the way a lot of torture apologists feel, but give Giuliani credit for being (I think) the first to come out and say it.
–Chris Orr, The New Republic
I think what that means is that if the Iranians were to waterboard a captured US pilot it would be torture but if the Americans were to waterboard a captured Iranian intelligence officer it would not. Such is the moral clarity of our times.
–Alex Massie, The Debatable Land
Back to what I started this story with, I mentioned Giuliani’s statement, and my mom nodded her head and said, “That’s about right.” I was astonished… I returned with some of these ideas, and the concept that torture is torture, no matter who we’re dealing with or what they may want to do to us. She said I need to “live in the real world”, which seems a rather vague thing to say, as best as I can tell, I do live in the real world. “These people are trying to kill us…” “…they use these techniques on our people, slitting throats, things like that.”
Then came the cherry on the cake; as she shuffled off I mentioned that we need to take the moral high ground and not torture people our government arbitrarily describes as “terrorists”. Her response? You guessed it…
“That got us 9/11…”
What the fuck is going on with this country right now…
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It also baffles me as to why people don’t immediately see torture for what it is. In the NYTimes article you link to, Giuliani goes on to say that he does not think sleep deprivation is torture, and even makes a joke of it. Guess he has never been forced to stay awake for 48 hours.