The Huffington Post speculates that one of the early warning signs that torture was taking place in the US military was the suicide of a female soldier who was not able to reconcile complicity in torture with her moral values:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/us-soldier-killed-herself_b_190517.html
Her brother comments on the post (11:27 PM 04/23/2009) and says he thinks this interpretation is probably accurate.

I certainly hope this is not the case, but I would hope someone would look into this possibility.

http://www.newsy.com/videos/making_sense_of_the_memos/

No, I don’t think anyone should be hanged – I’m against the death penalty.

I do question your assertion that it was always viewed as a form of entertainment, though surely some felt that way–people tend to believe that pain will extract information, even though this has been proven to be incorrect.

The Bush administration didn’t just throw this program together out of some cowboy fantasy. They called in SERE trainers, psychologists, at Gitmo they had several clinical psychologists on site. This was premeditate, designed, and continued for a very long time. Some people might believe that pain would extract information, but within a few trials it would have become apparent that it didn’t. Still, these behaviors continued. That doesn’t leave many options for motive. The photographs from Abu Ghraib also suggest that there was an element of entertainment, of dominance and humiliation for they’re own sake.

Beyond that you don’t need to look much further than Richard Reid to see a good example of torture continued long after anything could be believed to be gained from it. The isolation and psychological tortures remain a daily reality even long after his mind has broken. I would like to believe that the torturers employed by the US believed they were Jack Bauer, it would be an easier pill to swallow, one with less horror, but the evidence doesn’t support that.

Replace “vengeance” for “torture there, and see how it reads. Your whole argument here hangs on the defense of ideals regardless of pragmatism…seems an odd point to decide to be pragmatic about. I agree with part of your point, that the DESIRE for vengeance motivated justice will always be there. That doesn’t mean the system should give into it.

I do believe that our system of justice tortures on a regular basis, thats part of why we were so quick to move to more and more extreme acts. We have a penal system that uses institutionalized rape as a hammer to beat down brown people engaged in victimless crimes. Torture is an intrinsic part of our penal system, as is vengeance. They are not temptations to be given into but basic building blocks of our system. I don’t like that they are there, but I don’t see much of a point ignoring their existence. As a society we made the choice, long ago, that we would empower our government to hurt and torture people who did certain things. Over time we hemmed in the ways we allowed our government to harm people. We dispensed with drawing and quartering, slowly moved to isolation and incarceration. We also decided, around the same time we moved from public punishments of the flesh to private punishments of the soul, that the vengeance of our actions made us uncomfortable. So we convinced ourselves that we weren’t punishing people, no, we were engaging in “correction.” Part of that correction is hurting people in such a way that they are more likely, at least in theory, not to transgress again in the future.

That is our system, those are the rules, that is what we do. I would like to see that changed. Still, in the mean time, I see no reason why we should make special allowances for the worst of criminals. Every single person involved in a drug bust gets tried, from the kid smoking a joint up to the highest person the government can convince someone to roll on with threats of rape and incarceration. Hell, we specifically target small time criminals so that we can build a case moving up the food chain. Thats SOP. Why not do the same for those who engaged in torture? We’ll threaten a kid with a decade in prison for selling an ounce of pot unless he gives up his boss, but a soldier who tortured a human victim gets a pass because he was following orders. That seems to make the system an even greater farce than it already is.

In any case–your example of the immediate context vs “cold blood” doesn’t make any sense. You plan out a bombing in cold blood (hopefully), you decide on a general plan of attack in cold blood, calculate acceptable civilian casulaties, including children, etc, etc. War. is. brutal. It’s less messy and “uncomfortable” (to use your word) to drop a bomb that kills an entire family. I’m not sure it’s less morally culpable.

Also, your point about vengeance?

“the discomfort and difficulty of doing something about it outweighs the interests of justice or vengeance.”
followed by:
“Perhaps that is a worthy ideal, but it isn’t the reality. You cannot separate criminal penalties from the exercise of vengeance. As a society we might have farmed this unplesant human urge to our leaders, but that doesn’t remove it’s existence. Vengeance is going to be a part of any investigation and punishment, we can’t be vigilant against it if we don’t admit its there.”

Replace “vengeance” for “torture there, and see how it reads. Your whole argument here hangs on the defense of ideals regardless of pragmatism…seems an odd point to decide to be pragmatic about. I agree with part of your point, that the DESIRE for vengeance motivated justice will always be there. That doesn’t mean the system should give into it.

First of all, vengeance should have nothing to do with any action that is taken, period.

Perhaps that is a worthy ideal, but it isn’t the reality. You cannot separate criminal penalties from the exercise of vengeance. As a society we might have farmed this unplesant human urge to our leaders, but that doesn’t remove it’s existence. Vengeance is going to be a part of any investigation and punishment, we can’t be vigilant against it if we don’t admit its there.

ou find those who committed illegal action on high levels. You punish them accordingly. But you don’t go around throwing every Republican (or Democratic, fwiw) senator who ever backed torture into jail, nor every interrogator who followed orders.

It isn’t enough to prosecute on the highest levels. You don’t need to prosecute senators (although, as a matter of opinion, I believe that every senator who placed an affirmative vote for torture is at the very least guilty of dereliction) but you do need to prosecute everyone who committed a crime. That means the people who gave the order, the people who moved the order down the formal chain of command, the the people who ultimately carried the order out. Each is fully culpable for their crimes, each should have spoken up, and people in each of their positions in the future need to know that they can’t hide behind their position in a system. If someone committed, ordered, facilitated, or covered up torture they need to be prosecuted, regardless of how large or small a part of the act they were. Otherwise any response is only a symbol. If that means that a large portion of our armed forces end up in prison along side the politicians that set the stage for war crimes then that is a burden society must bear.

To go back to Nuremberg for a moment–are you suggesting that we should prosecute our people under international law, in an international tribunal, and (if we’re following that particular example) allow them to be sentenced to death?

I didn’t bring up Nuremberg, but no, I don’t think we ought to try anyone under an international tribunal. Personally, I’d like to see those in the military charged with dereliction and those in the government tried with treason. Realistically, I think those at the highest levels and those who were involved in particularly egregious abuses ought to face the death penalty and those lower on the ladder facing long prison sentences.

. In all seriousness, once you’ve started blowing the living s** out of entire cities of people, is that really so much less morally wrong than torturing them?

Its the difference between shooting a man dead in your home when he breaks in at 2AM and beating him to death over a matter of hours a week later. One is something done in a specific, immediate context, the other is done in cold blood. The problem with torture isn’t just that it is morally wrong but also that it doesn’t work. Everyone involved recognizes that it doesn’t work. Torture isn’t about getting information, it is a moral decay, it is causing pain for the sake of causing pain, it is sadism at a base level. Ultimately, thats why I believe even soldiers ought to be prosecuted. We aren’t talking about dispassionate interrogators applying pain as a method of extracting information. We’re talking about a pattern of abuse that is designed to humiliate the subject and entertain the perpetrator.

2) These documents are old. I know for a fact (because I know people involved), that those documents were re-drafted three years ago to say that waterboarding and other methods endorsed by the Bush administration were torture, and illegal. One of the Bush-appointed Department of Justice attorneys decided that he could not personally read the law the way the administration wanted him to when he re-drafted the memo. In order to make his determination he went to a military base in Virginia and had them waterboard him. Based on that experience he decided that waterboarding was torture and said it was illegal. He was fired for it.

3) These things are not as simple as the press portrays them. There is history to which we as the general public are not privy because we view it through two filters: government secrecy and media profit seeking.

In conclusion: Should we pursue those who are responsible for setting policy which was illegal? Yes. Should we prosecute those who followed orders based on that policy? No. Should we commend those who stood up for human rights? Absolutely.

We can demonstrate our moral stance by holding high those who do good, not just by slapping down those who do wrong.

I don’t think any investigation would necessarily be partisan and/or a witch hunt. I just think that it could easily become one and extreme care is necessary, which is why I said this:

“I have nothing against investigation of illegal action taken during the Bush administration, the idea of “Those two points, along with every single person between them in the chain of command, get to hang,” in my mind amounts to a witch hunt. You find those who committed illegal action on high levels. You punish them accordingly.”

To go back to Nuremberg for a moment–are you suggesting that we should prosecute our people under international law, in an international tribunal, and (if we’re following that particular example) allow them to be sentenced to death? The Nuremberg trials were run by the victors, because that is how war IS. Not saying those punished didn’t deserve it, just that it was a very different situation and that “international law” is really something of an ephemeral item.

Anyway, look. I’m not pro-torture or anti- any investigation. But I would be much more inclined to see those at the top of this taken down than the soldiers at the bottom. Yes, perfect soldiers would go to jail, get the tar beaten out of them, or be dishonorably discharged rather than take action they know to be morally wrong. But war is war, it is, at a base level, all morally wrong. In all seriousness, once you’ve started blowing the living s** out of entire cities of people, is that really so much less morally wrong than torturing them? (I know there is to some extent an identifiable line here. But it does start to seem increasingly absurd, and to someone in the middle of it, I can see how it would start to break down).

And on that perhaps mildly incoherent 4AM note, to bed.