Torture: the truth must come out

I haven't said much so far about the issue of torture of detainees under the Bush administration. A lot of internet discussion has focused on whether torture in the abstract can ever be justified, as with "ticking bomb" scenarios (an atom bomb hidden in Manhattan will detonate in an hour, a captured terrorist knows where it is but won't talk, so what do you do, etc.). This is not very enlightening -- for almost any evil, one could imagine a scenario in which a case could be made that it is justified to avoid an even greater evil. I haven't seen a clear answer to the question of whether torture ever actually produced information which prevented a terrorist attack, nor can I comfortably answer "yes" or "no", as some people apparently can, to the question of whether the torture of known terrorists could be justified in such a case. Also, there are serious practical issues to consider: for example, information gained by torture is notoriously inaccurate (Jesse Ventura, who actually experienced waterboarding as part of his Navy SEAL training, recently said that given an hour with Dick Cheney he could get him to confess to the Tate murders).

But the real question here isn't whether torture in the abstract can be justified in this or that hypothetical scenario; it's whether the actual Bush administration did immoral things or not. And on that question, things are a lot clearer.

It's being credibly reported that much of the torture was intended not to get information that might prevent future terrorist attacks, but rather to create "evidence" for (actually non-existent) links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qâ'idah, in order to justify the invasion of Iraq. McClatchy reports here (read this too).

Let me say that again in case it didn't sink in. If these reports are true, the President of the United States had people tortured in order to fabricate a justification for a decision he had made. Not to make America safer from terrorism, but to cover himself.

If this is true, then there are simply no words to describe the depth of depravity involved -- or the harm that has been done to what America is supposed to represent.

We already know enough that there can be no turning back. We cannot simply "move forward" and put this behind us. A problem that everyone knows about never just goes away because people don't talk about it. It festers in the dark and corrupts everything around it. The government must investigate, establish the truth for all to see, and -- if these claims are true -- try those responsible and punish the guilty, including the very highest. Until we do that, it will never be "behind us".