Dr. J.'s Commentary: A Torturous Debate

One of the principal lessons that Karl Rove learned from his master teacher Lee Atwater was that he who controls the agenda wins the debate and, in grander terms, the election. Rove has been positively brilliant with this tactic, from 2000 onwards. True Bush policies and programs have never been on the agenda, whether in that first election or any of the subsequent ones. And he has been able to do it on both the grand and lesser scales. And so we come to the debate over torture and Judge Mukasey, and the agenda for that debate. I have no way of knowing whether Rove is still active on a day-to-day basis with the Bush White House. My suspicion is that he is, for these tactics have Rove's fingerprints all over them.

What have they been able to do? The whole discussion in the Congress and the bulk of the media has come down to the definition of one particular torture technique known as ‘Waterboarding." It has been used by torturers, most of whom were only too happy to have potential victims know what they might face, since the time of that "Instrument of God's Will" known as the Spanish Inquisition. (Although the Inquisition was originally designed to "inquire" as to whether a particular resident of Spain after the official Expulsion of the Jews by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 was a Jew or not, it came to be more broadly used against a wide variety of persons perceived by its Catholic masters as "enemies of the church.") The technique has been used by a variety of repressive and oppressive regimes, not the least of which was the German Nazis, as a frank method of torture of chosen victims. There is no record of either the Inquisition or the Nazis ever claiming waterboarding or any of their other techniques of choice were not torture. As I said, they wanted to make sure everyone knew exactly what went on in their chambers of horror.

But not so the Georgites. For they have a little problem having to do with International Law, the U.S. Constitution, the Rule of Law, and their constant lying about what they are and are not doing, which still persists. Because of this little problem, they have had to control the agenda of the debate. And boy have they done this well. The agenda has been all about whether or not waterboarding is torture. It has not been about whether the Bush Regime tortures certain of its captives/victims, whether they have tried to cover that up, whether have violated the Constitution and the law. The debate has been just at the level the Regime wants it to be.

They have also featured a second agenda item, whether or not torture (of course they ain't doing it) if not generally justified, might just be justified in the "ticking bomb" scenario. (That that scenario has never been shown to occur, or if it did, anyone caught with the proper knowledge wouldn't give it up anyway because a) they would want the bomb to go off and b) they would know they were going to die in any case, is treated by all of the non-experts discussing the matter as irrelevant. After all, they know all they need to know about the use of torture and the ticking bomb from the plots of the TV series "24.") Thus the debate, as controlled by the Georgites, comes down to: "it is torture; no it isn't; yes, it is; no it isn't; yes it is," and so on and so forth, and then "even if it is justified in certain circumstances, well what circumstances, yes it is, no it isn't," and so on. These matters essentially go to Sen. Schumer's defense of his vote for Judge Mukasey (The New York Times, Nov, 6, 2007) and even the discussion in the Nov. 6 The Progress Report, "Tortured Logic."

But this is not what the agenda for this debate should be. The United States is a signatory of the Geneva Conventions, by treaty. Under Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, they have become part of the Supreme Law of the Land. Waterboarding was specifically defined as torture at the Nuremberg Trials. Without doing a poll, we know it is regarded as torture by virtually all, if not every one, of the signatories of the Geneva Conventions. We know the Georgites knew this, and knew the fact presented difficulties for them, as they obviously contemplated incorporating torture into their protocols for treating captives in the so-called "War on Terrorism." How do we know that? Because as White House Counsel none other than Alberto Gonzales described the Conventions as "quaint," i.e., discardable. Except that nations that abide by the rule of law cannot and indeed don't discard treaty obligations just before they think one provision or another is "quaint." They either abrogate the treaty (which in this case would put U.S. citizen captives of foreign regimes at great risk to say nothing of even further diminishing the international stature of the United States -- but even though the Georgites really care nothing about either of those considerations, they obviously didn't want to take the P.R. hit around the world) or they re-negotiate it.

The primary agenda item should not be whether or not the Georgites and certain of their supporters think waterboarding is not torture, or even if it is, it might be justified in certain circumstances (even if these circumstances have never been known to occur except on the aforementioned "24"). It should be: how can the BushCheney Regime be allowed to willfully violate international law and in this case specifically an element of the Constitution, in this case defined as the supreme law of the land. This is an impeachable offense.

Now Judge Mukasey knows all this. He knows waterboarding is torture. He knows the Bush Regime does it. He can't say either under oath and still become Attorney General. (Can you say: "I suddenly discovered my family and want to spend more time with them?) He can tell Sen. Schumer, not under oath, that he will "uphold the law" when it comes to torture. But when in the future it comes to the question, "but Mr. Attorney General, you said that you would uphold the rule of law and we now know for sure that the Regime uses waterboarding, and you did nothing about it," he will be able to say, "Oh, are you talking about that private conversation I had with Sen. Schumer? Was it about waterboarding? By golly, I was sure we were talking about waterbriding. What a misunderstanding. As I recall, the subject of waterboarding never came up, just that one of waterbriding. If it had, I would have just said to him what I said under oath, I can't comment on something I know nothing about." Oh that control of the agenda. Atwater, Rove, Bush, Cheney, etc. Just brilliant. It must be really tough to learn, because the Democrats just never seem to be able to do it, and seem not even to know how to try.

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY), a weekly Contributing Author for the Web zine The Political Junkies.net; an invited contributor to the Web log Thomas Paine's Corner, now published on Cyrano's Journal; and an invited contributor to the Web log The Daily Scare.