I rarely, and I do mean RARELY turn off NPR, but I did today.  For the umpteenth day in a row, they have been obsessing over the newly released CIA documents detailing the “Enhanced Interrogation” tactics used at Guantanamo Bay highlighting the debate between Republicans and Democrats.  Republicans defending their usage based on the fact that we obtained useful intelligence from these practices and the Democrats saying, “No we didn’t.”  all the while both sides are completely ignoring the real implications here asking questions that ultimately can’t be answered either way.  So let’s ask the real questions shall we?

Question number one.  Was it even torture?  This one is easy.  YES!  Waterboarding is described as “simulated drowning”.  It’s not.  It IS drowning.  Waterboarding is the process of forcing a person to lay down, holding a towel over their face and dumping water over the towel, forcing them to inhale water in to their lungs, then stopping while they are still alive enough evacuate the water from their lungs.  I, and I’m sure most anyone who has ever spent enough time in a pool, have almost drowned and it was terrifying.  This terror is the functional tool of waterboarding and using terror at that level to coerce cooperation is torture.

The other activity in question is called “Rectal Hydration”….. Use your imagination!  It is my understanding that the definition of rape is the forceful insertion of any object into the vagina or rectum.  I think a hose would be the qualifier here.  It is enough to say that using rape as a means of coercing cooperation is torture, but they went even further to inflate the subjects intestines with water once the hose was inserted, only to spill the contents all over themselves once the hose was removed.  If that doesn’t qualify as torture to you, you suck at being a human or you have some pretty twisted sexual preferences and ZERO empathy.

Question number TWO! Did we obtain any useful intelligence from these activities.  Another simple answer.  YES!  Despite the Democrats assertions, it is inarguable that we obtained some useful information at some point from these practices, but that just throws us headlong in to question number three.  Was it justified?  simple answers abounding, NO!

At some point in the building of this country, we developed a document call the Constitution.  This constitution was developed in the interest of enumerating the God given rights of man, not just Americans, these are God given rights and so apply to everyone, regardless of citizenship.  In this document, we have guaranteed the people, again, ALL people protection from what we call cruel and unusual punishment, up to and including torture.  It was established that the ultimate ends are irrelevant.  Torture is never a justified means of achieving it.  So according to the laws of this land, it doesn’t matter if we obtained useful intelligence, these acts were torture and torture is never justifiable… according to the laws of the land.

Question 4.  What’s the endgame?  One of  two things that need to happen.  We know that torture is against American law, but torture was used to keep Americans safe so we need to ask ourselves, is torture in fact justifiable under certain circumstances? and so, do we need to further amend our constitution to allow for the use of torture?  Not so simple answer here, but I feel once we decide that torture is a justifiable means of protection our country, it’s only a matter a time before the details of that decision are distorted and abused to the extent of using these tactics on ourselves because someone “became a threat to our country”, an all too ambiguous definition too easily applied to any manifestation of dissent.  I hope to God that this is not the route our country decides to take.

The other option, and in my opinion the ideal outcome would be for someone in the accused organization to manifest a little backbone, stand up and acknowledge that torture is illegal and should remain illegal because it is in fact cruel and disgusting, however that does not change the fact that torture was used to force cooperation.   “Torture was used, and useful information was obtained.  However just because useful intelligence was obtained does not negate the fact that one of THE laws that make this country great was broken.”  This individual would assert their accomplishment while admitting guilt, and as an act of unparalleled patriotism, accept full accountability for their actions, and submit themselves for lawful prosecution.  Just because you break the law does not mean you don’t respect them.  It means that you recognize that sometimes laws conflict and you have to make a value judgement, even if that means you sacrifice your freedom in the process.  That is the difference between heroes and cowards.

That’s all I have to say.