By Steven Lehman? letters to the editor
It is past time for torture to be retired as a “tool” for information gathering.
The U.S. has signed the Geneva conventions banning the use of torture and other forms of coercion and we ought to honor those agreements in the spirit and the letter of the law.
Pro-torture legal arguments seek to use new definitions and other disingenuous claims that justify harsh techniques to be used that are specifically prohibited in the Geneva documents.
If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck then it”s probably a duck. The pro-torture lawyers, politicians and spin masters can call it whatever they want, but at the end of the day it will be clear that it was torture.
Torture has caused significant blow back, i.e., the unintended negative consequences toward the party that initiates the action. Images of hooded and electrode implanted prisoners is a potent recruiting tool for anti-American jihadis. And there are tons more images available.
The lives of our servicemen and women are put in even more danger as long as torture methods are associated with them.
Information developed using these methods is more unreliable than that produced by interrogation methods that do not rely on coercion. Does anyone remember the FBI recommendations following their inspection of the interrogation process on site at Guantanamo Bay ?
The architects of the Bush torture policy should be charged with criminal conspiracy and other crimes as appropriate and held accountable in a court of law.
Steven Lehman
Lower Lake
