Debate gets tortured by press

When I came into the office this morning, a co-worker asked me about Bush's efforts to continue the practice of torture on detainees. I stopped in my tracks at what I had just heard. Here was an MOS (man on the street) who doesn't read about these stories in-depth, but watches the local news daily. It wasn't his fault for reciting the rhetoric he hears on a nightly basis. But what struck me was how such a misconception could stick. Since when did interrogation become a form of torture?

To answer his original question, I support our President and the CIA's methods of interrogating enemy combatants. It has saved many lives before and after the 9/11 tragedy and without it we can expect another attack would be imminent.

But how did this argument come to this? How did the concept of interrogation get swept into the Geneva Conventions firestorm? And how did al-Qaeda terrorists suddenly gain the respect and dignity offered by a treaty to diplomatic sovereign states?

To The Real Republican it's quite simple. Terrorists being held by the CIA are just that...terrorists. They are not a sovereign nation. They are not guided by a diplomatic state. They're rogue elements of a radical killing machine that would just as well cut off your head than negotiate. What respect and dignity does that deserve?

It’s the same argument I had when SCOTUS ruled in favor of terrorists back in June. Their ruling basically said al-Qaeda and other terror organizations will get the same respect given to diplomatic nation-states. In other words, al-Qaeda, while hacking off your head and blowing up your children, are no different politically and diplomatically than...say...Sweden. To me this is a crime in and of itself and a failure to recognize evil for what it is.

Now, with respect to all budding terrorists out there, the U.S. naturally employs a reasonable level of humanity with all detainees. Unlike the jihadists’ practice of beheadings, the U.S. offers detainees a life far better than many find in their own nation of origin. Not to mention the food and medicine provided to these jihadists on your dime. And generally speaking, the U.S. treats terror detainees far more humane than most other nations.

So how did this coercive interrogation - a method that stopped the latest terror attempts to blow up airlines over the Atlantic - become torture? Simple...the media ran with the sexier story. If nut job McCain came forward and said he didn't like our practice of yelling at terror suspects to loudly, the media would yawn. But by calling the methods of interrogation torture, the media jumped at the sex appeal of the mean Americans torturing those poor terrorists. Calling it torture goes a lot farther than what it really is...interrogating.

The National Review does a real nice editorial on the subject...

A bloc of Republican senators, led by John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham, is determined to disable the intelligence-collecting capabilities of the United States while it is at war with a deadly foe against whom intelligence is the best weapon. The trio wants to derail the Bush administration’s effort to preserve coercive interrogation methods. These methods — almost all of them falling well short of torture — have been proven to yield intelligence that saves American lives. In their absence, 9/11 would already have been reprised; if they are eliminated now, the likelihood of its recurrence will increase significantly.

The fact is we aren't talking about law-abiding citizens of peace here. We're talking about terrorists who will blow you up regardless of your interrogation methods. And if we're more concerned with how al-Qaeda perceives America based on our detainee treatment...we've already lost this war.

posted by RR @ 4:44 PM