Magic America!

by Eric Martin

John Cole spotted something interesting in the media's coverage of recent revelations of widespread torture in Iraqi government prisons: the New York Times, Washington Post and NPR all use the word "torture" to, rightly, describe the type of abuse endured by the detainees in question.

While that might seem like a mundane observation (media outlets using vocabulary accurately!), it is noteworthy because those same news organizations have been careful to use sanitized euphemisms to describe the torture committed by U.S. personnel under Bush administration policies.  The Times went as far as to enlist Public Editor Clark Hoyt to explain the bold decision to use the word "brutal" when describing the "methods of interrogation" - not to be confused with torture. 

This, and numerous other examples, establish that the Times, Post and NPR are more comfortable using the word torture to describe that variant of prisoner abuse when the acts are perpetrated by Iraqis, Iranians or some other (out-of-favor) foreign faction. 

We, however, are the United States of America and we don't torture.  Please adjust the facts, and the diction, accordingly.

Comments

[cleek]

they're just highlighting the contradictions. it's all part of a concerted plan to allow the masses to gain enlightenment for themselves. and when they do.... hooboy, such a revolution like you've never seen!

[rea]

Or at least, we are the United States and we dopn't torture when a Republican administration is in office.

[Jesurgislac]

Rea, how often has anyone admitted that prisoners went on being tortured at Guantanamo Bay even after Obama took office?

When Americans are doing it, it's not torture.

[Julian]

I really liked this quote of the Washington bureau editor:

"But [Jehl] said: 'I have resisted using torture without qualification or to describe all the techniques. Exactly what constitutes torture continues to be a matter of debate and hasn’t been resolved by a court. This president and this attorney general say waterboarding is torture, but the previous president and attorney general said it is not.'"

Teach the controversy! Exactly what constitutes torture has always been hotly debated by torturers indeed. I don't think such a debate rages among the rest of the nontorturing world.

"Exactly what constitutes torture ... hasn't been resolved by a court" is oddly vague; odd because it's clearly a lie. No court anywhere has resolved it? No international body? Really?

[John Thullen]

To paraphrase Mel Brooks, when an individual is nabbed off the street and waterboarded, that's slapstick.

When a Republican suffers a hangnail at home and receives subsidized healthcare, that's torture.

[Ugh]

This seems relevant:

But in the hearing’s most dramatic moment, [Khadr's defense attorney] Flowers said at least one interrogator would testify to having personally taken part in Khadr’s abuse. As detailed in a motion filed by the defense in 2008, Khadr claims in his affidavit that his interrogators threatened him with rape, denied him medical treatment for gunshot and shrapnel wounds he suffered in his July 2002 capture in Afghanistan, and used him as a “human mop” to clean up his own excrement. The interrogator, referred to in the hearing only as “Interrogator #1,” will testify on behalf of the defense that he personally threatened Khadr “with rape” by threatening to render Khadr to an undisclosed Arab country where he would face the abuse.

But we're looking forward...

[hairshirthedonist]

What invisible congitive armor allows us to contemplate this stuff without going mad? People are starving in the world, yet we pay people to shove other people into their own sh!t, not to mention thousands of other horrible, destructive things we devote our resources to. WTF, America/all of humanity?

[Ugh]

More here.

Feels like a nice combination of hopey freance and changey peance.

[Richard S]

I posted a query over at John's blog - What's the difference between rape and torture?
One of the responces pointed to the definition under US law that makes it pretty clear that rape is a subset of torture. The fact that NYT (Hoyt in particular), NPR, etc. are a bunch of cowards and toadies that don't want to piss off their corporate masters speaks for itself.

[Eric Martin]

Yup.

"Exactly what constitutes torture ... hasn't been resolved by a court" is oddly vague; odd because it's clearly a lie. No court anywhere has resolved it? No international body? Really?

Oddly enough, the contraversial "waterboarding" techniques - about which, inquiring minds disagree! - has been adjudicated in a court of law as constituting torture and, thus, a war crime.

See, ie, trials of Japanese accused war criminals circa post-WW II period.

[Ugh]

Yes but Eric you see in the U.S. version of waterboarding we use either Deer Park Natural Spring Water or water filtered courtesy of Brita (the U.S. version of course, not the wimpy European version located Heinrich-Hertz-Str. 4, 65232 Taunusstein, Deutschland); whereas I don't think you can even drink the tap water in Japan to this day.

Deer Park: The Official Water of the United States Waterboarding Team.

[Eric Martin]

this made me laugh

[xanax]

@Julian 12:43 - "Exactly what constitutes torture has always been hotly debated by torturers indeed. I don't think such a debate rages among the rest of the nontorturing world. those being tortured."

Fixed that for you, Julian.

[Richard S]

My real disappointment stems only somewhat that this tars us as a people as war criminals.
More importantly anything that someone cannot be tried and punished for is de facto legal. Obama may have stipulated a policy to 'not torture' under his administration but the precedent has been set. Any future president who decides differently from Obama is perfectly free to war crime away in public and without fear.

[Hartmut]

As I have repeatedly said: the right way would be heads on stakes in fron of the oval office facing inwards (and I mean heads of those high up in the Cheney..eh..chain of command (on the US side) not underlings or trophies.

[Laura Sympson]

Just to add, that Andrew Sullivan has continuously brought up this discrepancy in his blog for the past several years.