I guess the release of the Al-Quaeda torture manual has him scrambling again to divert the debate away from real torture and back to his primary focus, attacking the United States. But since he has no new material here (he's been blogging for years on the subject, and there wasn't much material to start with; US approved torture has been alleged in very few cases, and never proven) he has to make up some evidence. His new tactic is a frequent standby of those with very weak arguments: guilt by association.
Apparently, since the Nazis used the phrase "Verschärfte Vernehmung", which one can translate as "enhanced interrogation techniques" (although literally "sharpened interrogations"), and Bush also used the term "enhanced interrogation techniques", we are doing the same thing the Nazis did, therefore, we are bad like the Nazis.
I'm not joking. Read his post yourself. This logic is so wretchedly inane, so incredibly empty, that it's only purpose is as a desperate smokescreen, lest people start forgetting about US abuses and actually notice the real tortures going on in the rest of the world.
Just so there's no mistaking here: I am against any kind of torture in all circumstances. The few cases where it might be the only route to save lives (like certain scenes from the TV series "24") I would consider at the time only if/when I saw a situation like that actually occur. But to my knowledge, that has never actually occured in the history of the US.
And unlike Mr. Sullivan, I actually have some experience in this matter. I am a trained interrogator (it was a previous military specialty of mine). I have personally interrogated hundreds of Iraqis, both willing and unwilling to talk (most willing). I have never once used or seen anything resembling torture in any way. On one occasion, an interpreter who was working with another interrogator, hit a prisoner one time (and not very hard). He was fired immediately.
Now, it's true that some abuses have occured under US leadership. Most people (including Mr. Sullivan) like to point to Abu Gharayb. But Abu Gharayb had nothing to do with interrogations! The abusers, who were prosecuted for it, were not CIA or military intelligence, but a bunch of low-ranking national guard soldiers acting like idiots. Things like waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and stress positions have also been alleged to be used by the CIA, but never proven. But even if true, if we are going to have a productive debate on the subject, we have to maintain some level of porportionality. Comparing those alleged CIA techniques to insurgent tortures such as eye gouging, or drilling holes in the body is like comparing shoplifting to serial murder. Personally, I would like to prosecute both offenses when they occur. But where I put the majority of my attention shows where my priorities lie. I guess my priorities are very different from Mr. Sullivan's, and the owners of the main stream media at large, judging by how much they obsessed over Abu Gharayb back in 2004.
Incredibly, at the very end of the long post where continually compares the US to the Nazis, he then dishonestly tries to deny what we were just reading. In a "CYA" attempt to deflect potential objections: Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I'm not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture - "enhanced interrogation techniques" - is a term originally coined by the Nazis.
The problem is none of those empirical facts, as you carefully state them here, is any kind of war crime in and of itself. You still have to prove something beyond guilt by association, which you failed to do. The only thing you succeeded in is, once again, smearing the United States Government and feeding your enormous ego.
Update at 6/1/2007 11:35:00 AM:
Dave Price at "Dean's World" says the same thing I do, although much more effectively:the invocation of an emotional trigger like Nazism is clearly intended to convey something sinister like “BUSH=HITLER” without actually being so gauche as to say it out loud, because without that stigma of association the post really says nothing at all, as one quickly realizes with a little reflection.
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