We’ve learned, thanks to the New York Times, that the CIA destroyed at least two videotapes of what the press–following the administration’s penchant for euphemism–keeps calling “harsh” or “severe” interrogation techniques. It’s time the press stopped playing along. We know, despite the Administration’s desperate dodges, that the CIA tortures: it puts prisoners in situations where they think they will die; it deprives them of sleep for days at an end; it subjects them to sensory overload. These are all things we know, things the Administration claims are allowed. They aren’t. Decency does not permit these things. The law does not permit them. Enough. Torture is torture. It must stop. It must stop.
Why does it not stop? Part of the reason that the CIA continues to torture is that we allow it to. We have given the Administration and its agencies the thing that it absolutely refuses to give to anyone else: the benefit of the doubt. Even after years of lies–not “misstatements,” not “mistakes,” not “omissions,” but bald, ugly, and absolutely transparent lies–we can still find it within ourselves to play along.
Even steadfast opponents of the Bush administration give the CIA the benefit of the doubt. The Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, John D. Rockefeller IV, said this about the destruction of the videotapes:
We do not know if there was intent to obstruct justice, an attempt to prevent congressional scrutiny, or whether they were simply destroyed out of concern they could be leaked.”
Rockefeller is clearly insinuating that the CIA’s motives weren’t pure. Now, however, is not the time for mere insinuation; nor is it time for the benefit of the doubt. Let us say, clearly and boldly, that these people lie. This administration has an astoundingly consistent record of deception. From weapons of mass destruction (remember those? Bush doesn’t) to climate change to United States Attorneys, these people lie. And when they get caught lying, they smirk, they put their hand on a Bible, they swear they will tell the whole truth and nothing but, and… they can’t remember a damned thing. Today, through his spokesperson Dana Perino, Bush himself used the “aww shucks I forgot” routine:
“I spoke to the president this morning about this,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. “He has no recollection of being made aware of the tapes or their destruction before yesterday. He was briefed by General Hayden yesterday morning.”
We might have believed this five or six years ago. No longer.
The astonishing thing about all this is that people who know better do not act on their knowledge. The administration has taken advantage of this repeatedly. The most disturbing thing, for instance, about the U.S Attorney hearing in the Senate was not that Alberto Gonzalez lied to the Senate. It was that he lied knowing that most of the people, including his political allies, did not believe him. He knew that they knew that he was lying–and he did it anyway. And he smirked. Because he also knew that nothing of consequence would happen to him.
What consequences should there be for the destruction of evidence, the manufacturing of evidence, and perjury? Legal penalties have their place, of course. (Provided that we can enforce them: the example of Scooter Libby is not a heartening one.) But a better solution to the crisis of integrity that is common to most of what is wrong with the Bush administration–is to return to a culture of accountability. We need public servants to ask, as Joseph Welch asked of Senator Joseph McCarthy on June 9, 1954,
Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
Until we ask such questions–even when we feel that asking those questions puts our careers or us at risk–until we insist that decency return to public life, we stand little chance of defeating the liars and torturers who have lost their decency and besmirched our honor.
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