Category: The Dish

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Respect for bodily integrity

2297 Kidnapping and hostage taking bring on a reign of terror; by means of threats they subject their victims to intolerable pressures. They are morally wrong. Terrorism threatens, wounds, and kills indiscriminately is gravely against justice and charity. Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity. Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law. 91

2298 In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order, often without protest from the Pastors of the Church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture. Regrettable as these facts are, the Church always taught the duty of clemency and mercy. She forbade clerics to shed blood. In recent times it has become evident that these cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person. On the contrary, these practices led to ones even more degrading. It is necessary to work for their abolition. We must pray for the victims and their tormentors.

Notice that terrorism and torture are treated in the same context and abhorred for similar reasons. You cannot morally fight one with the other – without losing the very moral law you are trying to protect.

Here’s the AP wire-story.

Here’s Ahmadinejad’s peroration at the U.N.:

"I emphatically declare that today’s world, more than ever before, longs for just and righteous people with love for all humanity; and above all longs for the perfect righteous human being and the real savior who has been promised to all peoples and who will establish justice, peace and brotherhood on the planet.

O, Almighty God, all men and women are your creatures and you have ordained their guidance and salvation. Bestow upon humanity that thirsts for justice, the perfect human being promised to all by you, and make us among his followers and among those who strive for his return and his cause."

Read it again. Ahmadinejad is calling upon God to bring about the coming of the Twelfth Imam ("the perfect human being promised to all by you"), who heralds the Apocalypse. He is also saying that he will "strive for his return." It is the most terrifying statement any president of any nation has made to the U.N. We have a dictator on the brink of nukes, striving to accelerate the Apocalypse. Think of the Iranian regime as a nation-as-suicide-bomber. And anything serious we can do to prevent it may only make matters worse. No wonder Ahmadinejad smiles. Paradise beckons.

So we finally get to see the "researcher" behind much of the debunked "science" that the religious right uses against gays. The Daily Show’s Jason Jones interviews Paul Cameron – and puts his theories to the test.

A reader reminds me that Alberto Gonzales has a strong record of fibbing when it comes to questions of detention and torture:

On November 30, 2001, in an OpEd in the NYT, Gonzales defended the President’s November 13, 2001 order, reassuring the American people that it "preserves judicial review in civilian courts." In fact, the order does exactly the opposite, stating that individuals subject to the order "shall not be privileged to seek any remedy or maintain any proceedings, directly or indirectly, or to have any such remedy or proceeding sought on [their] behalf in (i) any court of the United States, or any State thereof, (ii) any court of any foreign nation, or (iii) any international tribunal."

On June 22 2004, in a press conference held the day the White House released the President’s Feb 7 "determination" on the Geneva Conventions, Gonzales stated: 

"Now, interrogation and detention policies in Iraq were issued by General Sanchez in the field.  They do not involve input from Washington and are not related to legal opinions I have discussed concerning the war against al Qaeda." 

In fact, General Sanchez himself said that he relied on these legal opinions and that he received input from Washington.

In the same press conference, Gonzales also stated:

"The President’s [February 7] determination [regarding the Geneva Conventions] is not controversial within the Executive Branch."

In fact, as is now the public record, Gonzales himself was witness to a massive controversy within the Executive Branch.

He needs a fire extinguisher in his back pocket at all times. But he does what he’s told. And that’s why he’s attorney-general.

Marty Lederman notes that many of us have long asked those who support the administration’s detention policies to come out and say clearly that they favor torture. I guess it’s a lesson in being careful what you ask for.

Seattle, Washington, 1.30 pm.

It’s not easy dissembling as smoothly as the attorney general. But he outdid himself on Tuesday, when asked about the U.S.’s seizure of an innocent man at JFK airport, and deportation of him to Syria, where he was brutally tortured – sorry, subjected to "coercive interrogation techniques" with a metal cable. No one disputes the facts of this story, but Gonzales said Tuesday:

Well, we were not responsible for his removal to Syria. I’m not aware that he was tortured.

The New York Times takes it from there:

The attorney general’s comments caused puzzlement because they followed front-page news articles of the findings of the Canadian commission. It reported that based on inaccurate information from Canada about Mr. Arar’s supposed terrorist ties, American officials ordered him taken to Syria, an action documented in public records.

On Wednesday, a Justice Department spokesman said Mr. Gonzales had intended to make only a narrow point: that deportations are now handled by the Department of Homeland Security, not the Department of Justice.

Ohhh. I see. So it all depends on what the meaning of the word "we" is. Like the president’s oft-stated position: "We do not torture."

A helpful primer on where we are.

Watching the CNN interview with Mahmoud Ahamedinejad and reading about his meeting at the Council on Foreign Relations reinforces my sense of foreboding about Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. There’s no point in denying that his trip to the U.S. has been a big media and p.r. coup for him. And there is a chilling slickness to him that is as disturbing as it is obviously formidable. The way he deflected questions always back toward the U.S., the way he skilfully used every awkward moment to pivot to the themes his domestic and international audience want to hear, the very image of the informal, mild-mannered, quiet-spoken, constantly smiling serenity: all these represent a very, very capable politician. There is a complete self-assurance to him that suggests he can neither be trusted as a diplomatic partner nor under-estimated as a global foe.

The serenity may also come from his own fundamentalist psyche. There’s a reason fundamentalism is popular. Unlike other forms of faith, it relieves the believer of almost all responsibility for any of his doubts, it surrenders everything in a person’s psyche to God’s will, it appeases all anxiety and reassures away every question. And so, in many cases, it can be a source of great goodness, unleashing compassion and service and amazing resilience. Look at how fundamentalism created, say, the Salvation Army. But in others, it can become the constant absolution and rationalization of almost any action. It can justify torture. It can legitimize all sorts of ugly means because the motive is deemed pure. In a religion like Islam, where reason has been eclipsed for a very long time, the absence of oxygen for the doubt that makes faith both real and reasonable is acute. The combination of that psyche with naked political cunning is one of the most dangerous combinations there is. We are looking at a man who absolutely believes he is right; and that he has a large majority of the cards. Alas, thanks to this administration, he has many more cards now than he did when he took office.

(Photo: Georges Gobet/Getty.)