Reliably Wrong

One thing you can absolutely depend on in this world is that Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson will get it exactly wrong whenever he writes one of his screeds about the Bush administration. His obvious personal contempt drips out of every syllable and, quite obviously, spurs him to ever greater hyperbolic vitriol. But at least he's reliable, right? Today he pronounces judgment on the procedures that the president wants Congress to authorize for interrogation of terror suspects.

I wish I could turn to cheerier matters, but I just can't get past this torture issue — the fact that George W. Bush, the president of the United States of America, persists in demanding that Congress give him the right to torture anyone he considers a "high-value" terrorist suspect. The president of the United States. Interrogation by torture. This just can't be happening.

It's past time to stop mincing words. The Decider, or maybe we should now call him the Inquisitor, sticks to anodyne euphemisms. He speaks of "alternative" questioning techniques, and his umbrella term for the whole shop of horrors is "the program." Of course, he won't fully detail the methods that were used in the secret CIA prisons — and who knows where else? — but various sources have said they have included not just the infamous "waterboarding," which the administration apparently will reluctantly forswear, but also sleep deprivation, exposure to cold, bombardment with ear-splitting noise and other assaults that cause not just mental duress but physical agony. That is torture, and to call it anything else is a lie.

Given that the Guardian leaked the proposed procedures, which Robinson must know judging by the rest of his column, it is ridiculous the sheer number of times Robinson repeats the word "torture" in his tortured piece (I count 17). He must be a firm believer in the old propaganda technique of repeating the big lie over and over until it becomes accepted as fact. One doesn't often see someone trying to apply it all at once, however.

No, Mr. Robinson. If the list of procedures the Guardian released with it's breathless article from yesterday is correct, calling the procedures "torture" is a twisted bit of tortured reasoning. That would be the lie here.

categories Media, War | Gaius Tuesday, 19 September , 2006

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