Strata Lucida

More on the torture story

PBS finally posted the transcript to the interview with Neil Lewis that I mentioned in the last post. One passage I particularly noticed was this:

[I]n the larger sense, I would say, in addition to the details in the memos, they do tell us that I think we can be fairly confident now that what was occurring in at least Guantanamo was systematic, intentional, done with the consent of the senior authorities, that there was a real intent to have a system of prolonged psychological and physical coercion in the interrogation process -- which is different, I might add, very importantly, from the story that the military had put out early on and held to fairly consistently that it was a more or less gentle interrogation process, building rapport with the detainees.

So, Lewis knows the real story isn't the new details of abuses, or further corroboration of them (although that is significant); it's that the orders for the practices came from somebody high, high up in the government, perhaps from the President himself. Lewis is being very careful not to jump the journalistic gun, and so far, Bush gets a pass from him. Lewis simply observes that "they [the White House] have shied away from any suggestion that President Bush has had any direct role in approving these harsh techniques."

I think that the press needs to pursue this "shying away" much more aggressively.

The other aspect of the Lewis interview that struck me was on a moral dimension. When asked what he felt the interrogators had in mind when they were applying their lit cigarettes to detainees' ears and such, Lewis replied:

Privately, when people talk to me about this, who were involved and generally approve of it in the government, one refrain is always, "Let's not forget the emotion and anger we felt in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11." In other words, they're doing good work and important work that has to be done. So I think that's the pervasive belief of the people who are involved with this. It's obviously not the view of outsiders, and it's not the view of many FBI people who thought it wasn't even effective in getting information.

So in the view of these officials, strong emotion is justification enough. That's more than depressing; it's a sign of complete moral bankruptcy. And it emanates from the highest levels of our government.

Posted by Chris at December 22, 2004 02:05 PM | TrackBack