A powerful editorial from the NYT on the torture memos released last week . . .
In one of the more nauseating passages, Jay Bybee, then an assistant attorney general and now a federal judge, wrote admiringly about a contraption for waterboarding that would lurch a prisoner upright if he stopped breathing while water was poured over his face. He praised the Central Intelligence Agency for having doctors ready to perform an emergency tracheotomy if necessary.
These memos are not an honest attempt to set the legal limits on interrogations, which was the authors’ statutory obligation. They were written to provide legal immunity for acts that are clearly illegal, immoral and a violation of this country’s most basic values.
It sounds like the plot of a mob film, except the lawyers asking how much their clients can get away with are from the C.I.A. and the lawyers coaching them on how to commit the abuses are from the Justice Department. And it all played out with the blessing of the defense secretary, the attorney general, the intelligence director and, most likely, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
We'll be discussing this in my class on worship and ethics where this week we're reading William Cavanaugh's book, Torture and Eucharist, an examination of torture under Pinochet in Chile during the 1970s. I'll post more on this book and our conversation later this week. Seems like atheism was my theme topic during Lent, and torture will be during Easter.
Anon, and peace,
Chris
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