When I was a kid, water boarding meant getting pushed into the creek or river before shorts season. It usually came as a choice between lunch money and a cold dip.
I learned quickly the dip came no matter. I'm not sure if it was torture, but it produced a lot of dread until I figured out a better way.
This week's release of the Senate report on CIA interrogation practices brings torture to the top of the infotainment pages these days and it's hard not to dive right in. Unless you notice how shallow the pool is. There's nothing to dive in to.
Torture is bad, we all agree on that.
But we don't seem to agree on anything else. Beauty isn't the only thing in the eye of the beholder. Appears torture's blinding too. I meant that figuratively though it is a literal possibility and that gives me the heebie jeebies.
What really is torture? Is it physical harm? Or is it phsychological battering? Many of the most rational folk I know swear listening to Dick Vitale call a Cats game is the purest form of torture. Who am I to say they are wrong?
If you believe the senate report, the CIA tortured prisoners of war, yielding no real information of immediate critical value, and then lied about the practice to congress. Many of us see this as bad, too. But evidently not everyone.
You've got some claiming none of it happened and it's all politics. You've got some claiming what happened wasn't torture because the US doesn't torture. You've got some claiming if it was torture, it was okay because "it was us, darn-it!". You've got some claiming it was torture and it yielded results. And of course, you've got some claiming it was torture, it yielded nothing of value, and we should all feel even guiltier than we should already be feeling for everything else we're collectively guilty of. Like the unicorns.
But the real question remains. Is water boarding and sleep deprivation and forced nudity and exposure to the elements torture? According to international law the answer is a resounding yes. And once upon a time, it was America that held itself above any practice resembling it. But most of the things the World War II generation believed in have been flipped. Today it appears torture ain't bad if it serves our purposes. At least to some.
But thankfully not all. Among all this false posturing between national security and collective denial are a few whose relationship with torture is a bit more direct. There is no wavering on the question of torture for those who have experienced it.
Standing in defiance of many of his party colleagues who rushed to condemn the report, US Senator John McCain declared "The use of torture compromises that which most distinguishes us from our enemies -- our belief that all people, even captured enemies, possess basic human rights which are protected by international conventions the United State not only joined, but for the most part authored."
The voice of experience is usually the most trustworthy. Experience has a conscience.