I have two and perhaps three big writing/editing projects that I need to get done, plus the launch of the Mary book, plus a trip to San Diego next week, plus other stuff (in addition to the normal stuff I have to write). Writing being a zero sum game, something’s gotta give, so I’m gonna have to back off on the blog for while. I will be posting, but rather sparely for the time being. That also means I may well be missing stuff in comboxes. If so, forgive me.

Just FYI.

DVDtalk.com seems to do a good job.

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A reader wries:

Hello Mr. Shea,

Hi!

I have seen you perform as Innocent Smith on EWTN, and I belong to my local Chesterton society (Denver). I’ve just started coming to your blog and perusing your quite extensive and informative writings, so I regret that my first comment here must be one of mild opposition.

Your regret is nothing compared to mine, now that I’ve read what you have to say.

While I fully agree with the statements made about the political divide within the Church, abortion and punitive interrogation practices do not share a parity of wrongness. I have a few brief words to say about this torture debate which I hope will help settle the issue.

A) I do not claim a “parity of wrongness”. I think such attempts to parse “which grave evil is more evil” debates are fruitless and stupid. I simply point out that Holy Mother Church tells us in Veritatis Splendor and in the Catechism that both torture (what you call “punitive interrogation techniques”) and abortion are gravely and intrinsically evil. That’s why we are instructed:

“In carrying out investigations, the regulation against the use of torture, even in the case of serious crimes, must be strictly observed: ‘Christ’s disciple refuses every recourse to such methods, which nothing could justify and in which the dignity of man is as much debased in his torturer as in the torturer’s victim’. International juridical instruments concerning human rights correctly indicate a prohibition against torture as a principle which cannot be contravened under any circumstances.” — Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, n 404

The internal quotation is from the 15 June 1982 address to the International Committee of the Red Cross by Pope John Paul II (available in French and Italian at vatican.va).

First of all, it is all only rumor and gossip at this point. Nobody accept the prisoners and the interrogators know what really happened inside those prisons, and there is no wisdom in everybody going off half cocked.

No. It is not. It is abundantly documented fact, including (but by no means limited to) pictures of corpses , reliable accounts of how they got to be corpses (and of Administration protections for the CIA interrogator who tortured the victim to death), as well as documentaries chronicling horrors inflicted on prisoners.

Secondly, I was very pleased to see that Fr. Sirico of The Acton Institute granted an interview on EWTN’s The World Over Live last Friday night in which he refused to condemn waterboarding as torture. Fr. Sirico recognizes that any statement of his which denounced Bush & Co. as being in violation of the moral law would be seen as him lending his pastoral support to a certain pacifist interpretation of Catholic social doctrine, which would not only hinder our country in dealing with its foreign policy challenges, but would throw fuel on the flames of a partisan divide such that the side least likely to advance a genuine moral agenda would reap the net advantage.

If that is what Fr. Sirico said, and if EWTN lets it go unchallenged, then shame on them. This is an elaboration of Peg Noonan’s counsel to simply ignore grave evil. A refusal to condemn waterboarding as torture is not a quibble about definitions: it is participation in an obvious and grave evil. We have *executed* soldiers from other countries who waterboarded people. It’s a preposterous falsehood to say that it’s impossible to know if waterboarding somebody 183 times is torture. Tom Kreitzberg summarizes the ridiculous incoherence of Fr. Sirico’s reported argument this way:

I don’t understand. Is the idea that Fr. Sirico thinks Bush & Co. violated the moral law, but he won’t say so because that would make pacifists happy? Or that he doesn’t think they violated the moral law, but he won’t say so because of… some other reason? Or that he hasn’t formed an opinion, because if he did then it might make pacifists happy?

And whatever it is, this is very pleasing and applause-worthy?

I hope somebody at EWTN wakes up.

This conflict is dividing the Church, sadly, into many subversive or misguidedly pacifist Catholics on one side, many pseudo-tough Mel Gibson-like “conservative” Catholic charlatans on the other, with hotheads on each side arrogantly approriating for themselves the title of “magisterium of the day.” Since my concern is for the integrity of the Church, the leavening of the world, and the protection of the country (in that order), I can only applaud Fr. Sirico’s suave handling of the question, in which he effectively told the blogosphere to “mind its own business.”

This, being translated, appears to mean “Don’t listen to the Magisterium, listen to Fr. Sirico.” Here’s the thing: Fr. Sirico’s disastrous attempt to paper over grave and intrinsic evil (and your attempt to anoint that opinion as the Last Word of Holy Mother Church) is *exactly* describable as “‘conservative’ Catholic charlatans …. arrogantly approriating for themselves the title of ‘magisterium of the day.’” The real Catholic Magisterium clearly teaches that torture is intrinsically and gravely immoral. Common international law (including US law), has treated waterboarding (among other tortures authorized by the Bush Administration) as torture. We even hanged people for it.

To simultaneously insist upon the broadest definition of torture and the strictest application of moral proscriptions against it, during a time of war, accomplishes little more than the emboldening of enemies abroad, fifth columnists at home, and other less sordid political opposition in the opinion pages of the world.

Actually, I have not insisted on the broadest definition of torture. I have typically confined my discussions to examples of torture which nobody in his five wits can deny are torture, such as waterboarding, cold cells, and strappado–all of them authorized by Bush. As to the rest of your argument, it basically means “People who authorize war crimes are above the law if I happen to approve of the war” or, more briefly, “Ignore the Church’s teaching in ius in bello.”

No state could function under that kind of scrutiny, which raises in my mind the suspicion that those who demand the impossible from the state are motivated not by the pure desire to see it conform to the image of Christ, but by some benighted instinct that the the entire eartly order of things is somehow ipso facto illegitimate. This cannot be squared with any proper understanding of Catholic social doctrine, but it remains a constant temptation within the religious life of man, for those who misunderstand the statement “my kingdom is not of this world.”

And we finish with the sotto voce suggestion that “If you don’t support war crimes, you may be an enemy of America” and the blasphemous invocation of Jesus as being all in favor of covering up grave evil.

Since you are a Chestertonian, try contemplating some of these sayings:

We do not really want a religion that is right where we are right. What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong.

****

The Catholic Church is the only thing which saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.

****

Whatever else is right, it is utterly wrong to employ the argument that we Europeans must do to savages and Asiatics whatever savages and Asiatics do to us. I have even seen some controversialists use the metaphor “We must fight them with their own weapons.” Very well; let those controversialists take their metaphor, and take it literally. Let us fight the Soudanese with their own weapons. Their own weapons are large, very clumsy knives, with an occasional old-fashioned gun. Their own weapons are also torture and slavery. If we fight them with torture and slavery, we shall be fighting badly, precisely as if we fought them with clumsy knives and old guns. That is the whole strength of our Christian civilisation, that it does fight with its own weapons and not with other people’s….

The elements that make Europe upon the whole the most humanitarian civilisation are precisely the elements that make it upon the whole the strongest. For the power which makes a man able to entertain a good impulse is the same as that which enables him to make a good gun; it is imagination. It is imagination that makes a man outwit his enemy, and it is imagination that makes him spare his enemy. It is precisely because this picturing of the other man’s point of view is in the main a thing in which Christians and Europeans specialise that Christians and Europeans, with all their faults, have carried to such perfection both the arts of peace and war.

They alone have invented machine-guns, and they alone have invented ambulances; they have invented ambulances (strange as it may sound) for the same reason for which they have invented machine-guns. Both involve a vivid calculation of remote events. It is precisely because the East, with all its wisdom, is cruel that the East, with all its wisdom, is weak. And it is precisely because savages are pitiless that they are still–merely savages. If they could imagine their enemy’s sufferings they could also imagine his tactics. If Zulus did not cut off the Englishman’s head they might really borrow it. For if you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

Mark that: “vivid calculation of remote events”

One of the “vivid calculations of remote events” that should occupy the mind of every Catholic (and especially every Chestertonian) is what happens after you grant Caesar the power to torture people whom he regards as “extremists”.

Yet another thing to contemplate is how your logic of “punitive interrogation” works. The Magisterium (the real one, I mean, not Fr. Sirico) specifically and clearly says tht torture to “punish the guilty” or “satisfy hatred” is intrinsically immoral. You can read it for yourself in Veritatis Splendor 80.

Oh! Says the torture defender, “Did I say ‘punitive’? I meant “enhanced”. We aren’t doing this to punish, but purely to obtain information”.

“Great!” says the post-Christian efficiency expert, “Then let’s round up the extremist’s wife and children and waterboard them in front of the suspect. He’ll sing like a canary in no time when his little girl starts screaming.”

At this point, the Catholic expert on morality–who has assured us that waterboarding is very likely not torture, that the extreme demands of war mean we should look the other way if it is, and that doing it “purely to obtain information” is certainly okay–will suddenly declare, “But the children are innocent!”

To which the post-Christian efficiency expert will reply, “So what? This isn’t about punishing anybody, as you yourself say. It’s about getting necessary information in the most efficient way possible. Men who will die as martyrs will tell you everything they know if you torture their children. Why do you think John Yoo said that the President could, if he thought it best, authorize crushing a nine year old boy’s testicles? (And we’re not even talking about crushing testicles. Just a little harmless “dunking” as Vice President Cheney called it. It’s safe, legal, and rare.) You are saying that the *real* reason we should waterboard somebody is because they are guilty of something. I’m frankly shocked and hurt by your suggestion! Haven’t you been listening to yourself? You just told me that torture to “punish the guilty” was intrinsically immoral. So why are you suggesting I am immoral? We at the Ministry of Safety are above such barbarous vengefulness! We aren’t interested in punishment here. We’re just interested in getting the information we want as fast as possible. And thanks to your invaluable assistance in deploying Catholic moreal theology, we can–by subjecting the children of extremists and other threats to the social order to enhanced interrogation! Hey! You have to admit it works!

Here’s your 30 pieces of silver.

Oh! And by the way, the newest directives from Caesar have placed you and your family on our Extremist Watch List since you are on record as having criticized abortion, gay marriage, and several government leaders during a time of war. Fifth columnists like you are to report to our interrogation facility immediately.”

…is that sometimes they lie about their unwavering commitment to abortion.

Here’s hoping Obama completely betrays his base on FOCA.

A reader writes:

MY UNCLE NIKOLA (my mother’s only brother) is in hospital already 3 weeks and his CONDITION IS CRITICAL, even worse than it was. Few years ago he had a stroke and now HIS BRAIN CELLS ARE ATROPHYING. HE CAN NOT MOVE HIS LEFT LEG AND HAND. Please pray, THAT GOD TOUCH AND HEAL MY UNCLE NIKOLA, AND PROTECT HIS LIFE. He is wonderful man, Christian all his life, regulary attended church. Doctor said that now everything is in God’s hands. PLEASE BELIEVE IN MIRACLE AND PRAY THAT GOD COMPLETELY HEAL HIM.

Thank you and may God abundantly BLESS YOU.

Father, grant complete healing in body, soul, and spirit to Nikola and peace to his family through our Lord Jesus Christ. Mother Mary, pray for them! St. Luke, pray for them!

A reader writes:

MY UNCLE NIKOLA (my mother’s only brother) is in hospital already 3 weeks and his CONDITION IS CRITICAL, even worse than it was. Few years ago he had a stroke and now HIS BRAIN CELLS ARE ATROPHYING. HE CAN NOT MOVE HIS LEFT LEG AND HAND. Please pray, THAT GOD TOUCH AND HEAL MY UNCLE NIKOLA, AND PROTECT HIS LIFE. He is wonderful man, Christian all his life, regulary attended church. Doctor said that now everything is in God’s hands. PLEASE BELIEVE IN MIRACLE AND PRAY THAT GOD COMPLETELY HEAL HIM.

Thank you and may God abundantly BLESS YOU.

Father, grant complete healing in body, soul, and spirit to Nikola and peace to his family through our Lord Jesus Christ. Mother Mary, pray for them! St. Luke, pray for them!

One thing that has struck me about all the gnat straining and camel swallowing of the sundry torture defenders I have encountered is their curious devotion to the inversion of Christian values. Over at What’s Wrong with the World there was a thrilling rhetorical flourish at one point of the discussion, in which I was berated for “pious pose and profane prose“. It really was an admirably catchy turn of phrase: sort of like “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries”. Admittedly, both flourishes are in the service of defending grave evil and ridiculing opposition to grave evil, but you have to give them props for sticking in your head–like a Kit Kat jingle.

Anyhow, it reminded me of a little exchange I had recently in my own comboxes. Zippy, remarking on the growing pattern of lies emerging from the “Torture Works” wing of the media, remarked:

The point is that the Rubber Hose Right is, well, a pack of dupes and liars when it comes to discussing the extent to which torture “works”.

To which I responded (caution, naughty word ahead):

I eagerly look forward to the latest round of fainting spells over your heart-rending “lack of charity” toward apologists for torture.

All I can think of is “Gentlemen! Fighting in the War Room!” – President Merkin Muffley, Dr. Strangelove

The bizarre priorities at work in the, ‘ow you say, Enhanced Interrogation Enablement Community are grotesque. Write “Those animals tortured that man to death” and torture defenders *still* have the gall to lie ‘Hey! Bush just defined ‘torture’ differently than you”. You get a tut-tutting scold replying, “A truly Christian person would say, “Those *gentlemen* administered approved enhanced interrogation techniques in a regrettably over-enthusiastic way. President Bush ordered what he felt was alright and you have no right to say he was wrong. I think you are very mean to him!”

If you reply, “Don’t you ever tire of telling God-damned fucking lies that insult everyone’s intelligence including yours?” the torture defender, eyes welling with tears, expresses shock and deeply spiritual dismay at your profanity (even though it’s actually more in the nature of a precise theological formulation combined with a little vulgarity just to blow off frustration).

It’s like so much of torture apologetics consists of a satanic inversion of Chesterton’s maxim: “Keep the conventions. Break the Commandments.”

As I contemplate this weird inversion of Christian morality, what also strikes me is the peculiar way in this the Sermon on the Mount gets turned on its head. Jesus’ preaching aims to kill sin at the root–in the heart. He says, for instance:

“You have heard that it was said to the men of old, ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.’ 22 But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother * shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults * his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be liable to the hell * of fire.

Likewise, with adultery, he famously remarks that if you so much as look upon a woman lustfully, you have already committed adultery in your heart.

It is, shall we say, a difficult standard to live up to.

But as torture apologetics continues to lay waste to clear Catholic moral thinking among those who have, hitherto, defended human life, it proposes to us (just as abortion apologetics does) an entirely different way of thinking about sin. The goal is to lower the standard so far that *nobody* is guilty of sin.

So, for instance, the abortionist tells us to ignore the question of whether the thing we are killing is a what or a who? We are pressed, not to look at the sin which is in our heart, but at how close you can get to murder without technically doing it. First trimester? Second trimester? What *is* infanticide anyway? The bar is always moved lower.

In exactly the same way, the torture apologist seeks to see how much he can dehumanize his victim without “crossing the line” of some technical legal boundary. And so you get the spectacle of Christian theologians and philosophers suggesting things like “The fact that [KSM] went through 183 spills means that it wasn’t torture to him” as specimens of “serious and careful” deliberation on the question of torture.

Yet such serious and careful thought does not stop for one moment to realize that you may as well say of a rape victim that “the fact that she was raped a dozen times in a gang bang means that it wasn’t torture to her“. What never enters the discussion is that, in a torture situation as in a rape, it is the torturer, not the victim, who decides how many time the torture is inflicted.

The notion is based on a false idea and on a dubious assumption. The false idea is that , in cases of torture, everything “would ultimately depend on the suspect’s perception of things” If it were really torture, the argument goes, then nobody would endure it 183 times. The victim or torture opponent must therefore be liars or bleeding hearts to call the procedure “torture”. With identical logic, a member of Britain’s National Front recently remarked that “Rape is like being force fed chocolate cake.” Both sex and dunking in water are harmless and even *fun*, as millions will attest, just as millions attest that caterpillars are cute and a little loss of sleep never hurt anybody. It’s only a whiner who turns it into psychological torture by their *perception*. So the problem is really with the victim. His perception is what makes it torture. The actions of the so-called torturers, like those of the so-called rapists, are being described by purely subjective hysteria. Physically, no harm is done to either the “torture” or “rape” victims. No tissue damage. Nothing that shocks the conscience of the so-called “torturers” or “rapists”.

In short, Jesus has it all wrong. People who force waterboarding on a “victim”, like people wno force sexual relations on a “victim” are simply performing a physical act with good intentions (just ask them!). It’s only the perception of the victim that makes it “torture” or “rape”. So we should go as far as we can, but be careful not to cross the line into something truly immoral, such as using the F word.

And anybody who tells you different is just posing piously.

One thing that has struck me about all the gnat straining and camel swallowing of the sundry torture defenders I have encountered is their curious devotion to the inversion of Christian values. Over at What’s Wrong with the World there was a thrilling rhetorical flourish at one point of the discussion, in which I was berated for “pious pose and profane prose“. It really was an admirably catchy turn of phrase: sort of like “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries”. Admittedly, both flourishes are in the service of defending grave evil and ridiculing opposition to grave evil, but you have to give them props for sticking in your head–like a Kit Kat jingle.

Anyhow, it reminded me of a little exchange I had recently in my own comboxes. Zippy, remarking on the growing pattern of lies emerging from the “Torture Works” wing of the media, remarked:

The point is that the Rubber Hose Right is, well, a pack of dupes and liars when it comes to discussing the extent to which torture “works”.

To which I responded (caution, naughty word ahead):

I eagerly look forward to the latest round of fainting spells over your heart-rending “lack of charity” toward apologists for torture.

All I can think of is “Gentlemen! Fighting in the War Room!” – President Merkin Muffley, Dr. Strangelove

The bizarre priorities at work in the, ‘ow you say, Enhanced Interrogation Enablement Community are grotesque. Write “Those animals tortured that man to death” and torture defenders *still* have the gall to lie ‘Hey! Bush just defined ‘torture’ differently than you”. You get a tut-tutting scold replying, “A truly Christian person would say, “Those *gentlemen* administered approved enhanced interrogation techniques in a regrettably over-enthusiastic way. President Bush ordered what he felt was alright and you have no right to say he was wrong. I think you are very mean to him!”

If you reply, “Don’t you ever tire of telling God-damned fucking lies that insult everyone’s intelligence including yours?” the torture defender, eyes welling with tears, expresses shock and deeply spiritual dismay at your profanity (even though it’s actually more in the nature of a precise theological formulation combined with a little vulgarity just to blow off frustration).

It’s like so much of torture apologetics consists of a satanic inversion of Chesterton’s maxim: “Keep the conventions. Break the Commandments.”

As I contemplate this weird inversion of Christian morality, what also strikes me is the peculiar way in this the Sermon on the Mount gets turned on its head. Jesus’ preaching aims to kill sin at the root–in the heart. He says, for instance:

“You have heard that it was said to the men of old, ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.’ 22 But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother * shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults * his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be liable to the hell * of fire.

Likewise, with adultery, he famously remarks that if you so much as look upon a woman lustfully, you have already committed adultery in your heart.

It is, shall we say, a difficult standard to live up to.

But as torture apologetics continues to lay waste to clear Catholic moral thinking among those who have, hitherto, defended human life, it proposes to us (just as abortion apologetics does) an entirely different way of thinking about sin. The goal is to lower the standard so far that *nobody* is guilty of sin.

So, for instance, the abortionist tells us to ignore the question of whether the thing we are killing is a what or a who? We are pressed, not to look at the sin which is in our heart, but at how close you can get to murder without technically doing it. First trimester? Second trimester? What *is* infanticide anyway? The bar is always moved lower.

In exactly the same way, the torture apologist seeks to see how much he can dehumanize his victim without “crossing the line” of some technical legal boundary. And so you get the spectacle of Christian theologians and philosophers suggesting things like “The fact that [KSM] went through 183 spills means that it wasn’t torture to him” as specimens of “serious and careful” deliberation on the question of torture.

Yet such serious and careful thought does not stop for one moment to realize that you may as well say of a rape victim that “the fact that she was raped a dozen times in a gang bang means that it wasn’t torture to her“. What never enters the discussion is that, in a torture situation as in a rape, it is the torturer, not the victim, who decides how many time the torture is inflicted.

The notion is based on a false idea and on a dubious assumption. The false idea is that , in cases of torture, everything “would ultimately depend on the suspect’s perception of things” If it were really torture, the argument goes, then nobody would endure it 183 times. The victim or torture opponent must therefore be liars or bleeding hearts to call the procedure “torture”. With identical logic, a member of Britain’s National Front recently remarked that “Rape is like being force fed chocolate cake.” Both sex and dunking in water are harmless and even *fun*, as millions will attest, just as millions attest that caterpillars are cute and a little loss of sleep never hurt anybody. It’s only a whiner who turns it into psychological torture by their *perception*. So the problem is really with the victim. His perception is what makes it torture. The actions of the so-called torturers, like those of the so-called rapists, are being described by purely subjective hysteria. Physically, no harm is done to either the “torture” or “rape” victims. No tissue damage. Nothing that shocks the conscience of the so-called “torturers” or “rapists”.

In short, Jesus has it all wrong. People who force waterboarding on a “victim”, like people wno force sexual relations on a “victim” are simply performing a physical act with good intentions (just ask them!). It’s only the perception of the victim that makes it “torture” or “rape”. So we should go as far as we can, but be careful not to cross the line into something truly immoral, such as using the F word.

And anybody who tells you different is just posing piously.

The media Obasms continue.

The media Obasms continue.

For years, we were told stuff like this by the Bushies and their shills for torture in the media:

U.S. and Pakistani authorities captured KSM on March 1, 2003 in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. KSM stayed mum for months, often answering questions with Koranic chants. Interrogators eventually waterboarded him — for just 90 seconds.

KSM “didn’t resist,” one CIA veteran said in the August 13 issue of The New Yorker. “He sang right away. He cracked real quick.” Another CIA official told ABC News: “KSM lasted the longest under water-boarding, about a minute and a half, but once he broke, it never had to be used again.”

QED! Torture works!

The claim was reiterated recently:

Today, Library Tower looms 73 stories above Los Angeles. But the Pacific Coast’s highest skyscraper might have become a smoldering pile of steel beams had CIA interrogators not waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) 183 times in March 2003, as recently released memoranda reveal.

Again, the claim is reiterated that waterboarding KSM worked! It foiled the plot to bomb LA. Say what you will, but torturing KSM sure worked!

Only then, Timothy Noah noticed that this is, well, a complete and utter lie. The plot was foiled in 2002. KSM was captured in 2003.

So, turning on a dime, the pro-torture spin machine suddenly announces, “Have we , for all these years, been saying KSM was tortured to foil the bomb plot? Silly us! We meant to say that Abu Zubaydah was, well, we don’t like to say “torture”. We prefer “enhanced interrogation”. But anyway, we got him to sing like a canary on the LA bomb plot! You can absolutely trust us on that. So yes, torture works. After all, have we ever lied to you?”

Hmmm… Well, the WaPo reports something rather at variance with this new narrative from Minitrue:

In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida’s tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida — chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates — was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.

Not that torture produced *nothing*, of course. It produced quite a number of baseless fears and wild goose chases upon which we spent our limited resources:

But the decision was made to ‘torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.’ He was ‘waterboarded,’ simulating drowning. Zubaydah babbled about terrorist threats to shopping malls, nuclear power plants, supermarkets, and about al-Qaida plans to build a nuclear device. The administration sounded alerts on every unconfirmed threat. In May 2002, New York City was put on high alert over Zubaydah’s torture-incited ravings that the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty were targets. Cheney went on ‘Larry King Live’ to defend the alerts: ‘We now have a large number of people in custody, detainees, and periodically as we go through this process we learn more about the possibility of future attacks.”

Of course, the torture defender will naturally protest that this information comes from ritually impure sources and so we do not need to listen to it (these would be the same people who tell you that the release of the torture memos was bad because we don’t want to know what the Bush Administation actually authorized. In the immortal words of Peg Noonan, sometimes you have to keep walking. Some things should remain mysterious.)

One way of clearing up this controversy would be to review the tapes the CIA made of Abu Zubaydah’s torture sessions. Then we could discover for ourselves what information he gave during his 83 waterboardings and nail down the claim that tortuing him saved LA. We wouldn’t to get our info from ritually impure sources.

But golly! What do you know! The very people who assure us that torturing KSM Zubaydah saved LA happen to be also the people who destroyed the tapes of the interrogation! What a strange turn of events? What could explain it? A suspicious person might think that people who have been documented to lie repeatedly might be lying still.

But, as torture defenders constantly remind me, it is *so* important to be charitable to torture advocates, especially in the face of massive amounts of common sense. So I guess we’ll just have to go on assuming that torture works. After all, the torturers and their authorizers say so. And what possible interest could they have in lying if it didn’t?