IT'S TIME TO RETHINK THE "TICKING TIME BOMB" TORTURE THEORY

...A real "Ticking Time Bomb"

"The issues and the discussion of America using torture are getting totally out of hand."

It´s now time for everyone to stop yelling about whether "enhanced interrogation" works or does not work. They should instead be asking some important questions about how and why the rule changes on "torture" were originally requested in the first place.

First, as we have been saying for years and now President Obama has re-established, "America does not torture". It has been that way since General George Washington made that decision during the American Revolutionary War, and since then we have convicted and put individuals to death for using torture during World War II.

There is no doubt that today the "ticking time bomb" scenario, currently referred to as TV´s "24-Jack Bauer strategy" have brought up the cable-TV answers for: "what do we do if there is a detainee that knows where a ticking nuclear bomb device is hidden inside the country and the good-guys need to find out right now?"

And in addition, there is now all the talk about what the attitude and the situation was in the country right after the 9/11 attacks. This was when, regardless of what the rules were, we had decided that we would do whatever it took to find the "bad guys" to prevent another attack. It would also allow America to get back at them in the same way.

If you listen to the conservative Op-Ed writers like Charles Krauthammer, what Bush / Cheney & Company did in re-writing America´s torture rule book was perfectly proper. He apparently feels that we should just chuck all that we have stood for as a "nation of laws and values" and look at the "ticking time bomb scenario" as what should be America´s future interrogation strategies.

In other words, let´s just ignore that it sends the world the message that America is no longer a civilized nation. Also, that by torturing we give the insurgents their best-ever insurgent recruitment tool. And let´s forget that the real potential of a "ticking time bomb scenario" is an extremely far-fetched concept that is more appropriate for a TV action drama than in today´s real life.

Yes, as more countries become "nuclear", that potential scenario becomes more of a possibility. However, 99.9% of all of today´s federal interrogations have nothing to do with this scenario. So why should it be part of America´s total interrogation program?

And let´s not forget, that in today´s "time bomb" scenario, the President of the United States has the power to change the rules on a case-by-case / as needed basis, should that situation ever avail itself in the future.

In other words, one needs not to re-write the whole rule book and re-define the definition of torture in order to deal with this potentially rare situation for interrogations.

In addition, as to the questions I mentioned earlier, we are now needing to seriously confirm just why Bush, and more likely Mr. Cheney, did feel the need to tell the lawyers in their Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) to write the memos that would change the definition of torture and would subsequently allow the development of the so called, "enhanced interrogations"….?

Based on all the recent TV interviews of the former vice president, it is now appearing more and more that he is mainly just trying to "cover his ass" for making the vastly mistaken decision that made US torture, "OK".

It also appears that instead of looking for "ticking time bombs", and based on the timing of the memos, Cheney and his boss were using the new torture "rule changes" mainly in order to force any terrorist they could find into admitting that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. This would, of course, have given the administration the solid proof they needed in order to justify their eventual attack on Iraq.

Unfortunately for Mr. Cheney, the one terrorist and al Qaeda chief, Ali Mohamed Abdelaziz al Fakhiri, that was "waterboarded" to where he finally and falsely admitted to that lie, eventually recanted this statement and he "apparently and conveniently" recently seems to have committed suicide while in a Libyan jail.

It therefore now appears less and less obvious that the torture rules changes were requested for dealing with the problem of having an immediate threat to the country.

They were instead needed in order to obtain the justification for an unnecessary invasion of a sovereign nation, the loss of thousands of Iraqi and American lives, the loss of America´s world reputation for fairness and for approving the continuing cost of now Trillions of American tax payer dollars.

And for more outside justification for stopping the use of torture, when we look at the most attacked country on the globe, Israel, even their Supreme Court in 1999 revoked their 1987 interrogation guidelines as being "unconscionably harsh". If a country that has continually experienced insurgent Muslim suicide bombings agrees that harsh torture does not work, who is the United States to question that logic?

The conservatives such as Mr. Krauthammer continue to use the, "Remember how everyone felt after the 9/11 attacks," scenario. And I admit that at the time, I too wanted revenge and wanted to strike back. And I also know that the Bush Administration continually used the 9/11 attacks for the following years in order to "scare the hell out of the country" so that he and his cronies could win another term in office.

But today, the people have since reawakened and have become alarmingly aware how much damage this past administration had done to the country and they now understand that it will take decades to repair.

I personally do hope that former vice president Cheney keeps going on TV and that he continues to talk, and talk, and talk. Every time he opens his mouth, he seems to dig his hole even deeper and he keeps reminding us why the country made a needed change and why we still need further investigations before we can move on.

America must continue to be the beacon of light to the world and it must stay with its laws and values. As the old saying goes, "Dance with the one that brung you," and this seriously rings true for America today.

The country cannot go against what made America the "greatest nation on earth" by putting aside our founder´s original focus on the honest pursuit of life and liberty for all.

Copyright G.Ater 2009

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