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Electronic Politics Asks: “What Is Torture?”

By SusanUnPC on November 17, 2007 at 2:27 PM in Torture, Valerie Plame Wilson

George Kenney has some strong opinions on torture — and the dirth of discussion in the MSM:

[I]t seems to me that it’s newsworthy when a person in that position [Manfred Nowak, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture] says (1) waterboarding is unequivocally torture and (2) that U.S. officials must be held to account by international courts — specifically, that it was a good thing for several groups to have pursued Rumsfeld on his recent trip to Paris but that French jurists dropped the ball by not indicting him. Nowak goes further, generalizing about the use of torture as practiced by authoritarian/dictatorial regimes, brings in some historical discussion, and talks about the optimistic trend he sees, internationally, against torture.

Frankly, it’s a disgrace that the mainstream media has not been talking to Nowak about his views.

Kenney’s fine radio program, Electronic Politics, did an exceptional in-depth discussion yesterday on the root questions surrounding torture:

What Is Torture?
“Give me Liberty or give me Death.” To put this famous saying attributed to Patrick Henry somewhat differently, we easily recognize that death is not the worst thing that can happen to us. Indeed, there seems a large class of worse circumstances, though we generally don’t categorize them or, perhaps more importantly, often lack adequate language to describe them. Worse than death: it’s a subtle difference that doesn’t lend itself to formulation in terms of rules. Perhaps that’s why, when we find such rules, we elevate them to preeminent positions in international law. Here, I talk with Manfred Nowak, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, to get a better sense of what the world is thinking, and doing, about a most peculiar abomination. And, no, the U.S. is not off the hook. It was extremely generous of Prof. Nowak to take time to talk with me, for which I’m most grateful. Please pay close attention and help redistribute widely. Total runtime an hour and eight minutes. (PODCAST / DOWNLOAD)

Yes, it was George who did the exceptional audio for Larry’s interview of Valerie Plame Wilson.