More essential reading: Susan Sontag has Sunday’s cover story of The New We cited Rummy boy’s circumlocutions for the T-word: the “terrible activities”<\/I> for We are glad to see Sontag’s thoughtful, elegant essay as a follow-up, beginning with her She then goes on in the third paragraph of her thoughtful, elegant essay to our duck analogy, And in her fourth graph, Sontag notes:<\/P>
\nYork Times Magazine. It’s a thoughtful, elegant essay called “The Photographs Are
\nUs.”<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> Here’s a reminder that at Straight Up, blogged on
\nthe fly (on the gadfly?) — we sometimes log on while still rubbing sleep from our eyes — our
\ntiming seems right even if it somehow keeps us from writing long, considered essays.
\n
In “The Duck in the
\nRoom”<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> (May 7), we wrote:<\/P>
\nThe T-word — “torture” — was studiously avoided by all in more than three
\nhours of the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Treatment of Prisoners in Iraq.
\nExcept, that is, for Sen. Edward Kennedy, who forthrightly spoke of “torture and abuse.” The
\nclosest Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld came to using the T-word was when he said
\ncompensation might be made to Iraqi prisoners who suffered “grievous and brutal abuse and
\ncruelty.” By any other name that’s “torture.” The old rule applies: If it walks like a duck, talks like
\na duck, looks like a duck, etc.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n
\nwhich, he said, “I feel terrible” as he offered his “deepest apology to Iraqis who were
\nmistreated<\/I>.” And the way Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, barely
\nskirted the word torture — but skirt it he did — by calling it “prisoner abuse”<\/I> that was
\n“appalling, unconscionable and unacceptable.”<\/I> And the way Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, deputy
\ncommander of the U.S. Central Command in Iraq, substituted the word “mistreatment.”<\/I>
\nAnd Lee Brownlee, Acting Secretary of the Army, applying the term “detainee abuse”<\/I>
\nthat was, alas, “tragic and disappointing.”<\/I> And Gen. Peter Schoomaker, Army Chief of
\nStaff, offering the summary that it was, not systemic and certainly not torture, but rather the
\n“inexcusable behavior of a few.”<\/EM> [The italics are ours.]<\/P>
\n
\nsecond paragraph: <\/P>
\nThe Bush administration and its defenders have chiefly sought to limit a
\npublic-relations disaster — the dissemination of the photographs [from Abu Ghraib] — rather than
\ndeal with the complex crimes of leadership and policy revealed by the pictures. … There was also
\nthe avoidance of the word “torture.” The prisoners had possibly been the objects of “abuse,”
\neventually of “humiliation” — that was the most to be admitted.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n
\nciting “the definitions of torture contained in a convention to which the United states is a
\nsignatory: “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is
\nintentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person
\ninformation or a confession.”<\/I> [The italics are hers.]<\/P>
\n
\nWhatever actions this administration undertakes to limit the damage of the
\nwidening revelations of the torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere … it is probable that
\nthe “torture” word will continue to be banned. To acknowledge that Americans torture their
\nprisoners would contradict everything this administration has invited the public to believe about
\nthe virtue of American intentions and America’s right, flowing from that virtue, to undertake
\nunilateral action on the world stage.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n