Kathleen Parker: Apologist for Torture

Who is Kathleen Parker and why should we care?

I only know Ms. Parker by having on occasion read her widely-syndicated newspaper columns. Apparently she's quite famous and well-regarded - especially in more conservative circles - having won the H.L. Mencken Writing Award back in 1993.

Opinion-shapers like her, with an audience of millions of fans, are especially dangerous when they express ideas which ought to be (and can easily be) decisively refuted, but aren't. Hence my effort today: To repudiate one of her recent columns.

Introductory Comment

All quotes appearing below, minus those specifically attributed to someone else, are from Parker's column which appeared in the Chicago Tribune on May 18, 2009:

Quotes and Comments

Quote:

Yet, there we were, an attorney and I, poring over memos about waterboarding as if they were weekend real estate ads.

Comment:

I'm going out on a limb here, since nowhere in her pitiful little essay does she identify this "attorney:" I believe this "attorney" is her husband. I also believe she kept this fact to herself for two good reasons:

• To lend gravitas to her words: It sounds better to say "an attorney," than to say "I ran this by my husband, who happens to be an attorney." Sounds to me like she was too lazy to be bothered with trying to obtain more than one opinion (kind of like Dubya himself).

• If I were this unnamed attorney, there's no way I'd want my good name and reputation attached to this column if, for no other reason, its brevity. Way too short, at less than 800 words, to allow for any in-depth analysis.

QUOTE:

It is easy now to declare that waterboarding is torture.

COMMENT:

And it was just as easy then, when Bybee et al [rubber-stampingly] approved waterboarding as a legal option.

Of course, Parker is trying to say that the emotional climate now makes it easier "to declare that waterboarding is torture," compared to the time when Bybee & Co. wrote their memo. Back then, of course, we "had" to give the CIA any and every imaginable tool to coerce their prisoners into revealing when and where the next hijacked airliner was going to crash into a famous American landmark.

But...there's a problem with this emotional climate argument. Bybee et al had been asked to render a legal opinion, not an emotional one. They were asked "to interpret whether 10 interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, would violate the 1994 statute prohibiting torture." All Team Bybee had to do was interpret the law; I don't recall that they had been subjected to torture or had been so emotionally traumatized as to pervert their judgment.

If so, whatever happened to the cool, aloof, "just-the-facts ma'am" legal professional?

QUOTE:

Keep in mind: Terrorist chatter at the time was comparable to pre-Sept. 11 levels. And the CIA had determined that Zubaida had crucial information about another attack.

COMMENT:

So, there it is - the underpinning of her entire essay: Ms. Parker is telling us to "Keep [certain factors] in mind." That's what makes the difference in certain actions being legal, when ordinarily not so. Again, what has the situation on the ground have to do with whether or not that 1994 statute was meant to forbid (among other techniques) waterboarding? The last time I checked, statutes don't include language like this:

"Certain practical matters must be kept in mind when determining whether or not an interrogation technique qualifies as torture."

That smacks too much of the moral relativism which conservatives are supposed to oppose. [Kathleen, is any of this getting through to you?]

QUOTE:

It [the 1994 statute prohibiting torture] defines torture as inflicting pain that is "difficult to endure" and that is "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

COMMENT:

Torture may be defined as inflicting pain that is "difficult to endure" [I'd say it's difficult to endure the sensation of drowning; the sensation you're about to lose your life] and that is "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury..."

Ah, "serious physical injury," you say? Does that mean it's okay for our agents to shove bamboo splinters under a prisoner's fingernails? That surely must be okay, since there's no "serious physical injury," certainly not even remotely approaching actual organ failure or impairment of bodily function.

As for "impairment of bodily function": Wouldn't you agree that it's an "impairment of bodily function" to interfere with breathing? How about not allowing a prisoner to take a crap? No one's talked about that, but you may be very sure that our guards weren't always very quick to allow a shackled prisoner to defecate when needed. Of course such a guard could always claim: "Hey, I never touched him." [Yeah, right!]

I have to ask a crucial question here: Why should any agent of the US be permitted to inflict any kind or degree of pain on any prisoner under his control? Don't forget: A prisoner is a helpless human being totally at the mercy of his guards.

As soon as we allow for even the possibility of inflicting pain on the helpless, then we open ugly doors: How much pain and under what circumstances?

Why don't we extend this permission to inflict pain to those who are guarding felons in county jails all over the country? As long as it's not severe enough to be called torture, why not allow for the systematic infliction of pain? That would certainly deter any criminal from ever wanting to return to prison. Of course, such a criminal might kill someone to avoid returning to prison, knowing that a daily dose of [what, in someone else's opinion, is] reasonably tolerable pain awaits him.

Such a killing would be seen simply as one prisoner's over-reaction, now wouldn't it? But then, it's not unusual to overreact, is it? When are we going to start being better people by not overreacting and not condoning overreaction?

QUOTE:

The Japanese forced water into the prisoner's nose and mouth. In our own version, the prisoner's mouth and nose are covered with a cloth that is saturated with water for no more than 20-40 seconds in a controlled manner. No water enters the lungs.

COMMENT:

It seems Parker is now talking about degrees of abusing prisoners, which (in her view) fall short of torture.

"20-40 seconds," you say? But who's counting and how? Stopwatch, anyone? Naw, let's just count it out: one (pause), two (pause), three (yawn and yawn again), four (time to take a drag out of my cigarette), fiiiiivvvvveeeee...(well, you get the idea).

"In a controlled manner," you say? Are we talking about the rate of water flow? Or the angle at which the waterboard is tilted? Is it okay to punch the guy in the stomach first? Ooph..out goes all the air. Okay, start pouring the water.

How thick is the cloth being used? Or could that be so thin there might as well not even be a cloth?

"No water enters the lungs." Says who? Or maybe Parker meant to say, "No appreciable amount of water enters the lungs." [The Buddha warned about people who cheat others with measures and scales. Could those be the scales of perverted justice?]

QUOTE:

Moreover, the same technique [waterboarding] is used to train our own military personnel, who do not suffer severe physical pain or prolonged mental harm.

COMMENT:

And how, Kathleen Parker, do you know this? Of course, when you say "the same technique," you don't say anything about frequency. Ah, yes. Nothing in your sorry essay says anything about frequency, and I doubt Bybee addressed that in his memo either. How could he, for then he might have to conclude that "too often" constitutes torture? And he didn't want to go there.

I wonder how Bybee might answer this question: Would you consider Chinese Water Torture to be barred under the 1994 statute? [In that case, "too often" (drip, drip, drip) is exactly the point.]

As events have revealed, frequency was indeed an important consideration - at least in the field:

QUOTE [from: Waterboarding Used 266 Times on 2 Suspects]:

The CIA officers used waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002 against Abu Zubaydah, according to a 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum.

The 2005 memo also says that the CIA used waterboarding 183 times in March 2003 against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

A footnote to another 2005 Justice Department memo released Thursday said waterboarding was used both more frequently and with a greater volume of water than the CIA rules permitted.

:UNQUOTE [The New York Times, 4/19/09, Scott Shane]

The hell, you say: "...used both more frequently and with a greater volume of water than the CIA rules permitted"...??? So much for the "controlled manner" praised by Ms. Parker. And since CIA rules were violated, I'm sure Kathleen Parker would be the first in line to insist that these violators be punished. [Yeah, right!]

QUOTE:

Even if Bybee and Yoo were wrong, their error doesn't rise to the level of an ethical offense, much less a war crime. Under the Justice Department's own standards, an ethical issue would arise only if their opinion was so obviously wrong that no reasonable lawyer could possibly reach the same conclusion.

COMMENT:

So that's the standard, eh? All Kathleen Parker has to do is find one single solitary "reasonable" lawyer to go along with Bybee's nonsense in order to exonerate his abuse of the public's trust? Maybe she's found one: her husband, attorney-at-law. I wonder how he stands versus the opinion of the following gentleman:

"Yale law school Dean...Harold Koh called [Bybee's memo] ‘perhaps the most clearly erroneous legal opinion I have ever read'"...[source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bybee_memo#Criticism ]

Bybee and Yoo were wrong and they surely knew this when setting pen to paper. They both worked for a White House which was quite intolerant of dissent, so they knew exactly what kind of opinion they were expected to render.

In Bybee's case, he was richly rewarded by President Bush with a lifetime appointment to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. I call that "corruption" at best, fruits of a "war crime" at worst. [Yes, I'll call it a war crime.] The cynical, though, would wink and nod and say, "Not a bad day's pay indeed."

Yes, I think Bybee should be impeached and imprisoned, for he enabled torture. Guys out in the field could use his legal opinion as a shield against criminal prosecution, which was the whole idea in the first place. An idea which Blaque Obammer* is sustaining by disallowing prosecutions of those who thought they were "just following [lawful] orders." [Ignorance of the law is now a permissible excuse, especially when the torturer can say he had a lawyer's permission to proceed.]

QUOTE:

In testimony before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, law professor Michael Paulsen predicted that "presidents and administrations of both parties will not obtain candid, vigorous legal advice reflecting the full range of views, on sensitive matters of war, foreign affairs and national security."

COMMENT:

The only kind of legal advice that's important is accurate legal advice. Advice cannot be "candid," when it is requested by a President who expects certain answers. As for advice being "vigorous," what the hell could that possibly mean? I will accept accurate over vigorous any time.

QUOTE:

America's enemies could hope for no more.

COMMENT:

No, Kathleen Parker, I'll tell you what America's enemies could hope for more of:

• Presidents who intimidate their legal counselors into rendering indefensible, inaccurate, and politically expedient opinions.

• Syndicated columnists who don't rise up and say, "America must stop torturing."

Steven Searle (was) a candidate for U.S. President in 2008:

"Frankly, it was a tortuous experience for me to ponder the import of Kathleen Parker's hideous, small-minded essay. Worst of all? Realizing there are untold thousands of yahoos out in Numb-Numb land who are applauding her, not realizing what it's doing to the country they pretend to love" - Steve.

Founder of The Best Party Available

Contact me: bpa_cinc@yahoo.com

* The following essay explains why I refer to him as "Blacque Obammer": http://bpa-cinc.gaia.com/blog/2008/12/why_blacque_obammer

Open Invitation: I hereby waive all copyright protection for any material I've posted on Zaadz/Gaia with these exceptions: I reserve the right to disseminate this material, claim authorship credit for it and any compensation I can negotiate. However, if anyone wishes to use these essays, they are free to do so. I do not require that advance permission be obtained, that I be paid any royalties, or that I receive author's credit or even be notified of intent to use. I truly want anyone "out there" to feel free to use these essays, in original or modified form, for whatever purposes they deem worthy.