Lies, Damned Lies, and The Rule of Law

From the Rude Pundit:

When O'Reilly asked Bush about defining torture, Bush got all pissy once again: "We don't talk about techniques. And the reason we don't talk about techniques is because we don't want the enemy to be able to adjust. We're in a war...one thing is that you can rest assured we're not going to talk about the techniques we use in a public forum. No matter how hard you try because I don't want the enemy to be able to adjust their tactics if we capture them on the battlefield." Motherfucker sticks to a talking point like a barnacle sticks to a whale.

Yeah, torture is a "technique." Revealing to terrorists that you use it will change their tactics . . . to, um, avoiding torture. Or wait, avoiding capture. Or, killing more people. Or . . . organizing around the fact that you -- a modern liberal democracy -- have legalized torture. There it is.

But the really sick part is how the Geneva Conventions are, per Alberto Gonzales, not applicable to people we don't want them to apply to. It's really not about the principle that torture, inhuman(e) treatment, cruelty, are wrong, and, as our friend Joe Lieberman helpfully notes, unjust. No, fighting a just war justly includes, apparently, the legal, systematic, institutional(ized) use of torture. Thinking otherwise is, per Joe and Alberto, "quaint" at best, and unjust at worst. Just dead wrong.

And we haven't even mentioned habeas corpus. Thomas Jefferson is rolling in his grave. I hope.