Abu Ghraib and the ticking bomb

It seems that we will soon be able to see and ponder the full horrors of what occurred at Abu Ghraib, including instances of rape and murder, further diminishing our already greatly diminished moral position in the world.

Uh, oh, I find myself agreeing with crazy Chris Hitchens.

Yes, but what about the ticking bomb? Listen: There's always going to be a ticking bomb somewhere. Some of these will go off, and it's just as likely to be in my part of Washington, D.C., as anywhere else. But we shall be fighting a war against jihad for decades to come. And the jihadists will continue to make big mistakes based on their mad theory. And they are not superhuman: They can be infiltrated, bribed, and turned. You don't have to tell them what time of day it is, or where they are, or when the next meal will be served. (Though it must be served.) But you must not bring in that pig or that electrode. That way lies madness and corruption and the extraction of junk confessions. So even if law and principle didn't enter into the question, we sure as hell know what doesn't work. The cranky Puritan voice of Sir Edmund Compton comes back to me down the corridor of the years: If it gives anyone pleasure, then you are doing it wrong and doing wrong into the bargain.

I think Hitch is right. The brutal nature of what went on at Abu Ghraib appears to have stemmed from interrogation techniques at Guantanamo that may (or may not) have had some limited success. Then, when things began to go out of control in Iraq, Rumsfeld on up made the decision to transfer some of those techniques to Iraq under the notion that extracting information, regardless of how, may save a soldier's life. The argument that torture is indefensible unless a bomb is about to go off somewhere -- the ticking bomb -- comes into play.

The trouble with that argument is, as Hitchens notes, bombs are ticking everywhere. We cannot battle the madmen who are building those bombs by becoming madmen ourselves. We cannot accept brutal interrogation methods any more than we should accept this administration's careless disregard for the Bill of Rights (except that precious second amendment). Even Andrew Sullivan agrees, how we win the war in Iraq is as important as winning it. How we conduct our wider battles -- militarily and legally -- against Islamofascism is equally important. I would argue that we're not conducting it very well, as the Padilla case certainly demonstrates, where fear of terrorists (and a hunger for publicity), led DoJ to disregard a U.S. citizen's Constitutional rights (Scott Turow has some important things to say about that "case").

This will become even clearer when details emerge -- and I'm sure they will -- how far afield Ashcroft's DoJ has been using provisions of the Patriot Act for criminal investigations that have absolutely nothing to do with terrorist acts.