April 19, 2009, It takes a village
Back from a fortnight's holiday visiting with dear friends, and ready for action... well, back anyway. And what did we miss?
We'll try to spare each other the more obvious, such as the bleakonomic news, and move on to really happy stuff... like...
The White House press secretary laughing it up with the White House press corps over... torture. Absolutely hilarious... the equivalent of a fraternity prank, perhaps?
Look: I know there are others who will provide more useful analysis of the whole torture memo thing... so I'll get right to it. What got me most among the 100 pages of clinical legal reasoning (of the kind I look at for a living, though not, of course, on the subject of torture of human beings) were the blithe suggestions (by Judge Jay Bybee and his ghost-writer Professor John Yoo) of the possibility of introducing "harmless, cute little caterpillars" into a coffin-sized confinement space and representing to the torturee that it was a stinging, poisonous insect... does this:
1) attention grasp, (2) walling, (3) facial hold, (4) facial slap (insult slap), (5) cramped confinement, (6) wall standing, (7) stress positions, (8) sleep deprivation, (9) insects placed in a confinement box, and (10) the waterboard.
To be more specific:
You would like to place Zubaydah in a cramped confinement with an insect. You have informed us that he appears to have a fear of insects. In particular, you would like to tell Zubaydah that you intend to place a stinging insect into the box with him. You would, however, place a harmless insect in the box. You have orally informed us that you would in fact place a harmless insect in the box. You have orally informed us that you would in fact place a harmless insect such as a caterpillar in the box with him.
Does this just happen to remind anyone of this(?): Oh, I'll just give you the whole God damned chapter:
NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOURGeorge Orwell
Chapter 23
At each stage of his imprisonment he had known, or seemed to know, whereabouts he was in the windowless building. Possibly there were slight differences in the air pressure. The cells where the guards had beaten him were below ground level. The room where he had been interrogated by O'Brien was high up near the roof. This place was many metres underground, as deep down as it was possible to go.
It was bigger than most of the cells he had been in. But he hardly noticed his surroundings. All he noticed was that there were two small tables straight in front of him, each covered with green baize. One was only a metre or two from him, the other was further away, near the door. He was strapped upright in a chair, so tightly that he could move nothing, not even his head. A sort of pad gripped his head from behind, forcing him to look straight in front of him.
For a moment he was alone, then the door opened and O'Brien came in.
" You asked me once ", said O'Brien, " what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world."
The door opened again. A guard came in, carrying something made of wire, a box or basket of some kind. He set it down on the further table. Because of the position in which O'Brien was standing. Winston could not see what the thing was.
" The worst thing in the world ", said O'Brien, " varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal."
He had moved a little to one side, so that Winston had a better view of the thing on the table. It was an oblong wire cage with a handle on top for carrying it by. Fixed to the front of it was something that looked like a fencing mask, with the concave side outwards. Although it was three or four metres away from him, he could see that the cage was divided lengthways into two compartments, and that there was some kind of creature in each. They were rats.
" In your case ", said O'Brien, " the worst thing in the world happens to be rats."
A sort of premonitory tremor, a fear of he was not certain what, had passed through Winston as soon as he caught his first glimpse of the cage. But at this moment the meaning of the mask-like attachment in front of it suddenly sank into him. His bowels seemed to turn to water.
" You can't do that ! " he cried out in a high cracked voice. " You couldn't, you couldn't ! It's impossible."
" Do you remember ", said O'Brien, " the moment of panic that used to occur in your dreams ? There was a wall of blackness in front of you, and a roaring sound in your ears. There was something terrible on the other side of the wall. You knew that you knew what it was, but you dared not drag it into the open. It was the rats that were on the other side of the wall."
" O'Brien ! " said Winston, making an effort to control his voice. " You know this is not necessary. What is it that you want me to do ? "
O'Brien made no direct answer. When he spoke it was in the schoolmasterish manner that he sometimes affected. He looked thoughtfully into the distance, as though he were addressing an audience somewhere behind Winston's back.
" By itself ", he said, " pain is not always enough. There are occasions when a human being will stand out against pain, even to the point of death. But for everyone there is something unendurable - something that cannot be contemplated. Courage and cowardice are not involved. If you are falling from a height it is not cowardly to clutch at a rope. If you have come up from deep water it is not cowardly to fill your lungs with air. It is merely an instinct which cannot be destroyed. It is the same with the rats. For you, they are unendurable. They are a form of pressure that you cannot withstand. even if you wished to. You will do what is required of you.
" But what is it, what is it ? How can I do it if I don't know what it is ?"
O'Brien picked up the cage and brought it across to the nearer table. He set it down carefully on the baize cloth. Winston could hear the blood singing in his ears. He had the feeling of sitting in utter loneliness. He was in the middle of a great empty plain, a flat desert drenched with sunlight, across which all sounds came to him out of immense distances. Yet the cage with the rats was not two metres away from him. They were enormous rats. They were at the age when a rat's muzzle grows blunt and fierce and his fur brown instead of grey.
" The rat ", said O'Brien, still addressing his invisible audience, " although a rodent, is carnivorous. You are aware of that. You will have heard of the things that happen in the poor quarters of this town. In some streets a woman dare not leave her baby alone in the house, even for five minutes. The rats are certain to attack it. Within quite a small time they will strip it to the bones. They also attack sick or dying people. They show astonishing intelligence in knowing when a human being is helpless."
There was an outburst of squeals from the cage. It seemed to reach Winston from far away. The rats were fighting ; they were trying to get at each other through the partition. He heard also a deep groan of despair. That, too, seemed to come from outside himself.
O'Brien picked up the cage, and, as he did so, pressed something in it. There was a sharp click. Winston made a frantic effort to tear himself loose from the chair. It was hopeless; every part of him, even his head, was held immovably. O'Brien moved the cage nearer. It was less than a metre from Winston's face.
" I have pressed the first lever ", said O'Brien. " You understand the construction of this cage. The mask will fit over your head, leaving no exit. When I press this other lever, the door of the cage will slide up. These starving brutes will shoot out of it like bullets. Have you ever seen a rat leap through the air ? They will leap on to your face and bore straight into it. Sometimes they attack the eyes first. Sometimes they burrow through the cheeks and devour the tongue."
The cage was nearer ; it was closing in. Winston heard a succession of shrill cries which appeared to be occurring in the air above his head. But he fought furiously against his panic. To think, to think, even with a split second left - to think was the only hope. Suddenly the foul musty odour of the brutes struck his nostrils. There was a violent convulsion of nausea inside him, and he almost lost consciousness. Everything had gone black. For an instant he was insane, a screaming animal. Yet he came out of the blackness clutching an idea. There was one and only one way to save himself. He must interpose another human being, the body of another human being, between himself and the rats.
The circle of the mask was large enough now to shut out the vision of anything else. The wire door was a couple of hand-spans from his face. The rats knew what was coming now. One of them was leaping up and down, the other, an old scaly grandfather of the sewers, stood up, with his pink hands against the bars, and fiercely sniffed the air. Winston could see the whiskers and the yellow teeth. Again the black panic took hold of him. He was blind, helpless, mindless.
" It was a common punishment in Imperial China ", said O'Brien as didactically as ever.
The mask was closing on his face. The wire brushed his cheek. And then - no, it was not relief, only hope, a tiny fragment of hope. Too late, perhaps too late. But he had suddenly understood that in the whole world there was just one person to whom he could transfer his punishment - one body that he could thrust between himself and the rats. And he was shouting frantically, over and over.
" Do it to Julia ! Do it to Julia ! Not me ! Julia ! I don't care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me ! Julia ! Not me ! "
He was falling backwards, into enormous depths, away from the rats. He was still strapped in the chair, but he had fallen through the floor, through the walls of the building, through the earth, through the oceans, through the atmosphere, into outer space, into the gulfs between the stars - always away, away, away from the rats. He was light years distant, but O'Brien was still standing at his side. There was still the cold touch of wire against his cheek. But through the darkness that enveloped him he heard another metallic click, and knew that the cage door had clicked shut and not open.
part 3 chapter 6
We have the Government we deserve, people. If they talked about it, they did it; we have no reason to believe otherwise. And why not? The whole bloody thing was just a demonstration project to show that they could do it, and get away with it. And now, the exclamation point is that my own college classmate The President, in the interest of demonstrating his commitment to the Grand and Holy Corporation that Owns Us All, is providing the "get away with it" part. Are we going to stand for this?
Are we? For those who believe in immortal souls... that's about the only thing on the line... no big deal...
Comments
As I read Obama's statement (I did not hear it) he said he was not going after the interrogators but said nothing about the people who planned and authorized. Maybe that is just how I wanted to read it?
Posted by candace at April 19, 2009 2:42 PM
Candace - Rahm Emanuel said that Obama believes those who designed the torture policy shoud not be prosecuted either. He said this today on This Week with George Stephanopolis
Posted by Bonnie Tamres-Moore at April 20, 2009 1:22 AM
Well, he has backtracked some on that since then. But he's leaving it in the hands of the AG. And although I think that's where it should be, he's certainly not encouraging the AG to go ahead.
He seems to hold FDR's "make me do it" advice a little too close to his heart for my taste.
Posted by Michael L at April 22, 2009 10:17 AM