My contribution to the discussion on why this is an important issue.

Sorry I haven’t been able to post on this thread, but I’ve read it. Busy weekend. A few points.

1. Definition: Again, like the famous Supreme court justice on porn: it’s hard to define but you can know it when you see it. We have lots of things like this in life. We are still able to make adjustments and procedures. Those who water boarded didn’t hook up car batteries or break fingers or …

2. Perspective: We have a lot of experience with prisons and fair treatment of suspects. One way to ask the question is “would we allow state and local officials the same procedures?” Would we let a kidnapping or molestation or racketeering suspect be water boarded? How about threatening his family? How about breaking fingers or smashing is face or dangling him over a pit of snakes or threatening to turn him or her over to enemies? Is it OK to use sexual means and threats to try to get information out of someone? How about food? sleep?

There are limits of course. You don’t have to make prison a fine hotel but there are also reasonable levels of expectations. Sure there are cultural elements to this but again it isn’t impossible to do.

There are reasons we don’t do these things, good reasons. It protects the people we ask to keep us safe in many ways. If you know that the cops are going to do these kind of things it heightens the stakes in ever the most basic exchanges.

Would the Iraqies who surrendered so quickly in the Iraq wars have done so if they hadn’t had a reasonable hunch that they would receive better treatment from us than their own regime?

the rule of law affords a reasonable person to imagine a fairly predictable process by which they are invited to do reasonable things even if they are not pleasant or chosen.

If you live in a place without the rule of law you start contemplating other options, ugly ones even for routine encounters with the government. Violence, bribery, bargaining, etc. all come into play. We have established systems because we know how things devolve without them. It’s very tempting when we’re scared to devolve but it is exactly in those moments that we must as a community remind each other what our past has taught us.

3. Moral harm. There is such a things as moral harm. The tortured and the torturer are harmed in the process. Systems then grow to harm all parties. Would you want your children going into the military, intelligence or police if you knew they would be trained in waterboarding or finger breaking or whatever? No, you want good people in these professions, people with self-control because systems require not just a person with fear but a person with character to let the system work. These practices undermine a person’s ability to operate in these circumstances.

4. Even though the report came from one side of the aisle it is not automatically compromised. The theory behind divided government is in fact to allow such things to happen. Are we upset that Republicans mostly alone champion pro-life reports? This report gave voice to what has been a grumble and a concern. I understand the executive’s reluctance. They want to protect their people and that is a legitimate concern, but this is a very important issue.

There’s a meme going around with a picture of 9/11 and the caption “I don’t give a shit how they get info from terrorists”.

This mentality is too a slippery slope. The minute we declare that terrorists are no longer people we are in the land where all kinds of other enemies are no longer image bearers. We forget what ‘we battle not against flesh and blood” is supposed to adjust how we think about our neighbors. It is a cousin to “well if that guy hadn’t stolen those cigars he’d be alive today.” True, but how many people wouldn’t be alive today if they hadn’t learned to drive.

The values we try to preserve even as a secular nation (listen to McCain’s speech) keep us from devolving into simply tribalism. What will Democrats or Republicans be able to justify as legitimate against the other group.

Here are some links to some of what I’ve read https://paulvanderklay.wordpress.com/2014/12/11/senate-torture-report/

There’s more obviously. This is really basic and important stuff that in our fears we forget and as with most things involving fears we need each other, even often our adversaries and enemies to remind us of them.