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Brian Gilmore is a poet and public interest attorney and contributing writer with Ebony-Jet Online.
He is also a columnist with the Progressive Media Project.
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| Torture III: Chicago's Lesson |
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The debate over torture has now deteriorated into verbal banter about whether the torturing yielded good information. Dick Cheney is leading that contingent. They also believe national security has been compromised because torture is no longer allowed (this is the suggestion). This is suspect. The U.S., according to the facts, did not torture for decades, and never was the country attacked during this period. So if torturing people was the key to our security, why weren't we using it years before the Iraq war? The debate about obtaining useful information is bankrupt as well. Anyone who believes torture provides good information probably believes that starving children will make them behave better. Chicago provides the best case against torture. For decades, one small segment of the Chicago police department tortured. This part of the department obtained a lot of coerced and false confessions. People wound up on death row because they were beaten and they confessed to crimes they didn't commit. Electrocution of the genitals was one of their alleged tactics (sorry, no waterboarding occurred as far as we know). Eventually the dirty truth was revealed, and then Governor George Ryan made a good attempt at making things right. But the damage was done. Lives were lost, time was lost, and torture was revealed as evil and immoral. It is. The city is thinking of prosecuting the torturers. The Obama administration wants to turn the page on U.S. torture and let it all go. As Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Senator noted today, he wants to turn the page too right after he reads the page first.
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We all know torturing was hardly the magic bullet that kept the country safe and considering we aren't going to torture (so we have been told), it no longer matters. Torture, in this instant, was all about revenge for 9-11, hatred.