Molly Ivins

Some Kind
of Manly
Bush administration, dead to
morality, says torture is the American way

by Molly
Ivins

Austin,
Texas -- I
can't get over this feeling of unreality, that I am actually sitting here
writing about our country having a gulag of secret prisons in which it
tortures people. I have loved
America all
my life, even though I have often disagreed with the government. But this
seems to me so preposterous, so monstrous. My mind is a little bent and my
heart is a little broken this morning.

Maybe I should try to get a
grip -- after all, it's just this one administration that I had more cause
than most to realize was full of inadequate people going in. And even at
that, it seems to be mostly Vice President Cheney. And after all, we were
badly frightened by 9-11, which was a horrible event. "Only" nine senators
voted against the prohibition of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment of persons under custody or control the
United
States." Nine out of
100. Should we be proud? Should we cry?

"We do not torture," said our
pitifully inarticulate president, straining through emphasis and
repetition to erase the obvious.

A string of prisons in Eastern
Europe in which suspects are held and tortured indefinitely, without
trial, without lawyers, without the right to confront their accusers,
without knowing the evidence or the charges against them, if any. Forever.
It's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich."
Another secret prison in the midst of a military camp on an island run by an infamous dictator. Prisoner without a name,
cell without a number.

Who are we? What have we
become? The shining city on a hill, the beacon and bastion of refuge and
freedom, a country born amidst the most magnificent ideals of freedom and
justice, the greatest political heritage ever given to any people
anywhere.

I am baffled by these
"arguments": But we're talking about really awful people, cries the
harassed press secretary. People like X and Y and Z (after a time, one
forgets all the names of the No. 2's after bin Laden we have captured).
The SS and the Gestapo and the KVD weren't all that nice, either.

Then I hear the familiar tinniness of the fake machismo I know so well from
George W. Bush and all the other frat boys who never went to
Vietnam and
never got over the guilt.

"Sometimes you gotta play rough," said Dick Cheney. No shit, Dick?
Now why don't you tell that to John
McCain?

I have known George W. Bush
since we were both in high school -- we have dozens of mutual friends. I
have written two books about him and so have interviewed many dozens more
who know him well in one way or another. Spare me the tough talk. He

didn't play football -- he was a cheerleader. "He is really competitive,"
said one friend. "You wouldn't believe how tough he is on a tennis court!"
Just cut the macho crap -- I don't want to hear it.

If you are dead to all sense
of morality (please let me not go off on the stinking sanctimony of this
crowd), let us still reason together on the famous American common ground
of practicality. Torture. Does. Not. Work.

Torture does not work. Ask the
United
States military. Ask
the Israelis.

There seems to be some
fantastic scenario floating around -- if Osama
bin Laden had an atomic bomb hidden in a locker at Grand Central Station,
and it was due to go off in 12 hours, and we had him in prison ... I seem
to have missed some important television program on this theme. I am told
it was fiction, but it must have been really scary -- it certainly seems
to have unbalanced the minds of some of our fellow citizens.

Torture does not work. It is
not productive. It does not yield important, timely information. That is
in the movies. This is reality.

I grew up with all this
pathetic Texas tough: Everybody here knows you can't make an omelet
without breaking eggs; and this ain't beanbag;
and I'll knock your jaw so far back, you'll scratch your throat with your
front teeth; and I'm gonna cloud up and rain all
over you; and I'm gonna open me a can of whup-ass ...

And that'll show 'em, won't it? Take some miserable human being alone
and helpless in a cell, completely under your control, and torture him.
Boy, that is some kind of manly, ain't it?

"The CIA is holding an unknown
number of prisoners in secret detention centers abroad. In violation of
the Geneva Conventions, it has refused to register those detainees with
the International Red Cross or to allow visits by its inspectors. Its
prisoners have 'disappeared,' like the victims of some dictatorships." --
The Washington Post.

Why did we bother to beat the
Soviet
Union if we were just going to
become it? Shame. Shame. Shame. Read more in the Molly Ivins archive.

Molly
Ivins is the former editor of the liberal
monthly The Texas Observer.
She is the bestselling author of several books including Who Let the Dogs In?