The media and the latest 'torture' revelations

Those who recall the indignity of President Richard Nixon having to declare, in response to a question from the press, "I am not a crook," must have winced on Oct. 5 when President George W. Bush, also talking to the press, was forced to avow, "This government does not torture people." That the questions had to be asked speaks volumes in itself. That the answers from both presidents were thoroughly unconvincing says just as much. Or perhaps Bush was only suggesting that our military and our private contractors may torture people but "this government" does not. In a dead giveaway, he added, "We stick to US law and our international obligations." This reference to "international obligations" rather than "international law" was a veiled admission that we have been violating the Geneva accords. The latest "torture" revelations from The New York Times this week seemed to shock many in the media, which also says a lot. That the US has been torturing prisoners has been known for years, producing only measured outrage from editorialists and pundits. Even in the news pages, reporters and editors have rarely used the 'torture" word, caving to the administration's insistence that these were merely "enhanced interrogation" measures (a term which could also have applied to, say, the time-honored cutting off of fingers). If you want to believe that torture is justified in the war on terror, fine -- but just call it what it is. Don't make jokes about it, like David Brooks did on the PBS NewsHour last night, when he said listening to Fred Thompson on the stump might violate the Geneva Conventions. Perhaps the most amazing statement of the week came from White House spokeswoman Dana Perino at a press briefing on Thursday, when she observed that six years after the 9/11 attacks "we are still having a debate to talk about how we should make sure that we treat people, and that we don't torture them. That is quite a testament to this country." So it's a good thing that the country still has to debate whether or not we torture people? The Times article that blew this wide open held this key paragraph: "Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on 'combined effects' over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion's overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be 'ashamed' when the world eventually learned of it." So far the "shame" has not emerged from many editorial pages but perhaps that will change this weekend. For now we have a pair of blistering blog critiques from two of the most popular members of that breed, one long seen as on the right and the other on the left. Andrew Sullivan, who now blogs for The Atlantic, and a onetime Bush-backer and war supporter, heads his latest posting with a photo of the president and the title: "War Criminal." Referring at least partly to the media, Sullivan declares, "A couple of things need to be stressed, because I've learned the hard way that intelligent people simply refuse to absorb what is staring them in the face, when what is staring them in the face is so staggering." What does he mean? He quotes from the Times story: "Never in history had the United States authorized such tactics." He closes with this: "There is no doubt -- no doubt at all -- that these tactics are torture and subject to prosecution as war crimes. We know this because the law is very clear, when you don't have war criminals like AEI's John Yoo rewriting it to give one man unchecked power. …We have war criminals in the White House. What are we going to do about it?" Over at Salon.com, meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald focuses more on the muted press reaction over the past couple of years: "All of the solemn 'debates' and hand-wringing and anti-torture laws that were passed have changed very little, because the administration knows that there is no political will ever to enforce any of that. They know that the political and media institutions intended to impose checks on their behavior will never take any meaningful stand against what they do, no matter how blatantly extreme or illegal." He then quotes a recent posting by media critic and New York University professor Jay Rosen suggesting that the media's acquiescence to the administration's lawbreaking is due to their inability to comprehend just how extreme it all has been. Rosen wrote: "The most important of these is that journalists and their methods were overwhelmed by what the Bush White House did -- by its radicalism. There is simply nothing in the Beltway journalist's rule book about what to do, how to act, when a group of people comes to power willing to go as far as this group has in expanding executive power, eluding oversight, steamrolling critics (even when they are allies) politicizing the government, re-working the Constitution, rolling back the press, making secrecy and opacity standard operating procedure, and repealing the very principle of empiricism in matters of state. "The press tends to behave because it does not know how to act, in the sense of striking out in a new direction when confronted with a new fact pattern." Greenwald, a former constitutional lawyer, concurs: "One does not expect an administration to imprison US citizens with no process, or to proclaim explicitly the right to break the law, or to systematically adopt policies of torture. For that reason, it is not surprising that it would take some time for the reaction to catch up to the full extent of the wrongdoing." But then he adds: "But we are now way past the point where that excuse is plausible. Anyone paying even minimal attention is well aware of exactly how radical and corrupt and lawless this administration is. We all know what has happened to our standing in the world, to our national character and our core political values, as a result of the previously unthinkable policies the Bush administration has relentlessly pursued. Ignorance or incredulity can no longer explain our acquiescence. Accommodating and protecting the lawbreaking of high Bush officials is widely seen by our Beltway elite as a duty of bipartisanship, a hallmark of Seriousness. "It isn't surprising or particularly revealing that there were not immediate consequences for these revelations. Our political system, by design, works slowly and methodically. The Founders purposely imposed significant hurdles to undertaking the most significant steps (such as criminal investigations of high Executive officials or impeachment) precisely to ensure that such actions were taken deliberatively, not impetuously. It took two-and-a-half years for the much simpler Watergate scandal to lead to what would have been the impeachment of Richard Nixon. The failure to impose immediate or even rapid consequences, while frustrating to many, would not really be a cause for legitimate complaint. "But when it comes to Bush's extremism and lawbreaking, we're not imposing consequences slowly. We're not imposing consequences at all. Quite the contrary, we're moving in the opposite direction -- when we're not affirmatively endorsing and providing protection for that conduct, we're choosing not to know about it, or simply allowing it to fester. And the more that happens, the less that behavior becomes the exclusive province of the Bush administration and the more it becomes our country's defining behavior. "This could still all be reversed….The Congress could aggressively investigate. Criminal prosecutions could be commenced. Our opinion-making elite could sound the alarm. New laws could be passed, reversing the prior endorsements and imposing new restrictions, along with the will to enforce those laws. We still have the ability to vindicate the rule of law and enforce our basic constitutional framework. "But does anyone actually believe any of that will be the result of these new revelations?"