

When Papers Quit Calling Waterboarding 'Torture' - talbina
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/06/the-legacy-media-and-torture.html

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philwelch
There's a reason for this, and it's cowardly and despicable, but it's not
nearly so straightforward as the US press being lapdogs for US war criminals.

Newspapers have a journalistic duty to be impartial, or at least a marketing
duty to appear impartial. (News outlets that seem partial lose prestige, and
hence compete in a different niche--contrast the New York Times and the New
York Post.) Who must they appear impartial to? Their audience, of course--and
the primary audience for American newspapers is Americans. Now, when the
American executive branch and one out of two political parties seriously
claims that waterboarding is not torture, you suddenly seem partial to
Americans if you openly contradict that claim, because the question of whether
waterboarding is torture has moved from accepted wisdom to controversy.
Clouding all of this, of course, is that the controversy itself is nothing
more than a semantic argument. Another contributing factor is ignorance--
waterboarding went from an obscure torture technique which comparatively few
people knew about to an active political issue, which means a lot of people
who knew absolutely nothing about waterboarding until the administration said
"we're for it and we're doing it" made up their minds at that instant, based
on their opinion of the administration.

Weaker forms of this are seen when, for instance, news outlets give equal time
to cranks when reporting on science, because there's "controversy" over
whether evolution is real or whether the earth is really 4 billion years old.
It's easy to find more examples if you look out for them.

~~~
MaysonL
_Newspapers have a journalistic duty to be impartial_

Actually, they don't: journalism's duty is to be _truthful_ , not impartial:
if somebody lies, it's the journalist's duty to show that they're lying, not
to do the he-said, she-said tango.

~~~
philwelch
Journalism's duty is to be truthful _and_ impartial--truthful on matters of
fact, impartial on matters of opinion. From there it gets complicated, of
course.

~~~
VBprogrammer
Journalism's duty is to sell newspapers. Anything else is a tertiary concern.

~~~
philwelch
Of course, but I addressed that in my original post.

------
MaysonL
The scare quotes in the title seem somewhat editorial, and should probably be
removed by moderator.

Also, a link to the original report on which the posted article is based:
[http://www.hks.harvard.edu/presspol/publications/papers/tort...](http://www.hks.harvard.edu/presspol/publications/papers/torture_at_times_hks_students.pdf)

~~~
philwelch
How so? They're not scare quotes, they're actual quotes. It's a grammatical
convention in English to quote a word if you're talking about the word itself,
as the headline does.

~~~
MaysonL
Actually, to call something torture is substantially different in connotation
than to call something 'torture'. I think the Atlantic headline writer goofed.

------
Daniel_Newby
Why is this sophomoric garbage on HN? Seriously, we're supposed to believe
that the New York Times is a craven tool of the neocon puppeteers, rather than
liberals who got mugged by 2752 object lessons in the difference between
random homicide and harsh interrogation?

~~~
crystalis
Why is this sophomoric comment on HN? Seriously, we're supposed to believe
that hyperbolic assertions are considered a contribution to the discussion?

~~~
Daniel_Newby
Yes. The most parsimonious explanation for the NYT's war attitude is that the
destruction of the twin towers recalibrated their ideas about justice and
reasonable response.

This is in comparison to the data-free explanation of the article, that an
unspecified conspiracy in the NYT sold out to an unspecified faction in the
Bush 42 administration under unspecified pressure. It's not even a conspiracy
theory. Rolling Stone and Drudge would require better sourcing to print such
vacuous trollop. HN is a poor venue for politics, and an even poorer venue for
empty political traffic-whoring.

~~~
crystalis
See? That wasn't so hard.

Now next time you are thinking about a useless post, imagine the downvotes,
the reply, and then the bit where you actually post something useful.

But then just post the useful bit.

~~~
Daniel_Newby
No, it has no effect. The votes on this issue appear to be based on political
alignment, not content or logic. This does not bode well for HN.

~~~
crystalis
Actually, it looks like the votes are right on. Top comment essays an
explanation for why newspapers stopped calling waterboarding torture, your
immature political signalling got downvoted, and an irrelevant straw
discussion about waterboarding itself, rather than its treatment by
newspapers, also got downvoted. Another top level comment that is half wrong
and half reference sits at 1 point. Those all sit about where they should. If
you seek converts, or even just votes, please post content and logic, not your
political alignment and tear shaped raindrops.

~~~
mkramlich
My comment about waterboarding is not irrelevant in a discussion about an
article whose topic was "how the topic of waterboarding was treated and when &
why a change in the narrative occurred." And especially one in which said
article took the stance that waterboarding is torture and therefore evil and
therefore _always unacceptable by any party_ and then showed a photo of a
Khmer Rouge torture facility _as if_ to imply there were a 1-to-1
correspondence and ethical parity between the actions of the Khmer Rouge (whom
most international observers agree tortured _thousands_ of innocent people and
murdered at least a million more) and the actions of the US government (in
reaction to 9/11 in which Al Qaeda murdered _thousands_ of innocent US
citizens) when any reasonable person could spot the _differences_ in the
circumstances.

Also there was no strawman argument in my comment unless you make an
assumption that is wrong going into the reading of it. I made an independent
argument formulated based on how I perceived and analyzed the topic that the
OA was addressing. I did not misrepresent the author's position, nor did I
claim to refute the narrow point of his article. I was intentionally not
addressing his narrow core claim (dealing with the change in mainstream media
terminology, theorized to have been done in order to become more in alignment
with a desired change in the public narrative by vested interests) -- _by
intent_ \-- and _instead_ addressing the larger issue and assumptions made by
the OA's article. And I put a lot of thought and care into what I wrote --
with no cursing, name-calling and with good spelling and grammar (generally)
-- and don't think it deserved to be downvoted into karma penalty land.

Votes should be based on the quality of the contribution to a discussion, not
on a mere I-agree/I-disagree or on emotional reactions.

------
mkramlich
Waterboarding is bad, of that there is no doubt. However, lots of things that
society already accepts as being, in isolation, bad/evil, we already allow and
accept and do not consider "evil" when done under special circumstances.

Take the case where someone is suddenly surrounded in the street, forced into
a vehicle and taken away. That's normally called kidnapping. But if police do
it, it's called an arrest. If a person is held against their will in a cold
small cell and their movements and actions strictly limited, and treated like
an animal or child most of us would consider that cruel and inhumane and label
it as slavery. But if it is inside a "prison" and said person had violated a
law and that is our justification for them being there then it is "okay" and
not evil to be doing that to them.

And almost all societies have been doing this for thousands of years. Nothing
new here. Move along.

But one day the issue of waterboarding comes up, as it relates to US treatment
of some terrorists caught in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Is it
unpleasant? You bet. Extremely? No doubt. But is the US government just
showing up outside John & Jane Smith's house in Iowa, kidnapping the wife, a
perfectly innocent suburban house mom, taking her away to a secret location
and then waterboarding her in order to make her reveal her _secret cookie
recipe_? Heck no. That's not what was happening. Far from it, according to the
published reports. Instead, the US government used this technique only on "bad
guys" -- and by that term I mean folks for whom there was enough evidence that
any reasonable person would agree that he had been engaged in evil & illegal
acts such is killing or planning to kill innocent US non-combatant civilians.
Such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the planning mastermind behind the 9/11
operation. Am I going to lose _any_ sleep at all over him being waterboarded
IF the goal was getting useful information out of him to further
fight/dismantle Al Qaeda and prevent future murders? Heck no. Do I think it is
wrong for him to be waterboarded? I'm not sure. At best it's in some shades of
grey area. I think _kidnapping_ is wrong, I think _slavery_ is wrong and I
think _murder_ is wrong but every single day in this country and in many
countries around the world citizens _already_ give their governments a free
pass at doing _exactly_ these things. And we as citizens allow it (assuming
democracies, people have ultimate control over laws, etc.) because even though
in the general case we detest it, we generally agree there are special cases
where it's acceptable because it's a choice of a lesser evil and also that
some greater good is achieved because of it. This is exactly the argument
behind waterboarding.

Do I like it? Of course not, I don't think any empathic, non-sadistic person
would. But to call it torture and thus because it's torture it is inherently
evil and therefore that there can _never_ be any _possible_ justification for
it -- I find that an illogical and therefore invalid argument. At best,
hypocritically inconsistent.

If anything I think the better case against waterboarding is whether it's
effective. If it is not effective, either at extracting true and timely and
useful information out of the subject, OR, in acting as a deterrent to other
would-be conspirators, then that's a reasonable argument for dropping it.
Another good argument is that it might drastically increase the chance that US
soldiers, when captured by enemies, are themselves subjected to it. But at
least with these arguments, there is nuance and there are trade-offs being
considered. But to simply say X-is-always-wrong-and-should-never-be-done I
find that to be a very weak argument considering all the other precedents that
run in the opposite direction.

~~~
brazzy
_But is the US government just showing up outside John & Jane Smith's house in
Iowa, kidnapping the wife, a perfectly innocent suburban house mom, taking her
away to a secret location and then waterboarding her in order to make her
reveal her secret cookie recipe? Heck no._

Heck, yes. Or pretty close to it. Quite a few Gitmo inmates were completely
innocent, they just were at the wrong place at the wrong time, or had the
wrong surname, or had enemies who called them terrorists to get rid of a
business rival, or to get the bounty that US was paying.

~~~
mkramlich
To clarify about your Gitmo point: the vast majority were not waterboarded.
Going to Gitmo did/does not automatically mean being waterboarded. But point
taken.

I thought of another good argument against waterboarding: the Geneva
Convention. My understanding is that it is banned by it under all (or, well,
proscribed) circumstances, and the US is signatory to it. I think part of the
reason why the US wanted to do certain things NOT on mainland US soil was to
be able to weasel around certain laws and international rules that address
what they are and are not allowed to do.

~~~
anamax
> the Geneva Convention. ... the US is signatory to it.

There are several "Geneva Conventions". The US has signed some of them.

In general, the Geneva conventions only apply when both parties are
signatories. Since the Taliban and such orgs aren't signatories ....

~~~
brazzy
The USA has signed all 4 geneva conventions and all 3 amendment protocols, but
not ratified 2 of the latter. Source:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_the_Geneva_C...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_the_Geneva_Conventions)

And the conventions quite definitely _do_ apply to some degree when a
signatory fights an opponent that is not a nation (and which therefore, by
definition, cannot be a signatory). The details are a bit difficult,
especially when a conflict is both internations and involves non-nation
parties, but it's definitely not correct to say "our opponents are not
signatories, so all rules are off".

