"What al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein did was an extreme form of sadistic torture, the kind that psychopaths enjoy and inflict. But that does not make, say, freezing someone to near-death, reviving him, re-freezing him again any less torture. Yes, we did that, carefully monitored by Rumsfeld. It does not make the Khmer Rouge waterboarding technique any less torture. It does not make contorting a prisoner into an excruciating stress position and then smashing his head against the wall any less torture. We should not forget that there have been more than a hundred deaths in U.S.-run torture chambers under George W. Bush either. So I really don't get the point. Unless it is the following: If we are not as evil as al Qaeda, we are not torturing. This is logically and legally and morally a complete non-sequitur. And it is truly mind-boggling to believe that the arbiters of our moral compass are now the men who murdered 3000 innocents on 9/11. I don't know about you, but that's not the standard against which I believe America should judge herself. Or ever, ever has."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Editors from the United StatesCatholics from the United StatesJournalists from EnglandColumnists from EnglandBloggers from England
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
"Al Qaeda and Torture", The Daily Dish (26 May 2007)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Andrew_Sullivan
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Andrew Sullivan
45 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Andrew Sullivan →
Related Quotes
"Today's age of politicized and intolerant Christianism seems to me to be one of those moments when Christianity has e…"
"First silence. Then denial. Then support of the insupportable. Then vilification of the dissenters. The pattern is as…"
"Torture was necessary to maintain slavery. It was integral to slavery. You cannot have slavery without some torture o…"
"In thinking about the costs of this war, and thinking about renewing it, we have to reconsider what it has done to Am…"
"At home, the public has come to accept torture as a legitimate instrument of government, something that the Founding …"
"There is no state more abject than the man broken on the waterboarding rack, or frozen to near death, or forced to st…"
"A constitutional republic dedicated before everything to the protection of liberty cannot legalize torture and remain…"
"It is not an opinion that "enhanced interrogation techniques" are torture. It is a legal fact. And it is also a legal…"
"Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I'm not. There is no comparison betw…"
"Monsters remain human beings. In fact, to reduce them to a subhuman level is to exonerate them of their acts of terro…"