Thursday, November 03, 2005

Torture: What Is It Good For?

Absolutely nothing! There is an amendment floating around in the Senate called the McCain amendment. This amendment would ban the military and the CIA from torturing prisoners, and was tacked onto a military spending bill and passed by the Senate 90-9. The House passed the same bill without the amendment. Now the bill is in conference and the White House is actively working to keep the amendment off the bill and President Bush is threatening to veto (which would be his first veto of his tenure).

I agree with John McCain (a Vietnam war veteran who was tortured for 5 1/2 years by the Vietnamese), America should not practice torture. Torture is not consistent with American values and more importantly, it is not consistent with human rights. All humans have diginity and should not be subjected to torture.

I understand that the Bush administration believes that torturing prisoners is important to national security. However, I believe that America has a standard to uphold: to treat all humans with dignity. Torture is the stuff of Cuba, and the former Soviet Union, and Slobodan Milosevic, and Pol Pot, and Saddam Hussein. Not America.

Christians, indeed all Americans, should oppose torture and support the McCain amendment.

1 comment:

Teresa said...

It's interesting, too - torture is nearly completely ineffective for what we want which is accurate information. If you torture someone (or, I suppose for that matter, offer too much of a reward), the person will say anything to make it stop, greatly increasing the odds eitehr that you will get a lie or you will get exactly what you tell them you want to hear - neither of which is good. We have just started 5th Amendment jurisprudence in criminal procedure, and we opened with a discussion yesterday about torture. Odd that you would bring it up :).