Torture & NPR

A couple of things about torture.

First, waterboarding is torture, no ifs, ands or buts. If my word isn’t good enough, consider former P.O.W. John McCain’s:

“All I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today,” Mr. McCain, who spent more than five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, said in a telephone interview.

Of presidential candidates like Mr. Giuliani, who say that they are unsure whether waterboarding is torture, Mr. McCain said: “They should know what it is. It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture.”

Therefore, it’s distressing that a potential U.S. Attorney General won’t take a firm stand against waterboarding.

We must do better as a nation.

Second, NPR’s Steve Inskeep and Anne Garrels collaborated on a story that used sources who had been tortured. Instead of focusing on the torture, they focused on the resultant unsurprising confessions. It caused a firestorm of response, and FAIR issued an action alert. Garrels lamely defended herself, and it came off contrived.

We must do better as a nation.