Sure It's Semantics, But Is It Torture?

Remember when the president's critics and the international press went to town over the convoluted, legalistic language surrounding that unforgettable answer: "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."? Well, he ain't got nuthin' on ol' GW and his associates.

Today Alberto Gonzales is testifying before the U.S. Senate's Judiciary Committee in confirmation hearings that will likely propel him into the position of U.S. Attorney General. Online headlines, giving the blow-by-blow coverage, exclaim "Gonzales Disavows Torture" (NY Times), seemingly as a consolation to Gonzales' critics, who worry that his previous writings on the matter could be construed as endorsing torture as an interrogation method in the war against terrorism and as dismissing the relevance of the Geneva Conventions. So now that he's disavowed torture, we can all sleep soundly, knowing that if we say we not going to torture, then we won't. Right?

Wrong. Unfortunately, it seems that for Gonzales, what is torture is not "torture." Therefore, it's meaningless to ask, as Judiciary Committee Chairman Senator Arlen Specter did today, whether Gonzales approves of torture--and in fact, it's actually harmful, because it leads to a wrong conclusion. Gonzales can answer with a straight face "No" and yet in the same breath defend the prisoner treatment at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay and the transporting of prisoners for interrogation to states that actively do condone torture (and who knows what other horrors that may still come to light). That's because he defines "torture" in the most narrow, most constricted, most legalistic manner possible. And if he can't undefine torture, then he'll run to the other end of the looking glass and undefine the tortured, arguing that the people captured in the war on terrorism don't deserve the same rights as any others captured in any other war, because this war is not like any other war.

This is just the latest example of how this administration puts Clinton's legalistic acrobatics to shame ("It depends on how you define 'alone.'") And after four years, they've learned well how to apply semantics to other issues in addition to torture:

Nonproliferation
During the 2004 presidential campaign, the one issue that President Bush and Senator Kerry (famously) agreed on was that the threat of the spread of weapons of mass destruction was the most important issue facing our country today. It was a point of high theater during the debates and elsewhere: that even if we are so bitterly divided on other issues, when it comes to national security, we stand side by side as Americans.

However, in the first indication of the administration's priorities after the elections, drafts of the 2006 presidential budget are beginning to leak out, and as it currently stands, the Bush administration is actually cutting $46 million from the main program that works to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction--the Cooperative Threat Reduction program. This represents nearly 10% of its budget at a time when many argue that its budget needs to be substantially increased and additional political weight thrown behind the program, rather than retreating from it. How's that for following through with political rhetoric?

Missile Defense
The first Bush campaign back in 2000 promised that President Bush would deploy missile defenses by the end of his first term. With the 2nd term fast approaching, he hasn't quite gotten there yet, but he's breaking down facts and reality-based inconveniences to do so in the very near future. The necessary components won't be in place for years, if not decades (former Pentagon acquisition overseer Phil Coyle has likened it to trying to fly a plane without the wings or tail) and the few initial pieces which do exist have high failure rates in the few tests that have actually been conducted (the last occuring just last month). Yet in an act of breathtaking defiance of reality, soon the missile defense system will be called "operational" or "deployed" or a "contingent capability" or some other phrase that sounds like it's ready to shoot down whatever they (whoever they are) throw at us. Who needs proof when you have creative Pentagon linguists?

War-Fighting Strategy
It's an oldie but a goodie. The Bush administration has advocated "pre-emption" as a cornerstone of its foreign policy--except that what they're really talking about is "prevention." No one argues with pre-emption as an accepted rationale for war. Pre-emption means that if we had seen the Japanese steaming toward Pearl Harbor on December 6th, 1941, we would have been within our rights and justified to attack the Japanese vessels in order to thwart their imminent attack, as an act of self-preservation.

But it's a different thing to say that we could have bombed Tokyo in 1935--because we were worried that one day they might want to harm us and have the ability to do so. No one would have found that justifiable. That is prevention, and it's a license to attack anyone at any time. And it's exactly what the Bush administration is arguing now, both in its war against Iraq and in its policy documents that give the setting within which the Bush administration works. And the Bush administration has counted on the fact that no one will really notice or bother with the difference between pre-emption and prevention and their use of the words. So far, they're right.

So to recount:
Torture is not "torture."
"Greatest threat" = slashing budgets
"Deployment" = the Emperor's New Clothes
"Pre-emption" erases the need to justify military action.

I have a few more phrases to suggest:
"Ignorance is strength."
"War is peace."

I'm sure a Gonzales Justice Department can work on those.