And so Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi was first captured by the US and tortured by CIA surrogates in an Egyptian cell. Apparently, they beat him and put him in a coffin for 17 hours as a mock-burial. To end the severe mental and physical suffering, he confessed that Saddam had trained al Qaeda terrorists in deploying WMDs. This evidence was then cited by Colin Powell as part of the rationale for going to war in Iraq. Bingo! And we wonder why torture is such a temptation. Which politician wouldn't want to be able to manufacture evidence to support what he wants to do anyway?
In a strange way, the torture program was the logical--if horribly unethical and illiberal--extension of the post-modernization of truth that was movement Conservatism's modus operandi. They created their own shadow version of every truth-seeking institution that didn't produce the results they desired: so you had think tanks instead of academia, Fox News instead of the mainstream media establishment, Alberto Gonzales instead of an independent Justice Department, a political hack going through scientific reports on global warming with a red pen.
The torture program was in the same mold: the traditional institutions and methods weren't generating the right results, and so they created their own alternative institutions and methods on the fly--Gitmo, extraordinary rendition, torture--justifying all of it, I'm sure, with the sincere belief that the old institutions had been long ago compromised by Liberals and their anachronistic, "pre-9/11" mindset.
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