January 13, 2005 - For those of us who grew from childhood surrounded by the tales of Nazi brutality and the cruelty of the Communists our country was the humane example to the world of what a democratic society could be. Behind the walls of Gestapo headquarters, in the dank cells of KGB prisons men and women were tortured. Enemy prisoners in America custody were treated humanely. That dichotomy drew the distinction between what they were and what we strived to be. They represented the cruelty of repressive, totalitarian regimes. We represented the promise of mankind’s better instincts returning, as we were taught, good for evil. That national naiveté began to erode when tales of tiger cages in the jungles and the bitter amenities of the Hanoi Hilton were balanced by the images of prisoners thrown by helicopters at 3,000 feet as an interrogation technique. Watching that kind of death focuses the survivor’s mind most wonderfully.

Congressional conferees this week stripped out language that would prohibit America’s intelligence agencies from torturing prisoners. The White House opposed the measure as it had opposed an earlier provision that would have prohibited the military from using torture. The scrapped language authored by Illinois Senator Dick Durban was opposed because it would have applied to the treatment of such high level detainees as Abu Zubaydah seized in Pakistan in 2002. Representative Jane Harman (D-CA) one of the conferees said, "If there are special circumstances around some intelligence interrogations, we should understand that before we legislate."

What “special circumstances” can there be to justify the application of torture to those in the custody of a moral and humane nation? More simply put, can a just end ever justify an unjust means to that end? “Special Circumstances” are easily found when necessary. Yesterday an interrogator testified in the Abu Ghraib trail saying that when he asked that certain practices be stopped, “The M.P.s wouldn't do it. They said, no, we have to show them who is boss. From my conversations with the M.P.s, they assumed that all the Iraqis were terrorists and needed discipline." Special circumstances can always be found if we look for them.

We claim to be a moral people devoted to values of humane morality in a just society. We long, we say, for a return through the mists of nostalgia to a simple time when we knew right from wrong; when we could discern a clear difference between good and evil; between them and us. If “Special Circumstances” can justify our use of evil how then can we condemn Them?