Wall Street Journal defends torture

The Journal’s intervention comes amidst an acrimonious debate within the political establishment and the media over the government’s official policy on torture. In October, the Senate passed an amendment to a military appropriations bill declaring that no individual in US custody may be subjected to “cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment. There is concern within a section of the ruling class that the US government’s open embrace of detainee abuse will undermine the ability of Washington to posture as a champion of democratic rights in justifying its military and diplomatic interventions abroad.

The Bush administration has vowed to veto the bill if the language is included, declaring that it would “undermine presidential authority” and tie the hands of US agencies. Speaking for the dominant section of the American financial elite, the Wall Street Journal has come down firmly on the side of torture: “[W]e can’t win the war on terror without good intelligence,” the editorial declares, and “there won’t be good intelligence without aggressive interrogations.”

The newspaper states that the amendment, sponsored by Republican Senator John McCain, “would effectively bar all stressful interrogation techniques. The danger for American security is that this would telegraph to every terrorist in the world that he has absolutely nothing to fear from silence should he fall into US hands.”

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/nov2005/wsj-n14.shtml