Gideon's Blog

has to be the most insightful one-man blog on the web. Maybe the most insightful, period. I think I may have mentioned it before, but it's time I mentioned it again. The author, Noah, weighs in on everything from national policy issues to personal philanthropy projects to his Rosh Hashanah menu. Today he has a very thoughtful post about the torture bill, especially these two paragraphs:

First, I'm against the torture bill, strongly. The specific techniques that Andrew Sullivan never tires of talking about - waterboarding, stress positions, hypothermia - are plainly tortures. They are "civilized" tortures in that they do not cause permanent physical harm; indeed, I've read that CIA operatives trained to apply waterboarding practice the technique on each other, which they would certainly not do if they were being trained to rip out fingernails. But they are plainly tortures, in that they are designed to cause pain and suffering, and break the prisoner by making him desperate to end that suffering. That's torture.

I'm not convinced that we need to go down this road. I'm very persuaded, in particular, by the argument that by formally legalizing such procedures, you will inevitably make them routine. That's certainly what happened in Israel when "moderate physical pressure" became part of the Shin Bet's arsenal. And while I'm both skeptical of making human rights the centerpiece of our diplomacy and generally indifferent to bien pensant opinion in Europe, formally endorsing torture by the CIA is going to alienate lots of people who are our natural allies, not only people who are already disposed to be our enemies.

Well supported, well reasoned; his writing here and everywhere strikes me as the very essence of sanity.