Food for thought: “Intelligence sharing between Europe and the United States certainly won’t grind to a halt but European political elites are coming under increasing pressure from their angry publics to distance themselves from any U.S. practices that infringe on human rights and international law. That spells trouble for European intelligence officers who cannot say with certainty how the intelligence they share will be used by their U.S. counterparts.”
–democracyarsenal.org [emphasis mine]

Intelligence cooperation has apparently been the unspoken backbone of political goodwill between Europe and the United States, even during moments of tense policy debate. That our stance on human rights could affect that backbone is troubling as well as unforeseen.

I mention this merely to provide more context for the human rights/terrorism defense debate, which rages unabated–and apparently unprogressed–in the news. What other practical considerations ought to be included when we weigh the hefty philosophical and moral burdens of sullying our souls through torture? Such actions are, I believe, like abortion: even on those occasions when they are both permissible and better than the alternative, they are NEVER to be wished for. No one is ever either pro-abortion or pro-torture; such choices are merely, as Winston Churchill might have said, the worst options except for all the others.

Speaking in Panama Bush told foreign reporters that the United States does not support, condone, or actively engage in it. So then, he won’t veto the McCain amendment right?

The United States was sharply criticized for its handling of detainees after photographs of guards abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq shocked the world.

U.S. forces have held hundreds of detainees at known facilities outside the United States since the September 11, 2001, attacks, such as Guantanamo Bay. But senior leaders of al Qaeda who have captured, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, have been kept in secret detention facilities overseas.

Bush did not confirm or deny the existence of CIA secret prisons that The Washington Post disclosed last week, and would not address demands by the International Committee of the Red Cross to have access to the suspects reportedly held at them.

“We are finding terrorists and bringing them to justice,” Bush said at a news conference with Panamanian President Martin Torrijos. “We are gathering information about where the terrorists might be hiding. We are trying to disrupt their plots and plans,” he said.

“Anything we do to that end in this effort, any activity we conduct, is within the law,” Bush said. “We do not torture. And therefore we’re working with Congress to make sure that as we go forward, we make it possible, more possible to do our job.”

Meanwhile, after such staunch denunciation of the illegal practice of torture Vice President Dick “Let’s go to war on Bad Intel” Cheney is fighting to get an exemption for the CIA in the McCain amendment that would only force the U.S. government to follow the ban on torture written in the Army’s field manual.

The Senate voted 90-9 for the McCain amendment to prohibit the use of torture and abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody, adding it to a $440 billion defense spending bill despite a White House veto threat.

The House of Representatives did not include the detainee rules in its version of the bill, and House and Senate negotiators are working out differences for a final bill.

The White House position is that international treaty obligations already on the books govern the treatment of suspects and that the United States is observing those rules.

Yes, well the part they leave out is the careful maneuvering the Bush White House has used with the help of now Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez to get around such provisions by classifying detainees as enemy combatants and not prisoners of war, a classification so effective the Supreme Court even allowed it to hold up against U.S. citizens.

As everyone may well know, the Iraqi Parliament extended the deadline for a constitution by a week. The Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish framers of the charter agreed on issues ranging from oil revenues to the country’s name but they put off decisions on women’s rights, the role of Islam and Kurdish autonomy. The last-minute postponement raises serious questions about the ability for the various factions, now and in the future, to reach the necessary compromises to have a unified state.

The Bush Administration contends that a compromise will be reached and as the American public continually polls against the war, they say they plan to “settle for far less than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months” (Washington Post).

Americans, if they still care, need to realize that Iraqi elected representatives that reflect more traditional Islamic values then Western ones. Democracy, as we know it, in unlikely to be planted in Iraq as this constitution comes into greater light. We are coming to realize that our vision of remaking the world in our own image will neither succeed nor particularly help in the “war” on terror.

Reading:
Salon – Women’s rights groups in the Middle East fear that Iraqi women will be the biggest losers in the country’s new Constitution.

Publius contends that the people of Iraq are more liberal than there repersenatives and that time will allow that to come through.

Iraq the Model gives good updates on the constituional process.