Today's Stories

July 22, 2009

Bernard Chazelle
How to Argue Against Torture

July 21, 2009

Sasan Fayazmanesh
The Iranian Election and Its Aftermath

Uri Avnery
Breaking the Silence on Israeli War Crimes

Dean Baker
Séance on Wall Street

Jonathan Cook
Team Twitter: Israel's Internet War

Dave Lindorff
Saving Private Bergdahl

Andy Worthington
Interrogating the Uighurs

David Macaray
Heat, Dust and OSHA

Carl Finamore
The Deferential Party

Harvey Wasserman
Cronkite and Three Mile Island

Walter Brasch
The Marie Antoinettes of Health Care

Website of the Day
Linebaugh: Magna Carta and the Commons

July 20, 2009

Pam Martens
Judicial Apartheid

Nikolas Kozloff
Honduras and the Big Stick: Obama's Bullish Behavoir in Latin America

Paul Craig Roberts
Threatening Iran

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Policy on China and Iran

Ira Glunts
Netanyahu's Time Bomb: Building in the Vineyard of the Mufti

P. Sainath
Put Your Money Down, Boys

Binoy Kampmark
The Moon Landing and the Cold War

Stephen Fleischman
The First Anchorman

Norman Solomon
Cronkite and Vietnam: Beyond the Hype

Andy Worthington
Predictable Chaos as Gitmo Trials Resume

Ron Jacobs
Out of the Haze, Into the Darkness: Recalling 1979

Website of the Day
Why Publishing Can't be Saved (as it is)

July 17-19, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
"Watch What We Do, Not What We Say"

Nikolas Kozloff
Chiquita in Latin America: From Arbenz to Zelaya

Joanne Mariner
CIA Apples: Bad at the Top of the Tree

Joe Bageant
America's White Underclass

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Road Signs: Wiping Arabic Names Off the Map

Saul Landau
Why So Much Sympathy for Madoff's Dupes and So Little for the Poor?

John Ross
Jurassic Fallout in Mexico

Sue Sturgis
Senator Sessions, Race and Impartiality

Anita Sinha /
Daniel Farbman
The Ricci Case and the Myth of Special Treatment

Peter Morici
Obama's Donut Economics

Pervez Hoodbhoy
Whither Pakistan? A Five-Year Forecast

Ramzy Baroud
Gaza and the Language of Power

Greg Moses
The Real Demand Crisis

Kia Mistilis
The Niger Delta Crisis

Missy Beattie
The Placebo President

David Ker Thomson
How Not to See: Things to Tell Your Eyeballs

James G. Abourezk
Evil Spirits: the Booze Strip in Indian Country

Paul Richards
Why Does Jon Tester Want to Log Wild Montana?

Dave Lindorff
Dark Days for Working People (With Three Small Rays of Light)

Marc Levy
Just Like Hanoi Jane

Matt Siegfried
The Good War Goes Hot

Stephen Martin
Panopticon Blues

Ben Sonnenberg
Sembène's Faat Kiné

David Macaray
Casablanca: When Melodrama Trumped History

Charles R. Larson
A Pakistani, Victorian Novel Celebrating Women

David Yearsley
That's Women for You: Abbas Kiarostami's Così

Lorenzo Wolff
Death Rattle and Roll: the Sound From England's Gutters

Poets' Basement
Payne, Anderson and Williams

Website of the Weekend
Hitler Learns of Sarah Palin's Resignation

July 16, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
What Economy?

Afshin Rattansi Iranian Planes and the Hidden Toll of Economic Sanctions

Gregory V. Button
The Search for Environmental Justice in Perry County, Alabama

Evan Knappenberger
Profile of a Deserter

Michelle Bollinger
Why is Leonard Peltier Still in Prison?

Russell Mokhiber
White House to ABC News: No Obama Single-Payer Doc

Belén Fernández
Iranian Penetration, Oh My!

Alice Walker
What is Torture Like? A Letter to Obama

Nicholas Dearden
Paying the Climate Debt: the G-8's Troubling Model

Albert Osueke
Sotomayor and the Identity Mountain

Website of the Day
Sotomayor for the Prosecution

July 15, 2009

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Assassination Bureau

Vijay Prashad
A Political Recession

Dean Baker
Stimulus Arithmetic

Ray McGovern
Cheney Sweating Bullets

Jonathan Cook
Jenin's Model of "Economic Peace"

David Rosen
Shouts From the Gallery: the Sotomayor Hearings and the Culture Wars

Eric Walberg
Uighurs vs. Afghans: a Study in Contrast

Greg Moses
Three Dimensions of a Complete Stimulus Plan

Sousan Hammad
Decolonizing Israel

Binoy Kampmark
The Trial of Charles Taylor

Tracy McLellan
The Story of My Arrest

Website of the Day
11 Days in Saudi Gitmo

July 14, 2009

Eamonn McCann
The Emperors of Bombast: Bono, U2 and the Crisis of World Capitalism

Joanne Mariner
Obama's New Euphemism

Franklin Spinney
The Taliban Rope-a-Dope

Steve Heilig
Walking Mount Tam: an Interview with Gary Snyder

Ali Abunimah
Hamas' Choice

Dave Lindorff
The End of "Nice" Health Care Reform

Nikolas Kozloff
The Politics of Destabilization: McCain and Honduras

Ellen Brown
From Golden State to Subprime State

Alice Slater
How US Missile Defense Plans Sabotaged Nuclear Disarmament Talks With Russia

Ron Jacobs
Protest U.S. Aggression

Joe Allen
The Fight to Save James Hickman in Jim Crow-Style Chicago

Website of the Day
Mel Brooks Does the French Revolution

July 13, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Essence of the Regime

Mike Whitney
The Deflating Economy

P. Sainath
How the World Depression Hits Orissa

Gareth Porter
A US / Iraq Conflict on Iran

Paul Moore
Rap in the Streets, Rap in the Suites

Tim Wise
Off the Deep End: Private Clubs, Public Prejudice

Andy Worthington Former Insider Shatters Credibility of Military Commissions

David Macaray
Cartoon Voices: Serf's Up in Hollywood

Cal Winslow
The Healthcare Worker War

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Spring in the Time of Obama

Website of the Day
Washington's Deep Game with China

July 10-12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Biden Problem

José Pertierra
The Cuban Five: a Cold War Case in a Post-Cold War World

John Ross
After the Honduran Coup

Conn Hallinan
The Settlements and the Quartet

Nikolas Kozloff
C Street Band: Sex Scandals, Moral Hypocrisy and the Far Right Agenda in Latin America

Clifton Ross /
Marcy Rein
U.S. and Honduras: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Good Neighbor

Carl Ginsburg
Summers' Clouded Crystal Ball

Michael Neumann
Say It Loud, Say It Proud: There is No God!

Gilad Atzmon
The Left and Islam: Thinking Outside of the Secular Box

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Parable of the Golden Parachute

Ellen Hodgson Brown
California Dreamin': How the State Can Beat Its Budget Woes

Jim Goodman
Rural America Needs More Than Listening Sessions

Christopher Bickerton
Europe's New Politics of Hard Times

Wendell Potter
Health Care Industry Adopts Tobacco Lobby's Tactics

Dave Lindorff
CIA Lies: Why Isn't Congress in Open Revolt?

David Ker Thomson
Switchbacking Toward Bastille Day

Anthony DiMaggio
The Michael Jackson Feeding Frenzy

Raymond Lawrence
Michael Jackson as Sexual Pervert: the Calumnies of Peter King

Walid El Houri
Neda and Marwa: a Tale of Two Murdered Women

Stephanie Westbrook
Yes, We Camp

Roger Gaess
The Shades of Highgate Cemetery

David Yearsley
Tara, America's Dream House

Kim Nicolini
Caution: Men at Work, Robbing Banks

Poets' Basement
Five Poems From the Japanese

Website of the Weekend
Free Tiga and Hugh!

July 9, 2009

Ronnie Cummings
How Industry Giants are Undermining the Organic Foods Movement

Jonathan Cook
Two-State Solution, Israeli-Style

Nikolas Kozloff
Honduran Destablization, Inc.: Otto Reich and the International Republican Institute

James Bovard
McNamara's Other Body Count

Norman Solomon Afghanistan: the Escalation Scam

Allan Nairn
Indonesia Gets to Pick Its Killer

Andy Worthington
Revamping the Military Commissions

Tomas Borge
The Sadsack Soldiers of Honduras

Nadia Hijab
Palestinian Titanic

Paul Krassner
How Jeff Goldblum Didn't Die

Website of the Day
Dave Lindorff Wants Your Money--Will Give Good Reports

July 8, 2009

Saul Landau
In Amazonia

Dean Baker
The Green Shoots are Dead: Why the Economy Needs a Third Stimulus

Winslow T. Wheeler
Gates, Congress and the F-22

Eric Walberg
Obama in Russia

Ray McGovern
Is Texas Harboring a Torture Decider?

David Rosen
When Sadism Goes Systematic: Prison Rape as Policy

Dr. Mona El Farra
Gaza From a Distance

Ron Jacobs
McNamara and the Post: When Idiocy and Hubris Merge

Benjamin Dangl
High Stakes in Honduras

Alan Farago
How I Almost Pitched McNamara Into the Sea

Website of the Day
Ayatollah So

July 7, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
McNamara: From the Tokyo Firestorm to the World Bank

Uri Avnery
Israeli Court Rebukes Military

Brian M. Downing
Crossing the Helmand

Gary Leupp
Biden, Israel and Iran

Gregory A. Burris
My Brush With Homeland Security

David Macaray
When in Doubt, Blame a Labor Union

Laura Flanders
Obama Hushes Health Care Advocates

Alan Farago
Princple Over Principal

Greg Moses
Texas Patels Take Over Dallas Bank

Dan Bacher
Three Big Lies About the Peripheral Canal

Website of the Day
Tragedy at Toncontin

July 6, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Hussein's FBI Interviews

Diana Johnstone
Zionist Fanatics Practice Serial Vandalism in Paris

Nikolas Kozloff
Honduran Coup to Venezuelan Coup: Same Old Globalizers and Torture School Grads

Gary Leupp
Operation Khanjar Begins

Jonathan Cook
Israel Calls on Ultra-Orthodox Jews to Stop "Arab Takeover"

Tim Wise
Of Fireworks and False Memories

Franklin Lamb
Cynthia McKinney and the Kidnapping of the Spirit of Humanity

Charles R. Larson
Sarah Palin, Plain and Tall

Carlos Benemann
California's Bingo Bondage: Getting Paid in IOUs

Shepherd Bliss
The Soulless Machine: Caught in the Cellphone Snare

Jerry Kroth
Stuart Levey and World War III

Karyn Strickler
A Fell-Swoop Moment Missed

Website of the Day
The Rise in Military-Backed Public Schools

July 3-5, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Gob Smacked

Eamonn Fingleton
Detroit's Collapse: the Untold Story

Jeffrey St. Clair
Is the Bald Eagle Really Back?

Mike Whitney
Running on Empty

Pam Martens
The Parable of Michael Jackson's Debts

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Counter-Revolution Will Not be Tweeted

Paul Craig Roberts
The Big Whorehouse on the Potomac

Patrick Cockburn
The Haggling Over Iraqi Oil

Anthony DiMaggio
A Perilous Path: Iraq and the Language of De-Escalation

Roger Burbach
Honduran Coup: Target Left?

John Ross
Left's Grip on Mexico City Slips

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet Jim Demint: Coup Apologist

Gareth Porter
The Iran Canard

Andy Worthington
Finally, a Trial Date in the African Embassy Bombings Case

Saul Landau
Bad Times, Worse Habits

David Macaray
How We Spend Our Money

Adam Federman
The Recovery That Wasn't

Jane Slaughter Labor's Vague Rally for Health Care

Russell Mokhiber Black Caucus Muzzled on Israeli Kidnapping of McKinney

Robert Jensen
Beyond Independence

Robert Bryce
Hey, Paul Krugman, Here are 2.4 Billion More Climate Traitors

Belén Fernandez
The Situation in Honduras

Missy Comley Beattie
Would Jesus Pack Heat?

C. G. Estabrook
La Cina e Vicina

Stephen Martin
The Fog of Economic War

Charles R. Larson
Adichie on Her Own

Lorenzo Wolff
A Voice Like a Newsreel: the Soul of James Carr and the Civil Rights Movement

Kim Nicolini
The System That Hijacked New York

Poets' Basement
Farrelly, Kazak and Stadler

Website of the Weekend
Paul Krassner v. Larry King

July 2, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
The Wall Street White House

Nikolas Kozloff
Spinning the Honduran Coup

Wendell Potter
Obama's False Friends of Health Care Reform

Ellen Hodgson Brown
California's Empty Wallet

Christian Christensen Iran: Networked Dissent?

Patrick Irelan
Lost in Patagonia

Binoy Kampmark Returning Iraq

Nicola Nasser
Ethnic Cleansing as State Policy

Brian Tokar
Climate Bill: Cap(italize) and Trade(Off)

Dan Bacher
Panama Canal North?

Website of the Day
Scheuer on Immigration: "The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States."

July 1, 2009

Vijay Prashad
Iran and Us

Alberto Vallente Thorensen
Why Zelaya's Actions Were Legal

Paul Craig Roberts
Pirates of the Mediterranean

Robert Weissman
150 Years

Manuel García, Jr.
The New Crisis in Aviation

Victor Figueroa-Clark / Pablo Navarrete
Honduras, a Coup With No Future

Norman Solomon
The NYT and Troop Deaths: Abstract Quality Journalism

Franklin Lamb
Remembering Amnon Kapeliouk

Martha Rosenberg
When Doctors Boo

Diane Rejman
Mothers and Military Lies

Website of the Day
The Color of the Race Problem is White

June 30, 2009

Michael Hudson
Debt Deflation Arrives

Esam Al-Amin
Iran and Washington's Hidden Hand

Benjamin Dangl
Showdown in Honduras

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Doctors Collude in Torture

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah After the Elections

George Wuerthner
Beetle Hysteria ... Again: the Truth About Bugs, Fires and Ecosystems

Todd Gordon
Acceptable Versus Unacceptable Repression

Ron Jacobs
Mark Sanford, Sexual Liberation and LGBT Equality

Kenneth Libby
Conditions for Citizenship

Julian Vigo
Feeling Michael Jackson

Website of the Day
Inside the Mega-Churches

June 29, 2009

Ishmael Reed
The Persecution of Michael Jackson

Nikolas Kozloff
The Coup in Honduras: Obama's Real Message to Latin America?

Clifton Ross
Coups and Constitutions: From Bolivia to Honduras

Patrick Cockburn
Why Iraq is Now the Most Corrupt Country on the Planet

Uri Avnery
Between Tel Aviv and Tehran

Conn Hallinan
Dealing With North Korea: Why Threats and Sanctions Will Backfire

James G. Abourezk
Where the Money Isn't Going

Ralph Nader
The Holes in Obama's Financial Regulation Plan

Carol Miller
Why Fiscal Conservatives Should Love Medicare-for-All

Greg Moses
Jobs First

Website of the Day
Key Leaders of Honduran Coup Trained in the US

June 26-28, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Hate Crimes Bill: How Not to Remember Matthew Shepard

Jeffrey St. Clair
Meet the Retreads: Obama's Used Green Team

Doug Peacock
Elk River: History and the Yellowstone

Daniel Wolff
The Night Before: a Glimpse of the Lenape

Mike Whitney
What the Big Banks Have Won

John Ross
The New York Times and Stolen Elections

David Rosen
Cry, Hypocrite, Cry: the Tradition of Sex Scandals and American Politicians

Emily Ratner
Thoughts on Manhood From the Rafah Tunnel

Gareth Porter
Airstrike Report Belies "Blame Taliban" Line

Farid Marjai
Green, But Not Velvet

Nadia Hijab
The Rift in Iran: Memo to the "Do Something" Brigade

Paul Craig Roberts
Gun Control: What's the Agenda?

Fred Gardner
FDR's Real Defining Moment: Ending Prohibition

Carl Ginsburg
Obama's Father's Day

Paul Watson
Fear and Loathing in Madeira

David Ker Thomson
Nothing

Farzana Versey
The Man in the Mirror: Michael Jackson as Tramp

Geoff Berne
Obama and Charter Schools: The Showdown at Schottenstein

Todd Alan Price
Ohio: Birthplace of Charter Education ... and Opposition to It

Ramzy Baroud
People for Sale in a Hungry World

Jeff Sher
Health Care Showdown

Dr. Carol Paris Despite My Arrest by Max Baucus, I Will Continue to Advocate for Quality Health Care for All

Walter Brasch Adultery as Family Value?

Glen Johnson
The Village and the Wall

Charlotte Laws
Hold the MSG!

Charles R. Larson
Dickens in Morocco, Sort Of

Kim Nicolini
The Erasure of Art

David Yearsley
Yankee Prof Takes on Dallas

Lorenzo Wolff
When the Songs Remain the Same

Poets' Basement
Larson, Davies, McLellan and Gardner

Website of the Weekend
Kayakers vs. Shell Oil

June 25, 2009

Kathy Kelly
Now We See You, Now We Don't

Jack Bratich
You Provide the Tweets, We'll Provide the Info War: the Media and the Iranian Protests

Wendell Potter
The Health Insurance Industry v. Health Care Reform: a Former Insurance Industry Insider Tells All

Charles R. Larson
Don't Cry for Him, Argentina! GOP Sex Scandal of the Week

Alan Farago
The Tears of Mark Sanford

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Firms Accused of Profiting Off Holocaust

Gareth Porter
Khobar Bombings: Telltale Signs of Saudi Fraud

Bitta Mostofi /
Bill Quigley
"You Will Not Get Past Us"

David Macaray
Six Ways to Reinvigorate Labor

Mark Schuller
Haiti's Elections: "Beat the Dog Too Hard"

Website of the Day
Worst Slide Story

June 24, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
How the U.S. Has Secretly Backed Pakistan's Nuclear Program From Day One

Dean Baker
Making Financial Regulation Work

Andy Worthington
The Story of Abdul Rahim al-Ginco

James Bovard
Obama and the Torturers

Diana Gibson /
Ray McGovern
Torture Eats the Soul

P. Sainath
The Age of the Everyday Billionaire

Gareth Porter
Investigating the Khobar Tower Bombing: Why Was Al Qaeda Excluded From the Suspects List?

Robert Alvarez
The Department of Energy's Nuclear Albatross

Dave Lindorff
Medicare for All

Steven Colatrella Remembering Giovanni Arrighi

Website of the Day
Protest as Terrorism

June 23, 2009

David Price
Obama's Classroom Spies

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reels Toward a New Era

James Ridgeway /
Jean Casella
Bi-Partisan Bull on Health Care: Three Ex-Senators Get It Up for the Health Care Industry

Dave Lindorff
Using the Economic Crisis to Attack Workers

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
Puerto Rico: Biotech Island

Gary Leupp
Dennis Ross Moves to the White House

Brian M. Downing
The Erosion of the Mullahs' Monolith

Robert Bryce
Are Theocracies Doomed?

Nicholas Dearden
The G8 is Dead

Yousef Munayyer
Seeing Through Israeli Delay Tactics

Website of the Day
The Great White Father of America

June 22, 2009

Michael Hudson
Obama's (Latest) Surrender to Wall Street

Esam Al-Amin
What Actually Happened in the Iranian Presidential Election? A Hard Look at the Numbers

Chris Floyd
Dexter's Legions in Afghanistan

Jack Z. Bratich
The Fog Machine: Iran, Social Networks and Genetically Modified Grassroots Organizations

Atash Yaghmaian
We Children of the Revolution

Laura Carlsen
Victory in the Amazon

Paul Craig Roberts
The U.S. Regime-Change Recipe for Iran

Vijay Prashad
Gun v. Butter: Now You are Only Poor

Fred Gardner
Charles Lynch Gets a Year and a Day (No Thanks to Eric Holder)

Andy Thayer
The Blank Check: How We Got the Obama-DOMA Debacle

David Macaray
Unions and the Newspaper Crisis

Website of the Day
The Most Spied Upon Town in America?

June 19 - 21, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
I Become an American

Jeffrey St. Clair
Firebrand: Rod Coronado's Flame War

Patrick Cockburn
Who Will Control Iraq's Oil?

Al Giordano
What the Left Should be Learning From Iran

Henry A. Giroux
The Iranian Uprisings and the Challenge of the New Media

Anthony DiMaggio
The Electoral Façade

Paul Craig Roberts
Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated "Color Revolution?"

John Ross
46 Dead Mexican Toddlers: Sacrificed on the Altar of Neoliberalism

Gareth Porter
Spinning Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan

Carl Ginsburg
Obama's Bix Fix: Placating the Bankers, Again

Tommi Avicolli Mecca
40 Years After Stonewall: From Smash the Church to Going to the Chapel

Joe Bageant
Workers' Rights: No Balls, No Gains

Serge Halimi
Protectionism: We've Been Here Before

P. Sainath
Price of Rice, Price of Power in India

Jim Goodman
The Claim Deniers: Why the Health Insurance Industry Doesn't Deserve Our Trust

Dave Lindorff
Obama's Health Care Waterloo

Rannie Amiri
Bush Jumps Over Maine, Carter Lands in Gaza

Robert Fantina
Iran, Obama and McCain

Harvey Wasserman
Big Nuke's Radioactive Hoax in Impoverished Ohio

Walter Brasch
They Got Away With Murder: 12 Angry White People

David Ker Thomson
This Moment's Bill of Rights

Charles R. Larson
No Voice: Telling Her Mother's Story

David Yearsley
Escape From the Torture Chamber

Kim Nicolini
When the Closet is the Culprit

Ben Sonnenberg
Rossellini and the Art of Ambiguity

Poets' Basement
Beatty and Kowitt

Website of the Weekend
Grown in Yellowstone, Slaughtered in Montana

July 22, 2009

Always Wrong; Always Illegal; Always Unjustifiable

How to Argue Against Torture

By BERNARD CHAZELLE

A signatory to the UN Convention Against Torture, the United States "does not torture." Yet abundant evidence indicates that it does, directly or by proxy—and in fact always has. An old American tradition of state-sponsored torture even has its own lexicon: SOA, Kubark, Phoenix, MK-Ultra, rendition, CIA's "no-touch" paradigm, etc. It is quite popular, too. Torture enjoys more than twice the public support in the US that it does in France, Spain, and the UK. One of the most watched TV dramas, 24, is but an extended ode to the glories of torture. The former director of a prominent human rights center at Harvard writes of the judicious use of sleep deprivation, hooding, and targeted assassinations; he concedes the government's need to "traffic in evils." The nation's most celebrated defense attorney recommends "torture warrants" and "the sterilized needle being shoved under the fingernails" ("sterilized" because he is a liberal). The most cited legal scholar in the land writes: "If the stakes are high enough, torture is permissible. No one who doubts that this is the case should be in a position of responsibility."

Anti-torture voices have been left sounding defensive, insecure, incoherent. Yet, while boasting the world's highest incarceration numbers and supermax prisons characterized by a warden as a "clean version of hell," the US has also begun to question its tolerance of torture. The debate is on, and torture is winning. I intend here to lay the foundation for a strong, cogent anti-torture position. It rests upon three principles:

Torture is always wrong;
Torture must be banned by law unconditionally;
Not all torture decisions should be morally codified.

The first two principles reject torture on moral grounds (it's wrong) and legal ones (it's bad). Unfortunately, they do not imply that one should never torture. If, indeed, our only choice is between two acts that are immoral, these two rules alone won't tell us what to do. This central dilemma arises in principle—we can all imagine ourselves in an extreme situation about which we cannot say with certainty that we would not torture—but does it arise in practice? Many say, with some justification, that it does not. Whatever the case may be, there is a hefty price to pay for dismissing the central dilemma on implausibility grounds, as many liberals are wont to do. Once the improbable is deemed morally irrelevant, torture can no longer claim the status of absolute wrong, for there is no such thing as an "absolute-wrong-in-practice." Any serious condemnation of torture must account for the central dilemma.

Hence my third principle. It stipulates that no ethical code (ie, universal decision procedure) should tell a would-be torturer what to do in all situations. This is to avoid rationalization and, beyond it, the dilution of moral responsibility in the hypothetical case where not to torture is no less an immoral option than to do so (the central dilemma). The third principle is a point of meta-ethics. It is not a moral rule per se, but a statement about the inapplicability of moral rules. It is designed to overcome the justificatory purposes embedded in any ethical code. One may object that the central dilemma arises with any moral wrong, so why single it out? Because it lies at the core of the "torture issue" itself, which, with the wide support it enjoys, is indeed an issue. How to aggregate universal moral principles into decision procedures, a central problem in ethics, is in my view the only interesting aspect of the torture question; the rest is straightforward.

Like many, I feel strongly enough about torture to find the very notion of a "torture debate" distasteful. But sentiment alone means nothing. I feel strongly about racism, too. But racism is not wrong because it offends my sensibilities. It is wrong because it violates reason and human dignity. Likewise, if we cannot offer a reasoned account of the absolute wrongness of torture (especially given the wide public support for it) then our impassioned opposition, indispensable though it may be, will still be, strictly speaking, meaningless. It also matters because one cannot fight effectively for a cause one does not understand. Is it a coincidence that torture has remained so popular in this country amidst such an impoverished public discourse?

I. Why Torture Is Always Immoral

What is torture? "I know it when I see it" is a fine answer and rough agreement with common intuition will do. Supermax incarceration and prison rape can be construed as institutionalized forms of torture. For the purpose of this essay, however, I narrow down the definition to the forced exchange of information for the relief of unbearable pain. Much like slavery, torture is coerced trade. To many, its abhorrence requires no empirical evidence: it is a priori, intuitive, and visceral. So much so, in fact, that even asking why seems immoral, as if merely speaking of a ghost might make it appear.

But, if torture is so evil, why is it so hard to explain why? Let's try. Some say a society that allows torture loses its soul and brings shame on its members. This is true, but it explains nothing—at least no more than calling murder wrong because it makes you a bad person. A line often heard is that torture does not work. Never mind the fragility of a proposition that is both unprovable and falsifiable. Even if true, this claim is a gift to the torturers: "Make it work, Mr Inquisitor, and the moral turf is yours." It's like rejecting slavery because "it does not work" or opposing cannibalism on nutritional grounds. Consequentialism is thin gruel against torture. Beware of the sentence that ends with the words, "therefore torture is evil." Better for it to start, "Torture is evil, therefore..."

This brings us to the deontological perspective. Do we recoil from torture because it treats a person only as a means to an end? It is a principled view that might account for our rational rejection of torture, but Kant's Categorical Imperative is too much at variance with Anglo-American norms to explain the instinctive revulsion the practice commonly elicits. (As the death penalty illustrates, note that popularity does not contradict abhorrence.) In his paeans to torture, Dershowitz is merely echoing Bentham and, beyond it, the reigning utilitarianism of our time, which, from conditional welfare to advertising, routinely flouts Kantian ethics. And yet, is there a doubt that the wrongness of torture finds its source, not in a holy book or in the final link of a chain of observations, but deep in humanity's moral intuition? On this we all agree.

Or do we? Few would argue that waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was worse than shooting him in the head. Yet killing does not make us wince the way torture does. Why? Could it be the excruciating pain? Doubtful. Baby Mohammed lost both legs during Shock-and-Awe and, over a 10-hour period, bled to death stuck in the debris of his home, a horror entirely foreseen in its outline, if not its particulars, by the architects of the war. The baby's pain vastly exceeded that of his namesake. Yet if Rumsfeld must one day cross Europe off his travel plans, it will be because of Khalid Mohammed, not baby Mohammed—despite the former SecDef's direct responsibility in the latter's agony. Pain and death do not explain why torture feels so evil.

Then what does? Perhaps the deadly mix of fear, humiliation, abandonment, and open-ended sadism that the practice connotes. The torturer never says, "I go home at 5." Torture stirs in all of us the age-old anxiety of a cruel deity that keeps us forever conscious to suffer an endless agony. Pain, like relativity, distorts time. (A root-canal patient can tell you all about eternity.) Past a certain point, the victim's fear is no longer that he will die but that he won't. Torture is a window into hell, with a satanic god cast as a human sadist. I believe one cannot grasp the role of torture in the imagination without integrating its metaphysical resonance. Torture rehearses eternal damnation. And that's not a good thing, because hell scares the hell out of everyone, even those who don't believe in it.

To add insult to injury, the torturer reflects back to us a magnified image of that repressed speck of sadism buried in all of us. This did not always bother us. God gave Moses not one but two commandments against lust, and not a single one against cruelty; likewise, Augustine deemed cupidity a more serious offense. It was not until Montaigne and Montesquieu that cruelty acquired a special status in moral philosophy. Our revulsion toward torture is hardly universal—children can be astonishingly cruel to animals—but, rather, the sign of a certain liberal disposition. Torture offends us through its frontal assault on human dignity. Beyond subverting free will into "anti-will"—your being tortured does not simply violate you: it makes you violate yourself—it denies something even more fundamental than freedom: personhood. It dehumanizes not only the victim and the torturer, but society as a whole. Or so our modern liberal sensibilities tell us.

II. Why Torture Should Always Be Illegal

Should torture be legalized in exceptional circumstances? The answer is an unequivocal no. The ban must be unconditional. Why? Because grotesquely evil behavior must be criminalized? Pleasing though it may be, this simple answer won't do. We must first examine whether there might not be a utilitarian reason to make legal exceptions. (Even the most committed deontologist will recognize the need to test laws against their consequences.) I will show that there is no room for exceptions by revisiting the three arguments central to the issue: TBS, self-defense, and torture creep. I'll also discuss the criminal prosecution of torturers.

The ticking bomb scenario (TBS) would appear to beg for an exception—see for a definition. (I'll assume the usual conditions of imminence, gravity, proportionality, and certainty, without which TBS is not worthy of consideration.) The first issue to address is consistency. TBS advocates often lack the courtesy to grant the same rights to their enemies. They remain oddly silent on whether, say, the Taliban would be entitled to torture captured American soldiers thought to know about imminent drone attacks. There might appear to be a normative basis for the double standard. After all, we're the good guys and they're not, so why should we grant them the same moral latitude? That's nonsense. Our own code of warfare, such as it is, dictates that it apply equally to both sides—as do the Geneva Conventions. Whether it should be so or not is an interesting philosophical question, but in practice this point is already settled.

The legal issue hangs on the "rarity principle." We all see the need for a law against murder. But do we need a law for a bad act that happens at one millionth the rate of murder? Probably not. Legality should offer only a blurry reflection of morality, not its mirror image. Whereas morals delineate complex fractal lines, laws should follow smooth contours free of singularities. As the saying goes, "Hard cases make bad laws." This is not a weakness of the law but a strength: that's how it can be both universal and enforceable. TBS theorists will agree but say: "Look, 1,000,000/1,000,000 = 1, so an action likely to cause one million deaths at one millionth the rate of murder matches the expected harm of murder, and hence merits its own law; ergo, legalize torture. QED." A three-word refutation: Break the law. No one's yet suggested a new speed limit sign: "55 — Unless You're Taking Your Dying Uncle To The Hospital." Speed up if you must, and pay the price later. Tucking exceptions into law is courting the same trouble as overfitting a machine learning classifier, ie, loss of generalizing power and diminished appeal to universality.

Self-defense was invoked in the infamous Bybee "torture memos." On the face of it, this is preposterous. A torture victim is not a threat. A captive terrorist such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is a culpable bystander, not a culpable aggressor. Therefore, first, the argument would need to appeal to self-preservation and not self-defense; second, this in turn would crash against the accepted legal doctrine that bystanders, even guilty ones, may not be hurt intentionally. Perhaps a legal argument of "distributive" justice could be made that, if harm is unavoidable, it is preferable to inflict it on the guilty party if there is the option. But, by that logic, a gunman who shoots you might be forced to give you his organs to save your life: if one life has to go, hey, guess which one? Trouble is, this constitutes a brand of justice far too alien to our own to be acceptable. To that normative consideration, I would also guard against the slippery notion of "collective self." Most aggressive wars in history have been fought in the name of self-defense. This might then justify the torture of war prisoners when one's country is under attack, thus losing the classical distinction between jus ad bellum (why one may go to war) and jus in bello (how one may fight a war). Even if all other options have been tried, the torture of terrorists cannot be called self-defense.

The case of individual, non-state sponsored TBS is not as clear-cut. You're entitled to stab a man on self-defense grounds if you see him break into your house and try to strangle your daughter. (No one will dispute that your "self" may extend to her.) So why can't you do the same if he refuses to divulge her location after he's kidnapped her and buried her alive with 20 minutes left to live? Simple: because the man is not attacking your daughter. But isn't his silence every bit as much a weapon as his hands? After all, he can wield either one at will to decide her fate. One can draw two distinctions, neither of which resists scrutiny.

The first one is epistemic: your belief that the man knows the burying location of your daughter and that she is still alive cannot match the certainty of your witnessing her strangulation. This can be postulated away—certainty is an accepted part of any serious TBS narrative. (No need to assume here that what you believe is true: only that you have no reason to doubt it.) The other distinction, silence vs strangling, ie, omission vs commission, concerns neither causality nor intentionality—in both cases the man acts willfully to kill. It rests solely on timing, a consideration of no discernable normative relevance. One can, likewise, torture by omission. If the captive were diabetic, it would be torture to withhold his insulin until he talks, since this would fit our characterization of torture as a form of coerced trade. In sum, tying a stand on torture to a distinction between omission and commission is dicey. And even a plausible self-defense plea (which, it is fair to say, would never happen in practice) must give precedence to the rarity principle: break the law if you must.

Torture creep is yet another reason to make the legal ban watertight. The historical record indicates that the slightest legal opening to torture will metastasize into widespread institutional abuse. This "cancerous" spread affects intention, which leads to intimidation, submission, and extraction of false confessions. Even a state that allows torture only in rare cases will soon insist on competent torturers; hence torture schools, torture experts, torture research, and, given the gravity of the matter, an administrative state structure to oversee it all. In other words, it will build itself a "School of the Americas." The evidence is overwhelming: torture intended as a security tool will always morph into an instrument of power. That alone justifies a total ban on torture.

Finally, how much leniency should a judge extend in hypothetical cases of torture that demonstrably save lives? It would seem wise to grant judges enough sentencing discretion to keep would-be torturers in the dark and induce them to proceed on worst-case assumptions. Just as torturers may not invoke the Nuremberg defense, so anyone who orders torture, directly or by proxy, must be held legally responsible. Wartime torture admittedly poses a conundrum. There is empirical evidence that it is an inevitable by-product of aggressive warfare. If so, it may thus fall under the rubric of war crime (like executing children) and lose its categorical singularity. The issue of punishment becomes more complex. In theory, the jurisprudence on war crime should provide the relevant legal authority. Right, but in theory war criminals are dragged before a judge even when their side wins the war. In theory.

If torture is illegal at home, subcontract it overseas. Extraordinary rendition is the process of handing suspects over to third-world dictators with the promise that they won't be tortured and the certainty that they will. If only because of the rank hypocrisy behind it, one should not extend to rendition the customary distinction between directly causing harm and merely allowing it. If anti-torture activism results only in increased rendition, what is being morally gained? Torture is barbaric; rendition is barbaric and hypocritical. It must be an integral part of the fight against torture.

III. Why Not All Torture Decisions Should Be Morally Codified

Most opponents of torture would declare the matter settled: always immoral; always illegal. They would be wrong, for neither morality nor the law can answer the question: were you to face your daughter's kidnapper, may you torture him? The answer, whatever it is, must remain unjustifiable, so as to impose upon you, and you alone, the full moral weight of your action. This is the only subtle point of this essay, so I'll begin with a gentle introduction.

There are two common objections to the TBS question itself, neither of them wise. One is that it is a trap set up by torture lovers to force a small concession from their opponents, shift the debate to "settling the price," and then gloat: "See, we agree!" Of course, it's used as a trap. But the question is legitimate, in fact necessary, and the dreaded shift is easy to avoid. The second objection is that "it never happens," so why even discuss it? This collapses on three grounds. First, the claim is unprovable. Second, if it never happens, why should you care about the moral outcome? (Do you worry about my ethical take on green Martians?) Perhaps you care out of concern for torture creep: if so, address it on its own merits. Third, the philosophical value of hypotheticals is undeniable. Yes, the field of ethics has been hard on fat men being shoved in front of trolleys, but as in mathematics these "singular" points can be the lampposts that light up the dark street. Just as the corners of a triangle tell us all there is to know about its shape, so extreme cases help us read our moral compass.

The unease that accompanies the discussion comes from elsewhere. It stems from a confusion between morals and ethical codes, ie, between moral principles and the decision processes by which we make moral choices. Morality is about right and wrong. A moral (deontological) system may include specific injunctions, "Do not kill," as well as abstract precepts, "The Golden Rule." It is preferably universal in a Kantian (negative) sense, in that it should, at the very least, not contradict its adoption by everyone else: "I may leave a restaurant without paying for my meal" cannot be a moral maxim, for its wide adoption would quickly cause all restaurants to close shop, which in turn would contradict my desire to eat out. Moral systems consist mostly of intuitive, a priori judgments, unshackled from the need for empirical validation. Lying is wrong and so is tormenting a child. These are truisms. But what do we tell a terminally ill child who asks: "Am I going to die?" We lie, of course. Are we thereby signifying that honesty is less important than compassion? Not at all. For example, most of us would agree that empathy may not always excuse perjury. Honesty and compassion are both universal moral values, but their relative ranking may vary depending on the context. Unfortunately, there is no simple rule to tell us which should prevail when. We can always follow our moral intuition. But that can be dangerous: hate, self-interest, prejudice, biases can be all too "intuitive." And we are all so good at lying to ourselves.

Far better for us to turn to an ethical code, ie, a decision procedure to convert our moral beliefs into action. To guard against egoism, we'll try to make it universal so others might want to adopt it, too. We're all familiar with ethical codes: etiquette; chivalry; just-war theory; political ideologies, etc. The conservative code, for example, tells us that the best way for government to help the poor is not to help them at all. This is so weird we might never have come up with anything like it on our own. But it meets the three criteria of an ethical code: it seeks to match our actions with our morals; it is not self-evident (if it were we wouldn't need it); and it is effective (it helps us identify whom to vote for).

The ideal ethical code would be a big handbook—infinitely long, to be precise—with, next to each possible situation, a list of moral actions to choose from. This being somewhat unwieldy, a code will look more like an "algorithm," ie, a coherent set of interconnected generalization and abstraction rules based on representative cases that mesh with our intuitions. A perfect code would have to be complete, meaning that it covers all cases, but that is unrealistic. We might hope for it to be sound, ie, never to prescribe actions that violate our moral intuitions. To fix such violations, Rawls suggested tweaking rules and intuitions back and forth until we reach some sort of stable, "reflective" equilibrium. Inevitably, an ethical code will be on occasion intractable, meaning that it may actually tell us not to do X in situation Y but we're just too dumb to figure that out by the time Y has passed. The complexity of a code must be honored. It is in fact unethical to gerrymander moral boundaries to make it easier to lead a moral life—Bush tried to do just that with his "You're with us or against us." Naturally, to adopt an ethical code is itself a moral decision. (The vigilant reader will immediately spot the self-referential implication but I'll leave that one for another day.)

It is beyond dispute that an ethical code that advises us to lie to the dying child can be sound. But can all moral dilemmas be resolved by sound ethical codes? No code can be expected to be complete and always tractable, so the only reasonable answer is no. Fine, but what about torture? A ruling cannot be derived a priori, unless perhaps one considers torture a wrong universally greater than all others, a proposition clearly untenable. So what do we do? David Luban argues on incompleteness grounds that moral systems (hence ethical codes) should not apply to TBS. I agree, but for somewhat different reasons. I plant a flag right in the middle of the TBS swamp with the sign, "No Ethical Code Here." By that, I am not simply stating the impossibility or intractability of always reaching a decision via a universal code, something of which I cannot be sure. Rather, I am decreeing it. I disallow any code for TBS not because I have to (Luban's position), but because I choose to. My rejection of an ethical code appeals to an existentialist intuition. If morality is going to be incapable of helping us decide, then our choice should engage us fully so as to avoid any rationalization. It should be the ultimate act of free will. The would-be torturer must accept full moral responsibility and be denied both alibis: "My code made me do it" and "I was confused." The latter says that even incompleteness is no excuse. Here is a quick explanation.

Considering the real-life story of a young Frenchman in the 1940s torn between his urge to fight the Germans to avenge the execution of his brother and his desire to stay with his heartbroken mother, Sartre reviewed various moral systems to highlight the difficulty of teasing ethical guidance out of them. His point was that ethical codes are dressed up as advisory devices when in fact they serve only justificatory purposes. In other words, how do we know that ethical codes aren't rationalization engines in disguise, mechanisms for evading responsibility, sophisticated dodges? This points to the exculpatory nature of an ethical code. The neat thing about being advised, you see, is that we can always blame the advisor.

Sophie is given a choice: to kill one of her two children or have both of them killed. She has no choice but to act immorally. This is not my judgment but hers; more accurately, it is an a posteriori inference from the knowledge that she'll be racked with guilt for the rest of her life. Sophie's choice falls within the world of morals but beyond the human reach of moral guidelines. The injunction, "Spare the child who..." is morally impermissible. Sophie is thus able to act in a way that, though necessarily immoral, is not ethically mistaken. No one can ever tell her, "You saved the wrong child." In fact, we so believe that no ethical code should apply that we'd be shocked to hear Sophie justify her choice by appealing to some holy book claiming that God prefers, say, older siblings. "My religion made me do it" would reek of bad faith (in the Sartrean sense of self-lying) and suggest that perhaps Sophie preferred her older child but blamed her faith instead. It is morally imperative for her to renounce any ethical code and take full responsibility for her choice—or, as an existentialist would put it, to admit that she is condemned to be free.

The kidnapping story is identical except in one key aspect: the temptation of a code. Faced with the kidnapper and the mental picture of your daughter imploring you to do everything in your power to save her, your intuition is likely to whisper in your ear, "Torture the bastard!" Unlike Sophie's, your choice may even seem entirely obvious. This intuition may help you decide but, even after integrating the moral relevance of family, it still violates the deontological constraint of treating torture as a universal moral wrong: after all, your intuition might be quite different if the "bastard" were your son and the captive girl the past killer of your daughter. To give up on an ethical code altogether may be quite difficult, in fact. But this is the only way to respect the absolute wrongness of torture. If you're going to do it, you'd better be ready to "own it" and take all the blame. In this instance, free will implies carrying out, and accepting to carry out, your own decision in the belief that you would do it again in the future. In other words, neither of these excuses is acceptable: "I was foolish"; or "I did what I thought was best but that was against my will."

Consider a variant of TBS where torturing one person prevents the torturing of two other people elsewhere. Should you do it? Basic utilitarianism of rights says yes. The danger is that moral calculus is nothing but the exercise of an ethical code, hence a rationalization. I am not saying this is not allowed to influence your decision—one cannot shield oneself from all moral calculus. I am saying that in the end you must be the only owner of your decision. You must accept the guilt for your action as the necessary consequence of your freedom and you must reject any attempt to justify your choice. What if you are ordered to torture? Assuming a moral choice is possible, ie, disobedience is not punishable by death, you should refuse to torture unless you are confident that you would give the same order—were you in a position to do so—if you also knew that you had to carry it out yourself. (Merely believing that you would give the order is not enough.)

The final verdict on torture: always wrong; always illegal; always unjustifiable.

Bernard Chazelle is a professor of computer science at Princeton University and author of The Discrepancy Method: Randomness and Complexity. He can be reached at: chazelle@CS.Princeton.EDU 

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