Ottawa

Applying the human rights standards of The Fugitive

Leonard Stern looks on the bright side of torture.

As for the Red Cross report, it’s scary to see the ease with which a modern, democratic government can ignore the taboo against torture, not to mention principles of due process.

That’s the intellectual reaction. Then there’s the emotional satisfaction of reading about CIA officers doing it the Chicago Way and taking monsters like Khaled Shaik Mohammed to the “verge of death and back again,” as Mohammed put it.

I’d be suspicious of anyone who reads the report and experiences only one response but not the other.

Here again, posted this time for Stern’s emotional satisfaction, is the sworn affidavit of Omar Khadr. And here, again, is the Washington Post report detailing how useless—and, in fact, counter-productive—the emotionally satisfying treatment of Abu Zubaydah proved to be.

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