Andrew Sullivan on torture

Read what Andrew Sullivan has to say on the torture of Abu Zubaydah and on torture in general:

Notice what the Zubaydah case tells us about the key argument of torture advocates like Charles Krauthammer: that torture should only be used when we already know that someone has actionable information on an imminent catastrophic threat. We're five years into the Bush torture regime and despite hundreds - and possibly thousands - of torture sessions, this was never, ever the case. Charles' abstract argument has been rendered completely moot by the evidence of the past five years. The United States made the decision to torture Zubaydah after he had already given helpful information - solely because they suspected he had more - and not in response to any knowledge of any imminent, catastrophic threat. In the beginning - not even in the end - torture became its own rationale, creating a need for torturers to justify their war crimes by finding more information through more torture, and unleashing the sadism and evil that exists in every human heart - even the most trained and professional. And then the war crimes created a need to destroy the evidence of war crimes and so the criminality of the government deepened, cloaked in the secrecy of national security. and now we are caught between an acceptance that the president is a war criminal and the necessity to keep fighting a vital war.