"Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved a plan that brought unconventional interrogation methods to Iraq to gain intelligence about the growing insurgency, ultimately leading to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, the New Yorker magazine reported on Saturday."
- Reuters, May 15

President Bush has said that Americans are not the kind of people who commit this kind of act. Yet many Americans have committed these acts, which were apparently planned and approved, then carefully staged and recorded. How do we persuade young American men and women to behave like this? It's simple:

 •Declare war on terrorism. Since terrorism is not a nation, we need to define terrorism so we can wage war against it.

Terrorism is anything done by a terrorist; a terrorist is anyone who commits an act of terrorism. Therefore, when we detect a terrorist act, there must be a terrorist in the neighborhood.

Terrorist acts include blowing up people, shooting at Americans, voting against a Republican-sponsored bill, opposing a GOP-sponsored judicial candidate, being a member of the NEA, or carrying nail scissors in your carry-on. If we're sufficiently audacious, we can identify as a terrorist anyone who opposes policies of the administration.

• Declare that America is a special nation. Because America is the strongest nation on earth, because our economic system is the most successful, and because it is our sacred duty to spread democracy everywhere, international law does not apply to us. We can abrogate treaties, fight preemptive wars without international approval, and declare ourselves exempt from international tribunals.

• Declare that these are special times. Because terrorists do not care about the rule of law, we need to establish special procedures for dealing with them. We can imprison them for undeclared reasons, deny them due process and detain them indefinitely, because they are too dangerous to be released. We can do this with any citizen of any country, including our own.

• Catch as many terrorists as you can. We have already identified Saddam Hussein as a terrorist, because he opposed American policies in the Middle East. This allowed us to invade Iraq and remove him. Now that we are in charge of Iraq, Iraqis are shooting at us and blowing people up. They are against us, therefore they are not with us, therefore they are also terrorists and friends of terrorists. We are justified in rounding them up.

• Get better intelligence. Terrorists are mysterious, and we have failed in the past to detect their presence before they committed terrorist acts. So we now need to improve our intelligence. Because we have rounded up a lot of people and put them in prison, we have a ready source of information. Even if some of them are not terrorists, they know someone who is. Because we dare not fail to extract the information, we have developed new techniques involving discomfort, humiliation, disorientation and fear. They worked well in Afghanistan against suspected members of Al-Qaida. In fact, they were found to be more effective than traditional methods, and because they do not destroy the detainee's body, they're not really torture.

And so you have it: The people we have detained must be terrorists, or they would not be opposing our occupation. If they are not terrorists, they probably know someone who is. Our intelligence services are not going to fail again to identify the enemy. Because we have detained these people in this special time, they have no rights. Because anything is justified to prevent terrorism, it is our duty to practice the kind of interrogation on them that will yield the desired information.

International law cannot be allowed to put our soldiers and citizens in danger, wherever we have decided to insert them. The logic has come straight from the mouths of President Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft. The conclusion is clear, and the result has been caught on film for the world to see.

© Copyright 2004 Star Tribune

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