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Depends what you mean by 'torture'

Tortured evidence will be admissible... because it may not be torture.
March 2, 2006  |  
 
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According to TalkLeft: "The Guantanamo military tribunals are underway... [and] evidence obtained under torture will be admissible."

And why is that? Oh, it's complicated. It's because our definitions of torture vary. Which, of course, is part of the problem and diabolical-ness of this administration and its followers. Don't like to be restricted by the Constitution, precedent, the spirit of America? Just change words, definitions, categorizations...

Colonel Peter Brownback declined to commit to a blanket ban on evidence obtained as a result of torture. "What you and I mean by torture could be different," Brownback told defense lawyer Major Tom Fleener.
So, it's unclear at this point, but it looks as though, we're (sort of) not taking the evidence obtained by torture so much as we're just arguing that this or that isn't really necessarily torture? Or that we're taking it from some tortures?

Of course, all this torturing of language and reality is brilliant for another reason: torture doesn't really work. So maybe if we stop calling it torture the evidence will be more, uhh, how you say? factually truthy? (TalkLeft)

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Evan Derkacz is a New York-based writer and contributor to AlterNet.

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