Being Picky

I read this piece today, in The Plum Line, on the WhoRunsGov website:

I know some of you will say it doesn’t matter whether torture worked or not. This is true, as far as it goes. But there’s a large body of evidence not only that torture doesn’t work generally, but that that it didn’t work specifically when implemented by the U.S. (or didn’t work any better than non-criminal methods would have worked). So while I’ve seen a lot of well-reasoned arguments about why the debate shouldn’t be framed as did the torture work or not, I would say that is merely one part of a wide-ranging debate, and there’s no reason to concede that point to Cheney’s mendacity.

Perhaps I'm being picky, but I regard that as a tricky set of words. Let me try it again, with the trickiness emphasized:

I know some of you will say it doesn’t matter whether torture worked or not. This is true, as far as it goes. But there’s a large body of evidence not only that torture doesn’t work generally, but that that it didn’t work specifically when implemented by the U.S. (or didn’t work any better than non-criminal methods would have worked). So while I’ve seen a lot of well-reasoned arguments about why the debate shouldn’t be framed as did the torture work or not, I would say that is merely one part of a wide-ranging debate, and there’s no reason to concede that point to Cheney’s mendacity.

That those phrases make the concept tricky is apparent by what happens when you take them out.

I know some of you will say it doesn’t matter whether torture worked or not. This is true. But there’s a large body of evidence not only that torture doesn’t work generally, but that that it didn’t work specifically when implemented by the U.S. So while I’ve seen a lot of well-reasoned arguments about why the debate shouldn’t be framed as did the torture work or not, I would say that is one part of a wide-ranging debate, and there’s no reason to concede that point to Cheney’s mendacity.

Not quite a weasel-worded now, is it? Which to me means that those phrases provide a back door, an escape hatch. I know there's a time and place for that kind of thing; I even acknowledge that Obama would use them. I would like to think, though, that when talking about torture, he'd be clear. Whether torture works or not, it's the action of a reprehensible and subcivilized nation.