US Supreme Court judge Antonin Scalia says some physical interrogation could be used on a suspect in the event of an imminent threat, such as a bomb set to go off.
Scalia told BBC, “You can’t come in smugly and with great self-satisfaction and say, ‘Oh, it’s torture, and therefore it’s no good.”
Justice Scalia said it would be “extraordinary” to assume that the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment applied to “so-called” torture in the face of imminent threat. He said that the Constitution “is referring to punishment for crime.”
But “is it really so easy,” he said, “to determine that smacking someone in the face to determine where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited in the Constitution?”
“It would be absurd to say you couldn’t do that,” the justice said. “And once you acknowledge that, we’re into a different game. How close does the threat have to be? And how severe can the infliction of pain be?”
This is just the sort of thinking we ought to expect from Cheney hunting partner and fellow moral reprobate Scalia. It glibly masks what's not said.
For example, who on this planet believes that security services wouldn't freely smack someone in the face if they believed that necessary to discover the whereabouts of a hidden bomb? But this isn't about a smack across the face, is it? Scalia tacitly admits that when he concedes the issue becomes one of justification of torture - cause and extent. How close does the threat have to be and how severe can the infliction of pain be?
What Scalia deliberately omits is the real issue - how legitimate does the threat have to be? His sanction would absolve a torturer who could claim an "honest but mistaken" belief that something dire was imminent. What if it's nothing more than a perceived threat, something based on ginned-up "intelligence" of the sort that Bush manipulated to justify invading Iraq? With enough wiggle room, anything is excusable, there is no excess.
No, I'm sorry. Torture needs to remain illegal because claiming that it all depends on circumstances admits just too many vagaries into the calculation of right and wrong, so many as to render judgment virtually impossible and meaningless.
Scalia then went on to show the BBC audience what a knuckle-dragger he is by wading into the death penalty issue:
“If you took a public opinion poll, if all of Europe had representative democracies that really worked, most of Europe would probably have the death penalty today,” he said. Excuse me, Tony, "representative democracies that really worked?" You mean like your own, the United States of America? This man is positively delusional.
Scalia told BBC, “You can’t come in smugly and with great self-satisfaction and say, ‘Oh, it’s torture, and therefore it’s no good.”
Justice Scalia said it would be “extraordinary” to assume that the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment applied to “so-called” torture in the face of imminent threat. He said that the Constitution “is referring to punishment for crime.”
But “is it really so easy,” he said, “to determine that smacking someone in the face to determine where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited in the Constitution?”
“It would be absurd to say you couldn’t do that,” the justice said. “And once you acknowledge that, we’re into a different game. How close does the threat have to be? And how severe can the infliction of pain be?”
This is just the sort of thinking we ought to expect from Cheney hunting partner and fellow moral reprobate Scalia. It glibly masks what's not said.
For example, who on this planet believes that security services wouldn't freely smack someone in the face if they believed that necessary to discover the whereabouts of a hidden bomb? But this isn't about a smack across the face, is it? Scalia tacitly admits that when he concedes the issue becomes one of justification of torture - cause and extent. How close does the threat have to be and how severe can the infliction of pain be?
What Scalia deliberately omits is the real issue - how legitimate does the threat have to be? His sanction would absolve a torturer who could claim an "honest but mistaken" belief that something dire was imminent. What if it's nothing more than a perceived threat, something based on ginned-up "intelligence" of the sort that Bush manipulated to justify invading Iraq? With enough wiggle room, anything is excusable, there is no excess.
No, I'm sorry. Torture needs to remain illegal because claiming that it all depends on circumstances admits just too many vagaries into the calculation of right and wrong, so many as to render judgment virtually impossible and meaningless.
Scalia then went on to show the BBC audience what a knuckle-dragger he is by wading into the death penalty issue:
“If you took a public opinion poll, if all of Europe had representative democracies that really worked, most of Europe would probably have the death penalty today,” he said. Excuse me, Tony, "representative democracies that really worked?" You mean like your own, the United States of America? This man is positively delusional.
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