The truth was always out there. The United States of America tortures political prisoners. After torture was redefined by pettifoggers to exclude torture, President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who had far more political prisoners penned up in Cuba at once than did Fidel Castro during his entire dictatorship, insisted that this great nation of ours does not use “torture.” But only fools are fooled by the words of professional prevaricators.

The awful truth about torture, that it causes a great deal of suffering to everyone concerned, including the inquisitors themselves, and that it does not work, certainly does not bother patriotic people who hate the enemies of their pater, whether that father is in heaven or on earth. Anything whatsoever, otherwise condemned as immoral and even barbaric and monstrous, is justified under the rubric of patriotism. Of course lying is satanic. Yet it is said there can be no god without a corresponding satan, no truth absent lies; in sum, no good without complementary evil. In any case, as history proves, to call a liar a liar is not to condemn him when he is a patriot who believes he is doing the right thing sanctioned by that heavenly father whose authority is far greater than that of any earthly father.

Carl Schmitt, doctor of jurisprudence, author of philosophical totalitarianism, tutelary father of several policies of the Bush administration, embraced lying as the right way to get the right things done. Lying is a necessary means to obtain the right end, he thought, especially in a democracy, where so many factions are at odds.  Torture, if contrary to law, would be quite all right according to his extralegal approach, and legal as well, provided that the law prohibiting the crime were suspended by executive fiat.  He argued in favor of the implementation of emergency dictatorial powers so that the “right” thing could be done. For instance, he condoned Hitler’s indefinite suspension of the Weimar constitution.

Ultimately, as the Prussian forefathers of Germany’s New Conservatism – adopted by American thinkers and dubbed neo-conservatism - who admired and misinterpreted Hobbes insisted, might is right, hence might makes right, not vice versa. Does not the deity, especially the deity identified by the pagan term “god”, stand for the absolute, unmitigated power that everyone wants and worships? They admired Machiavelli too. Machiavelli had a much better world in mind than the one at hand, but his experience told him that many devious means were necessary for its realization. However, to paraphrase the lawyers, a prince should do his best avoid the mere appearance of impropriety, especially when his methods are improper. Those methods might include covering up his improper conduct – are lawyers disbarred for the mere appearance of misconduct, when no misconduct can be proved?

The truth was out there. We suspected it all along – the highest officials of this great nation of ours were lying about the evidence which they said gave the nation preemptory cause for destroying a sovereign state, and about the illegal methods for eliticiting further false evidence from suspicious persons.  But the awful truth is no problem for those who appreciate the use of prefabricated pretexts for doing whatever they wanted to do in the first place. Moreover, if one lies long enough, the lies seem to be true . The interrogators believed the infamous prisoner had already told them everything he knew without being tortured, and certain line officers thought the brutality to be completely unnecessary, but a highly placed lawyer opined that torture was necessary even if no useful information was to be gained. Indeed, the CIA, under sway of the prevailing hysterical confabulations, faithfully believed that he must know something else. The fact of the matter was that there was no way to tell if the prisoner was withholding information, but as long as interrogators believed there must be some information to be had, that was sufficient ground to continue the torture.

Officials came over from headquarters to watch the last session of torture. Maybe the officials enjoyed it, but other observers did not – the tormenting of the prisoner reportedly distressed his captors, who were traumatized by the depths of misery and degradation the captive was subjected to. Despite their distress, they believed the torture was necessary. Those in favor of the brutality associated their discomfort with normal human sympathy, and their willingness to continue the brutality with their sense of service to a higher, supposedly just cause. But we suspect their discomfort was due to their sense of the grave injustice that they were doing, and the doing of it was continued due to their subservience to authority. We give them credit for their distress, for the true Fascist Type would have thought nothing of the misery inflicted, or would even have enjoyed the suffering in the subject.  Notwithstanding that credit, their distress indicates they knew they were doing wrong, and they should be charged with war crimes. So should the CIA officers and administration lawyers who gave the go-ahead, and so should the president and vice-president if they ordered or condoned the brutality that is presently degrading the United States far more than it debased the captive at the time.

In his defense, former Vice President Cheney claimed that the brutality did not go too far.  If the face of political evil does not lie, he probably feels that it did not go far enough. Other former officials of the Bush administration believe the brutality was righteous. Michael V. Hayden and Michael B. Mukasey publicly stated that the revelations of torture due to the declassification of the documents “will be to invite the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened intelligence gather in the past, and we will came to sorely regret on  Sept 11, 2001.”

In other words, revelations of criminal activity including crimes against humanity committed under the guise of patriotism will convert the perpetrators into the same sort of law-abiding cowards and weaklings they are supposed to be serving by doing their illegal dirty work for them. This brings to mind the question as to who the cowards are – are they not the bullies and thugs who hide behind the big guns?

Now President Barrack Hussein Obama, who is billed as the instrument of CHANGE, has eschewed recriminations.  If there are no punitive consequences for reprehensible conduct, it shall recur time and time again – perhaps when the current president feels covert torture must be relied upon to save the nation from an imminent threat. President Obama does not plan on prosecuting the interrogators who were merely doing their patriotic duty under orders from higher-ups. “We were only doing what we were told, we doing our patriotic duty,” claimed Nazi officers charged with crimes against their fatherland and humanity.

“Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past,” President Obama declared. Not to lay the blame is to condone the behavior of those who should be blamed and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. No doubt President Obama would pardon the likes of President Bush and Vice President Cheney if they were indicted for patriotic crimes. So what has changed in this regard? Nothing: except that we Americans speak of our homeland instead of our fatherland or motherland. Patriotism is still the last refuge of scoundrels, if not the first one.