WSJ's moral preening on torture

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

I love the smell of coercive interrogations and tribunals in the morning, smells like……Victory.

The Wisconsin State Journal made a conscious decision to move to the left with their editorial voice. I don’t know why, although perhaps being the largest paper in a very liberal town may have something to do with it. They once were considered a few steps right of center, which when translated by the progressives here made them arch-conservative, but they have never strayed very far right. Now they seem determined to prove their “moderate” stance by taking gratuitous shots at easy Republican/conservative targets like Sensenbrenner and of course W. Their recent torture editorial is a case in point. I took them partially to task here and did their editorial board the courtesy of copying them and explaining why their piece was chock full of falsehoods. I requested space on the opinion page to refute the unsupported allegations they made that the President requested authority to conduct torture. I received a response from Scott Milfred, editorial page editor, who ignored my arguments completely and reiterated his previous position that “Torture is bad mmmmkay, W asked to torture so, W is bad mmmmkay” He summed his position up thusly:

“It is a fact that the Geneva Conventions established standards of behavior in military conflicts that prohibit the use of all forms of torture. President Bush sought to escape the torture provision that bans outrages against personal dignity”

I answered him with the following and also a number of other fact-based points to rebut the moral preening of their editorial:

That is simply incorrect. The prohibition banning outrages against personal dignity is a separate provision within Common Article 3 not a “torture” provision.

The rest of my education of the WSJ's editorial board and the opinion piece they feared to run

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WSJ's moral preening on torture

I love the smell of coercive interrogations and tribunals in the morning, smells like……Victory.

The Wisconsin State Journal made a conscious decision to move to the left with their editorial voice. I don’t know why, although perhaps being the largest paper in a very liberal town may have something to do with it. They once were considered a few steps right of center, which when translated by the progressives here made them arch-conservative, but they have never strayed very far right. Now they seem determined to prove their “moderate” stance by taking gratuitous shots at easy Republican/conservative targets like Sensenbrenner and of course W. Their recent torture editorial is a case in point. I took them partially to task here and did their editorial board the courtesy of copying them and explaining why their piece was chock full of falsehoods. I requested space on the opinion page to refute the unsupported allegations they made that the President requested authority to conduct torture. I received a response from Scott Milfred, editorial page editor, who ignored my arguments completely and reiterated his previous position that “Torture is bad mmmmkay, W asked to torture so, W is bad mmmmkay” He summed his position up thusly:

“It is a fact that the Geneva Conventions established standards of behavior in military conflicts that prohibit the use of all forms of torture. President Bush sought to escape the torture provision that bans outrages against personal dignity”

I answered him with the following and also a number of other fact-based points to rebut the moral preening of their editorial:

That is simply incorrect. The prohibition banning outrages against personal dignity is a separate provision within Common Article 3 not a “torture” provision.

The rest of my education of the WSJ's editorial board and the opinion piece they feared to run

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