LESLIE STAHL: “If someone's in custody, as in Abu Ghraib, and they are brutalized by a law enforcement person, if you listen to the expression ‘cruel and unusual punishment,’ doesn't that apply?”
SCALIA: “No, No!”
STAHL: “Cruel and unusual punishment?”
SCALIA: “To the contrary. Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment? I don't think so.”
STAHL: “Well, I think if you are in custody, and you have a policeman who's taken you into custody…”
SCALIA: “And you say he's punishing you?”
STAHL: “Sure.”
SCALIA: “What's he punishing you for? You punish somebody…”
STAHL: “Well because he assumes you, one, either committed a crime…or that you know something that he wants to know.”
SCALIA: “It's the latter. And when he's hurting you in order to get information from you…you don’t say he's punishing you. What’s he punishing you for? He's trying to extract…”
STAHL: “Because he thinks you are a terrorist and he's going to beat the you-know-what out of you….”
SCALIA: “Anyway, that’s my view, and it happens to be correct.”
No, Justice Scalia, your view is not correct. On the contrary, it displays (yet again) a deep and profound ignorance. Justice Scalia shares a common trait with many ultraconservatives - a lack of that intuition about others that many people take for granted. A complete and total lack of empathy, and a corresponding inability to look the truth of human behavior in its face.
“Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment? I don't think so.” Come on, that statement is absurd on its face.
Here’s the definition of torture from the United Nations Convention Against Torture:
... the term “torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Part I, Article I (United Nations, Dec. 10, 1984).
“Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment?” Only the entire world!
“What’s he punishing you for?” For failing to provide the information the torturer is seeking, or to confess to whatever the torturer wants a confession about, that’s what. Give me a break!
There is simply no way to defend Scalia’s take on torture in any logical, rational way. He is clearly bullshitting, he knows he’s bullshitting, and yet when the question comes before him on the Court, he will continue to bullshit, and people will suffer as a result. Innocent people too.
It is unconscionable.
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