Representation

Say you are someone taken captive by a government. Say said government whisks you away to a secret facility, where you are stripped, cavity searched, shoved naked into a room, given irregular portions of food at irregular hours, are denied sunlight, are innundated with white noise, are forced to stand for a day, or squat for two, or waterboarded. After a while, you lose track of who you are, or where you are, and your entire world becomes the walls of your cell. The outside world means nothing, and you are entirely dependent upon your captors.

Meanwhile, your family is wondering what happened to you. Where did you go? Where are you? Repeated requests for information both from your government and theirs are met with silence or outright denials. Rumors abound of "housing facilities" in other countries where people who fall into a "gray" status are kept. Is their child there? How would they find out? Could they sue? If they could, who would they sue?

Do you realize at this point that in the eyes of the world at large you no longer exist?

Do you realize that this fate could befall any of us at any moment?

Here is my issue: I support torture. Yes, yes I do. I believe that the application of torture (when carefully applied) can serve the best interests of the public at large. I am perfectly fine with sacrificing the right of the one to protect the rights of the many. Perfectly. I am not naive. The U.S. does torture; we just do not do it domestically. We do it in other countries, or through intermediaries, so at first blush we aren't getting our hands dirty. Don't lie to me and tell me we don't torture. Tell the public the truth - say yes, we torture, and we saved xxx amount of lives last year in a proposed terrorist attack due to information we were able to extract. Don't obscure the truth. Don't pass laws saying "combatants must be treated according to the Geneva Convention" and then by Executive Order sneakily circumvent this by passing your own bill that allows you to continue your offshore information collection programs.

Here are my two challenges: 1) I think everyone, regardless of national origin or religious preference (or plain nuttiness) has the basic right to legal representation. I find it immoral for any government to deny any detainee access to legal counsel. I find it inhumane to deny any detainee access to their families. But how do you allow someone to have legal counsel if that person doesn't technically exist? If the facility in which they are stored (Poland, Egypt, Israel, Mexico, Cuba, Germany, Russia) doesn't exist on paper? If the transport of those non existing people - flight manifests, private and government vehicle mileage reports and satellite tracks, etc. - is deliberately muddied thus obscuring the trail?

Lastly, so you've tortured this person you plucked from the field months ago, and reduced him to a shell of himself. What do you do with him? You can't take him home - he'd talk. You can't release him in a hospitable country...he'd still talk. What do you do?

Of course, knowing us, we'd just outsource his execution.