Apparently, the Senate in its infinite foolhardiness has attached a rider to a defense spending bill that would ban the U.S. government from engaging in the practice of torture outside the United States. President Bush, in his infinite wisdom, has threatened to veto the entire bill if the anti-torture language in it is agreed on by the House of Representatives in conference.
There is, I believe, a place for torture in U.S. operations. If a military unit, in the heat of battle, captures an enemy combatant, it may be urgent and important to find out what combatant knows, to save American lives. If the enemy is doing his job properly, he'll refuse to tell. If the unit commander is doing his job properly, he'll do whatever is necessary to find out. Under such circumstances, it's nice to have a willing sergeant on hand who knows something about the effects of burning splinters under the fingernails.
The major problem with this is that there is an old saw to the effect that "no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy." Most battles don't go as expected by either side, and a lot of improvisation has to be done. Which means that within an hour or so of his capture, our enemy combatant's information won't be worth the price of those splinters shoved under his fingernails. By the time he's remanded to Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo, most of what he knows will be worthless, and what remains will not be very topical.
At this point, of course, torture has long since receded from the status of a necessary evil to that of a convenient one, or even, perhaps more commonly, of a simple sadistic pleasure.
There should be a law against torture. Yes, there may be exceptions when it is necessary. But write the law to address the usual circumstances, not the exceptions. Let a court ultimately decide whether there were mitigating circumstances in some particular case, and give the culprit a mild slap on the wrist rather than shoving burning slivers under his fingernails.
I saw a news-note in yesterday's paper to the effect that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, now visiting in China, complained that China's massive defense spending indicated some sort of global ambition on the part of that nation. This, of course, is a very awful thing to say about any country, except maybe ...
Last time I heard figures about defense spending, the United States was spending as much, annually, as the next ten nations combined. If we assume (theoretically) that China is in second place, and spending as much as the next nine nations combined, that means that China is spending about half as much as the United States on defense (and, in passing, that each Chinese citizen contributes slightly under 12% as much to defense as each American citizen). I guess I could make some sort of comment here about pots calling kettles black.
Of course, it would hardly surprise me to discover that China does have global ambitions. There may be countries in the world (Liechtenstein springs immediately to mind) that don't, but it would hardly be surprising if the most populous nation in the world, with one of the fastest-growing economies and, like all the rest of us, a resource problem were to look to spread its influence abroad. After all, it has had, over the last half century or so, such a good example of global ambition to imitate.