Bill Clinton warned against "wide torture approval" today in an interview with NPR.   He noted that any decision to use harsh treatment in interrogating suspects should be subject to court review.   "You don't need blanket advance approval for blanket torture."

Maybe you don't need blanket approval for torture but you certainly do need to define what constitutes torture.   That's true whether you are looking for a way to instruct interrogators about what they cannot do or you are a judge trying to discern whether a line has been crossed.   The comments this year regarding torture suggest that playing music too loudly, sleep deprivation, or placing a book on a toilet constitute torture.   How loud is "too loud?"   When is a person said to be deprived of sleep?   How many hours does he need?   Is it torture if a cell faces the east and the sun comes up before the prisoner has obtained some pre-set amount of sleep?   Can we codify that certain books can never be placed on a toilet?   What else needs clarification?   Is allowing a prisoner's foot fungus to go too far torture?   What about allergies?   If we do not keep these prisoners completely physically fit, are we not torturing them?   Should we require a course of exercise?   When does that cross the line into torture.

Don't give me a wink and a nod and claim, "heck, we all know what torture is."   If I do what I think is right and fair, but you think it is torture, tell me why in objective terms.   I cannot handle my duties if every motion I make must be subjected to court review.   And those courts need some sort of bright line demarcation of what constitutes torture or they cannot conduct their inquiry into whether my actions have crossed the line.   Should another court oversee their inquiry?   Do we need another court to oversee the inquiry overseeing the inquiry?   This is not how rational societies work.   At some point, the rule of law (as opposed to the rule of men) must require objective standards which can be understood by the ordinary, common man and woman.   Without law, we have despotism of the wise men.   And that is subject to the whims of those who would call themselves wise.

The Reuters story discussing Clinton's comments says, "Clinton warned against circumventing international standards on prisoner treatment, citing U.S. abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, criticism of treatment at the Guantanamo Bay prison for suspected terrorists and a secret CIA prison system outside the United States."   He said, "The president says he's just trying to get the rules clear about how far the CIA can go when they're when they whacking these people around in these secret prisons."

Well, first off, let's dispense with Abu Ghraib since it is an example not of systematic torture during interrogation.   Rather it is an example of the acts of a few deranged people who were perhaps extremely poorly supervised.   The prison is a big place and it has never been alleged that these abuses were systematic or deliberately performed at the direction of higher ups.   They certainly weren't used as any sort of device with respect to the conduct of interrogations.

Guantanamo is another issue entirely.   There the most damning evidence of "torture" was the placing of the Qu'ran on toilets.   Perhaps this was systematic or done in conjunction with interrogations.   But torture?   Surely we can discern between that and torture?   Or maybe we can't since we cannot enact an objective standard.

And as to the "secret CIA prison system," as I pointed out yesterday, that has never been proven.   There is no "prison system" unless you consider a handful of detainees - the really, bad ones at that, being questioned for a period of time at some group of locations.   This number has never risen above a handful and does not constitute a system.   Besides, nobody has ever suggested that torture was performed at these locations.

What would the great man have us do when we capture somebody like bin Laden, prosecute via the US criminal justice system, or simply let the guy go?   Oh yeah, he wouldn't have had him arrested in the first place.

But I am going astray.   My point is that if you cannot exert enough effort to define "torture," then either everything is torture or nothing is.   You cannot slick willy-nilly decide everything based on the wisdom of some judge.   There has to be an objective standard.   Of course, Willy doesn't like objective standards because they would dictate definitions for things like what constitutes "sex" ("I did not have sex with that woman"), "as well as other terms by which wiseman William Jefferson Clinton does not wish to be pinned down.