Letters

By Our Readers & Alexander Cockburn

This article appeared in the November 7, 2005 edition of The Nation.

October 19, 2005

LYNNDIE ENGLAND, READ THIS

Cambridge, Mass.

Alexander Cockburn persists in lying about me. In his October 17 "Beat the Devil" column, "From Lynndie England to Shaquille O'Neal," Cockburn falsely claims that I have "clamored for torture." Cockburn knows full well that I "clamored" for just the opposite. As I wrote in my essay "Tortured Reasoning," which appeared in Sanford Levinson's book on torture, "I am against torture as a normative matter, and I would like to see its use minimized. I pose the issue as follows. If torture is, in fact, being used and/or would, in fact, be used in an actual ticking bomb terrorist case, would it be normatively better or worse to have such torture regulated by some kind of warrant, with accountability, recordkeeping, standards and limitations?"

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About Alexander Cockburn

Alexander Cockburn has been The Nation's "Beat the Devil" columnist since 1984. He is the author or co-author of several books, including the best-selling collection of essays Corruptions of Empire (1987), and a contributor to many publications, from The New York Review of Books, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly and the Wall Street Journal to alternative publications such as In These Times and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. With Jeffrey St. Clair, he edits the newsletter and radical website CounterPunch, which have a substantial world audience. more...
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