Two sides, no middle ground?

I've noticed that there seem to be two really opposite sides of opinion on some of the atrocities committed at Abu Grhaib, Guantanamo Bay, and now very possibly at a whole network of secret prisons.

These opinions are: (because my opinion is clearly NOT Opinion A, I felt the need to refute some of the claims - my personal opinions are in parenthesis)

Opinion A) WE ARE AT WAR. (Holy crap, if one more person says this on a blog, tv show, letter to the editor, whatever, I swear, I'm going to spontaneously combust or something) These people (who? exactly? the same people?? Are ya SURE?) attacked US. Sure, we'd usually like to be nice, but this is life or death (for Americans). We have to think of our security, first. There is no need to be overly paranoid about abuses of power (why not? Haven't we seen proof to the contrary?) - people who are in these camps are in there because specific evidence (that no third parties are allowed to see!) has linked them to terrorist acts.

PLUS - when the media focuses on these stories, we fuel the propaganda machines of the Islamic extremists who want to add new ranks to their terrorist armies (funny, I thought it was the actual atrocities that did that), and unfairly turn public opinion against the war, making it harder for the troops to do their jobs. (most of those people are probably working their asses off over there, and forging personal and professional relationships with the Iraqui people - it would be really great if they had a nation behind them, WWII-style, cheering them on. Unfortunately, their leaders sent them in under false pretenses, expect unrealistic results from them while providing them with inadequate resources, and may even have created a climate where abuse and torture are expected behavior. To allow a government to do this to the women and men of the military without a public outcry would enact a far greater injustice upon them.)

Opinion B) Secret prisons, torturing detainees, and restricting rights in special cases (as in the Patriot Act) are the stuff of fascism, not democracy. How do we know that people will not be held in such camps and prisons simply because they disagree with the government, if no third parties can see why they are being held?

PLUS, we signed the documents at the Geneva Convention, saying that we would not allow torture. Torture is something that should never be done in the name of the American people, fully deserved or not, but ESPECIALLY not when there are no legal structures in place to prevent innocent people being held as terrorists. When we use the tactics of the terrorists, we advocate state-sanctioned terror.

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Having pitched my tent firmly in Camp B, I'm trying to understand the people who are in the Opinion A camp, so I did some reading of story comments on washingtonpost.com. A reader calling himself "GAT2005" had a very clever argument - he mentioned that in 1998, the big story in the Washington Post, the day after Osama bin Laden declared his intent to strike the U.S., was a fairly lame follow-up article on Lewinskygate. He compares this to the scandal stories about the outing of Valerie Plume and prison abuses - he feels that these are being reported ad nauseum while reports pertaining to new terrorist threats are all but ignored. Here's what he says:

"**WHICH** story was more important - Clinton's sexual activities or a Maniac Terrorist Leader declaring plans to attack the USA?
**WHICH** story do you think the American MSM (mainstream media) widely reported?
We are seeing another repeat of this NOW - with the monofocus on embarrassing scandals to the currrent government, and the repeat of the non-reporting / under-reporting of global terrorist threats and attacks...."

This is (admittedly) a very clever argument - our media tend to focus on the aftermath of a big scandal, and downplay stories about things that may come in the future (it's harder to sell stories about things no one has heard of). For instance, if newspapers had been able to dig a little deeper BEFORE the Iraq War about some of the bad intellegence and cover ups during the build-up to war, the American people as a whole might have more vehemently opposed it. There's one big hole in his argument though - THIS scandal is a huge threat to national security, in itself.

Another poster, Bill Krumpter, had this agrument:

The American people elect the political representatives who exercise congressional oversight of the CIA, and the media should rightly bring the revelations of stories like these to those representatives, preferably in direct testimony behind closed doors. From that point, the media should continue to follow up to see the results of actions the Congress takes and act accordingly -- and still with sensible restraint.

Finally, an intellegent conservative take on the issue. Krumpter makes an excellent point - the CIA is overseen by congress, an elected body, in our system of checks and balances. However, I feel that a journalist who discovered information THIS disturbing about the CIA has an obligation to share it with the American people. Krumpter and I agree that there is a certain amount of secrecy neccessary in government operations, and that the media has a moral (not neccessarily legal, in my mind) repsonsibility to maintain some of that secrecy. We disagree about how MUCH secrecy should be allowed in government, and what role the media should play in preserving it. From this point, a meaningful dialogue could be built.

Krumpter's comment is far outside the norm, however, in my experience. The arguments I find most disturbing (and I find them all too often!) actually advocate the use of torture in the case of terrorism. These people believe that if the crime is heinous enough, torture is a legitimate way to punish and/or prevent it. This, in itself, is a shocking, and in my mind, morally reprehensible premise. They also seem frighteningly unconcerned about the possibility that some of the detainees in these camps and prisons may be innocent. This seems to stem from a lack of concern for the citizens of other countries, in general (and possible racism or xenophobia). Why else would we allow American convicted criminals an extensive appeals process, but not even give the citizens of other countries (who have not even been tried) access to lawyers?

Of course, this is when the Opinion B person would say, "but WE ARE AT WAR!" But being at war should not give our military personnel complete authority over prisoners at war - and even if you feel it should, the only thing that this might be expected to accomplish would be expediency and efficiency. Considering the amount of time the Guantanamo detainees have been held, that seems to be a non-issue. I'm all for trusting government officials to do their jobs, and not obstructing them with needless paranoia, but to allow them to operate without checks and balances, even in time of war, is hopelessly naive.

To close, a couple of Opinion A posters who make the case for Opinion B by sounding moronic:

Says "38051956":
"So freakin' WHAT if we use other countries' prisons overseas to torture al-Qaeda types into confessing?!
After 9/11, the LAST thing I want is to be nice to some TERRORISTS!
They can use cattle prods, baseball bats with protruding nails, and barbed-wire bullwhips on these bozos for all I care!!!

Wow.

And unfortunately, the otherwise quite reasonable Bill Krumpter finished his piece thusly:

Frankly, 9/11 happened because the CIA was hamstrung for so long by righteous, albeit ill-advised indignation over certain incidents in the past. I can empathize with those who always want to see America set the example for other nations and organizations and take the high moral road. Unfortunately, weakening the CIA for that reason weakens America and makes us vulnerable to unscrupulous and violent terrorists who want to destroy the freedom we represent. Given the choice between super-high morality versus the loss of American freedoms in whole or in part, I would choose to lower our moral standards when dealing with those who would tear our nation down.

You heard it here - we're going to save our principles by lowering our morals!