Out of a Bad Spy Novel

The men from the pages of a bad spy novel throw people they don’t like into secret prisons that officially do not exist, snug little dungeons hidden away in undisclosed countries. These spy-novel men keep to the shadows; if a ray of sunlight happens to fall upon one of their lairs, they scurry away to some other dark corner. They make their “high-value” prisoners simply disappear — no charges, no hearings, no exit.
They tell us that we shouldn’t worry, that every one of these prisoners is evil beyond redemption. And, anyway, what prisoners?
To interrogate these prisoners who don’t exist, the spy-novel men use practices that international agreements classify as torture. Again, they tell us not to worry. They produce legal opinions, written by lawyers from the pages of a bad spy novel, proving definitively that torture is not, in fact, torture. Besides, the spy-novel men outsource the really messy business to cooperative regimes for which the word “qualms” has no meaning.
Out of a Bad Spy Novel

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