BY SISTER DIANNA ORTIZ

None of you has said you favor torture, but it appears that, for some of you, it’s the word “torture” that you oppose and not its practice. (President Bush provides a good example. He has insisted that the United States does not torture but it seems clear that he has not only condoned but ordered its practice.)

While no one has argued in favor of torture per se, some of you have used the kind of euphemisms that signal that you countenance its practice. We know by now what “enhanced interrogation techniques” mean, just as we know that by calling water-boarding “a dunk in the water,” Vice President Cheney was approving the technique. (And as we also know that when Michael Mukasey claimed not to know what water-boarding was, or whether it was torture, he was protecting the Bush administration.)

Of course, not all of you are torture’s advocates. John McCain’s first-hand experience with torture has under-girded his opposition to it. Others, in one way or another, have taken small steps in that direction, from announcing opposition to its practice to introducing or co-sponsoring bills that would limit its practice by the government.

Still, we wait in vain for the meshing of the spoken word against this crime with action to bring it to an end. If there is one recent litmus test, it is the Military Commissions Act, the vote in favor or opposed and, since it passed, action to repeal it in its entirety. It is from this dreadful act that I cull three questions for each of you:

• Should the President of the United States have the unilateral right to designate and detain unlawful enemy combatant persons, including U.S. citizens, without charge?

• Should the President have the right to decide what practices constitute torture?

• Should evidence be admissible at trial that has been obtained through coercion?

These are but three of the questions that might be asked. There are others dealing with habeas corpus, the narrowing of the definitions of rape and sexual assault, hearsay evidence, and the like, but these three will do.

An answer in the affirmative to any of the three marks one as an advocate of torture. When asked if you oppose torture, none of you said, “NO.” But where do you stand on the subject of legislation that legalized its practice and provides immunity for those, including the President, who violated U.S. law?

The Military Commissions Act is indeed the litmus test for those of us who have survived torture. To date, only one of your number has stood that test. Ron Paul has introduced legislation to repeal the act, plain and simple. It is true that others, Senator Dodd for example, have introduced legislation that would turn back parts of that act. Parts, not all.

In the last few years, there has been a significant change in the amount of conversation about torture—from nearly nothing to an incessant drumbeat. Sadly, the subject has now become debatable. What is the proper way to commit crimes against humanity, open and above-board or in secret shrouded in lies? How much pain is too much? What kind of brutality leaves a lasting impact? Congress talks on and on, wanting desperately not to answer these questions. How do we know? Because they do not ask those who do know. You do not ask torture’s survivors. None of you asks us. And some of you even refuse to respond to our calls and letters to meet to dialogue about the issue and its effects.

And so the debates go on. The evasions go on, carried on the wings of euphemisms. Torture is opposed, yet those Senators who claim to abhor it cannot even make it back to the senate to vote against an attorney general nominee who claims he doesn’t know if water-boarding is torture.

Torture survivors call on the candidates to say what they mean. For those who truly oppose torture, we ask, “When will your actions match your words?” Stop beating around the bush!