E-Mail This Article to a Friend THE WAR AT HOME 2006: Torture is a moral issue BY DEIRDRE FULTON

Using words like values, morality, honor, and even spirituality, three liberal congressmen visiting Boston outlined their arguments this week for a US ban on torture, while calling for an independent investigation into US-military interrogation techniques. In doing so, they touched on what could become a central liberal-values talking point — one that could help Democrats win back the House of Representatives in next year’s midterm elections.

Congress and the White House were expected to hammer out a compromise this week on Arizona Republican John McCain’s torture-ban bill, which outlines acceptable interrogation techniques. Liberals, reacting to both Vice-President Dick Cheney’s outright endorsement of torture and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s dance around the issue overseas last week, worry that McCain’s bill will emerge much watered down. But if they keep the heat on, Democrats could tap into the elusive well of values votes that evade them on other moral issues such as abortion and gay marriage.

"No longer are we going to leave this in the back of the hall, or off to the side," said US representative John Conyers, of Michigan, who spoke at a panel discussion on torture at Suffolk University Law School on Monday with fellow representatives Marty Meehan (D-MA), and James Moran (D-VA). "We don’t need Republican leadership to give us permission to meet and talk on a subject of this dimension." (No one knows that better than Conyers, who this summer held a mock basement hearing on the notorious Downing Street memo, which documented the Bush administration’s decision to go to war by July 2002 on the basis of dubious intelligence, after conservatives prevented him from scheduling an official inquiry.)

To effect policy change — and to use the issue of torture to electoral advantage — liberals have their work cut out for them. According to a Pew Research Center poll released last month, close to 50 percent of the American public believe torturing terrorist suspects is often or sometimes justified; just 32 percent think it’s never okay. (The Pew poll found that 59 percent of respondents who work in national security oppose torture on any grounds, which backs up two common arguments against torture: that the information obtained thereby is often false, and that it puts our own soldiers at risk.)

"That means we’re losing," admitted Amnesty International president James Schulz, who joined the politicians on the Suffolk panel. "We’re losing the public-relations war. We’re losing this argument."

But Schulz — whose organization has distanced itself from the current fight in Congress over the torture-ban bill in order to avoid "sullying it with a bleeding-heart label" — says there are two arguments that can change people’s minds. First, that torture is antithetical to American values; second, that using such techniques damages US reputation overseas.

"We have lost our moral high ground," Meehan said. Regaining it could be a boon politically, as well as policy-wise.