It’s legal because the Spanish Inquisition was worse!
Hard to see how else to interpret the Congressional testimony of Justice Department official David Bradbury trying to retroactively justify his own war crimes legal advice to the effect that “rough CIA interrogations” were “not torture” and hence a.o.k.
This is consistent with Bradbury’s current boss Michael “Spanky” Mukasey and his former boss Alberto “Abu Frat Party” Gonzales, who just could not bring themselves to say that the practice of waterboarding (for which Japanese and American military officers have been court-martialed as war criminals) is even a little bit illegal.
And yet… will any members of the Bush Administration be held to account for debasing this nation to the level of Third World s***-holes (and late Medieval Spain)… or not? Some signs are hopeful… the House refused to pass an extension of the law permitting the President to legally eavesdrop on all our communications (as if it made a difference, given how proud the President has been to tell us that he did so illegally, and would continue to do so, law or not, so help me, signing statement, while “impeachment remains off the table”). Meanwhile, that same House voted to hold Josh Bolten and Harriet Miers in contempt for bogus assertions of executive privilege over the U.S. Attorney/election stealing scandal… is it possible that one house of Congress, at least, has finally found its backbone? Is torture one long bridge too far… will it be the rack straw that breaks the camel’s back?
No idea. But as would be President McCain starts to tell us (by voting for them!) of the virtues of “harsh interrogation techniques” while he continues to sell what’s left of his tortured soul to secure a nomination for which he will have pitched himself so far to the insane right that he will have no chance whatsoever against either Clinton or Obama…
maybe we should stop a moment and realize that this is no longer a joke. The nation’s very soul is to be burned at the at stake.
Waterboarding is, without doubt, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment for which we have signed and ratified treaties to ban. The gall of the Orwellian efforts to torture our very language to legitimate torture itself should be regarded as one of the most colossal outrages of all.
February 17th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Huckabee being the only of the three (I think) to support waterboarding, jokes that a lack of sleep is a lot like being waterboarded. He makes waterboarding out to be less harsh than it really is. He wants to cast the same impression as David Bradbury, that waterboarding is not torture.
February 17th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
[…] Note: The Talking Dog has more on the topic today. […]
February 17th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Ask people with terminal pneumonia or congestive heart failure what it feels like to struggle for breath and feel yourself drowning.
I understand insomnia and exhaustion well, as I suffer from sleep apnea. I also watched my father’s decline, over a decade, from two heart attacks that left him with a heart incapable of pumping the fluid that built up in his heart and lungs, eventally killing him.
There’s no comparison between them. It’s like comparing the bite of a flea against an alligator’s jaws. There’s a chance that both could prove deadly, but the odds are great that one will prove more torturous, frightening and produce an immediate fear of death.
Waterboarding is like drowning, capable of getting folks to say anything they think you want them to say. It’s terribly ineffective in gaining useful information and remains too effective in making the torturer brutal, inhumane and ultimately, stupid.