I never thought I'd see the day when torturing people was being defended in the United States of America.

torture is torture is wrong!

BTW Mucasey is denying the crack violations to be retroactive, but the telco get retroactive protection! Muck FE! even the logic is being tortured!

These defenses of waterboarding, such as "It’s like swimming: freestyle, backstroke" make no sense to me. IF waterboarding is so mundane and really nothing very dangerous then WHY use it as a method of interrogation.

This piece of shit isn't the only person in Washington who belongs on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. I hope to see them all on trial someday...

They are all so damn old........why does a nation of predominately young, progressive people have to be goverened by old people? Seriously, we need some Senators younger than 50 up in here!

Republican = Torturer = Religious Idiots = Fucking Morons

I am pretty sure this combination will win elections forever

sorry, I don't know how to use the quote this comment thing. But just wanted to say lived in missori for 10 years, and they do keeping voting for idiots like Bonds, I believe partly because he appeals to the hate crowd.
the only thing I miss about KC is the barbecue

I hate it when they talk about waterboarding....the reality is that they have been talking about it for so long and described it in detail for so long, that any enemy of ours knows what it is, how it works, and would feasibly be able to recognize the fact that it may feel like they are drowning, but they aren't drowning and they know this because they saw some dumbass on ABC go through it.

Do they really think this debate is even about waterboarding? Seriously, regardless of whether it is torture or not, everyone in the world now knows what waterboarding is so why should it ever be used as a way to get information?

#2: many of you guys don’t fully understand the hate and ignorance that rednecks in missouri have for blacks, gays, women, hispanics, etc.

i grew up in farmington mo. go to the local pub and just listen.

EXCUSE ME!!!

I am a lifelong Missouri resident and I cannot STAND when people from my state characterize everyone in the state as a redneck racist homophobic sexist asshole. I know where Farmington is. There are rednecks there, it's true. But there are a lot less of them after King George and Matt Blunt fucked them all over in one way or another (taking away their S-CHIP, medicaid and medicare, giving away freebies to every industry under the sun and closing their farms, for example). You ask them about waterboarding you ask them about the state of their bank account and I guarantee, most idiots out there who voted for Bush are sorry they did, and most of them may not be smart enough to pick out a good Chardonnay, but they know waterboarding is illegal and wrong.

Go to St. Louis or Kansas City or even Springfield and Columbia, there are smart and enlightened people who despise the Republican agenda, who did not vote for Kit Bond (he won by 2% or something like that), and who are not rednecks in any way, shape, or form. And guess what, there are non-rednecks outside of those areas too, but you're too smart to talk to them, aren't you?

Kit Bond does not speak for me, nor anyone I know. Generalizations like yours are what piss rural areas off and send them to vote against "elitist" leftists. That's EXACTLY the divide the right is trying to solidify and you're playing right into their hands. Maybe treating small-towners like intelligent life will make them listen to reason a little easier.

tony @ 13:

sorry, I don't know how to use the quote this comment thing. But just wanted to say lived in missori for 10 years, and they do keeping voting for idiots like Bonds, I believe partly because he appeals to the hate crowd.
the only thing I miss about KC is the barbecue

Which ever comment you want to quote, just click on that little blue wording at the bottom right in that comment (it says, Quote this Comment) and the quote will appear in the box where you are making your own comment. Just drop down a couple of lines below the end of the quote code (the last word you'll see in the code is "blockquote" and start typing your own comment. I hope this helps. :)

Send him to a padded cell where he can't hurt himself or others.

that @ 1:

I never thought I'd see the day when torturing people was being defended in the United States of America.

I'm sick physically from all this.

We are selling our infrastructure to foreign nations. (Think ports to Dubai deal) but the ones that went through.

Habeas Corpus is gone now.
Our military is being privatized.
Our currency is losing value.
We are being spied on.
No one is doing anything about it.
No one is talking about 9/11 and the history of false flag terrorism.
Gap between rich and poor is soaring.

What the hell happened to the surplus our president Bill Clinton left us with??? Damn times have changed.

It's obvious there is a New World Order that is dissolving nations and putting in place a world government structure. The WTO, NAFTA, IMF, European Union, North American Union, Now News Corp. bought the Dow Jones? I thought the conspiracy crap was bullcrap until about 2005, now its getting pretty obvious. Corporations are running the world. Think Halliburton and Oil. Exxon Mobil the biggest profit ever of all time. Think who is running the White House. The Oil Industry. Bush/Cheney? the Oil Industry. Our Constitution is not being respected.

[Edited-Sitemonitor]

thanks, this should be easy, but my new guidedog isn]t much help

Anderson Cooper had a great thing on last night about water boarding and even this guy who was having it done in a controlled way could not help but react like he was dying. People always say - well they know we aren't going to kill them it's just like dunking them in for a little while. It's actually much more sinister than people think though as they use a rag and water on your face to trick your mind into thinking you are dying. So, every part of the body tightens up and your brain releases chemicals that make you think you are dying. It's just a horrible thing that the Geneva conventions say you can't use. When the nuts in Cambodia were doing it we called it torture.

Sure, Bond is horrible, etc, etc, and I'm sure this is missing the forest for the trees...but what about "our side" on this one?

The gentlewoman from California:
"...waterboarding, another name for which is Chinese water torture..."

Really? Water dropping continuously on your forehead is the same as simulated drowning? Sigh...

tony @ 24:

thanks, this should be easy, but my new guidedog isn]t much help

I was sincere in trying to help you.

I cant wait till the NEO NAZI republican nuremburg TRIALS began
after bush is gone ha h ah ha hah ah ahha

rats on a ship will sink with loose lips.....

Kit Bond demonstrates the desperation of Repubs trying to spin the Bush administration. It's becoming comical.

In a politically sophisticated society, the Republicans would never again win a single office. They would be toast. Sadly, ours is a society more enamored of NASCAR than governance, more taken with American Idol than the News Hour and half of us are led by people with multiple first names, questionable education and self bestowed titles.

Waterboarding is torture. When we torture, we are no better than those we claim are the enemy.

Tony:Unfortunately Missouri also is responisble for Ashkroft (sp). Of course there are good people in Mo. they have an excellent program to help the blind.

Unfortunately, you're wrong. We voted in the deceased Mel Carnahan over the breathing John Ashcroft, remember?

And congratulations, that's really constructive to disenfranchise people who agree with you because they live in a fly-over state that you think is full of stupid people. I swear, I'm a liberal but sometimes liberals make me sick with their sanctimonious coastal bullshit. No wonder democrats don't win, they bully the "lesser" democrats. Get a clue.

Katie @ 36:

Tony:Unfortunately Missouri also is responisble for Ashkroft (sp). Of course there are good people in Mo. they have an excellent program to help the blind.

Unfortunately, you're wrong. We voted in the deceased Mel Carnahan over the breathing John Ashcroft, remember?

And congratulations, that's really constructive to disenfranchise people who agree with you because they live in a fly-over state that you think is full of stupid people. I swear, I'm a liberal but sometimes liberals make me sick with their sanctimonious coastal bullshit. No wonder democrats don't win, they bully the "lesser" democrats. Get a clue.

Your right. I just get tired of right wingers making fun of me because I get help from the goverment.

We have retards running america. How else can all this insanity be explained?

This guy is a total tool. I watched this interview in open mouth amazment that such a man is a senator of the USA. I would actually take Carl Rove over this man which is how low I view this senator!

Tony, if right-wingers are chiding you about getting help from the government, you can always throw it back in their faces:

Guiliani's mistress got government funding
Enron got government funding
Other righties who got government funding:
Faith-based initiative office
VECO (Alaskan oil/Ted Stevens)
Blackwater
Halliburton/KBR
Telecoms
All manner of war contractors
I could go on and on...

What does the government give you a year, a couple thousand? Throw in their faces the BILLIONS of dollars of "government help" the right gets every freakin' day.

Just stop it with the Missourian slanders. We're not the bad guys.

How lovely. (that's my "bless his heart" euphemism)

If it's not torture, then how does it work?

Jeannie See @ 49:

pissed off patricia @ 25:

Sadly I'm afraid waterboarding is going to be talked about so much and in such a lackadaisical fashion that the meaning of it is going to be lost and the general public will come to see it as no big deal and not even related to torture.

That's what they are hoping for Pop.

Exactly. And it will probably work.

This is more proof that reich-wingers have NO CONCEPT of reality.

Well one thing he said is correct: there's waterboarding and then there's waterboarding.

Several accounts refer to it as "simulated drowning" with water dripped over a cloth held against the victim's nose & mouth.

Scary enough - have you ever leaned back in the bath tub and accidentally gotten a few drops of water down your nose?

But the account I read of waterboarding of a victim in one of the foreign prisons where the CIA sent him concluded with him being brought back to consciousness by his torturers punching him in the diaphragm to force the water from his lungs.

OBVIOUSLY a whole different level of torture.

For perspective, here's a paragraph from:

The Guardian Jan 1, 1934: Dachau concentration camp - Report on its organisation, routine and recent history; Punishment and ill-treatment of prisoners

In addition to the regular punishments there are special forms of arbitrary ill-treatment. Thus prisoners are sometimes beaten with wet towels. Sometimes they are bastinadoed until the soles of their feet are lacerated. Several S.A. men (Brown Shirts) who arrived in the camp on August 1 were bastinadoed as well as being maltreated in other ways. Two of them, Amuschel and Handschuck, died of their injuries. The Communist Fritz Schaper was so beaten that he was prostrate for eight weeks. On September 2 one of the Nazi guards broke a prisoner's jaw with a blow of his fist. On June 30 twenty prisoners were so beaten in the cellar under the kitchen that their cries could be heard by the other prisoners. Some prisoners have also been beaten with lengths of rubber hosepipe. Some have been burnt with cigarette ends and some have been put to what Americans call the "water torture" .

And don't forget where Prescott Bush made the money that put him & his son GHW & grandson GW in power. Prescott managed the "Hitler Accounts" at Brown Brothers Harriman, including the Bush family's investment in the Silesian American Coal Company, which, together with IG Farben, ran the coal gasefication project at Auschwitz - and the Labor Camps, and the Death Camp too.

The Bush Family has been an international criminal enterprise for nearly a century. All started with war profiteer Samuel Prescott Bush managing the acquisition of small arms and ordnance for the US military in World War One, for which he earned the nickname "A Merchant of Death."

Sure, waterboarding is akin to a leisure backstroke across the pool...What a f*cking idoit! I like how Bond never answers the question. This guy needs a baseball bat to his knee caps.

It is true that most Americans could give a crap if guys like KSM or other high level terrorists operatives suffer and rot in prison, but if these so-called enhanced techiques have or are being used on innocent or low value prisoners, then we become no better than those whom we are battling against.

bad guy, sure, but wanker?
unless I didn't receive an important memo, a wanker is a masturbator. The biggest wanker is the one who spends the most time, or releases the greatest volume of fluid, or self-pleasures in the most public and wanton way.

ok, but if we are calling him this, which is reasonable, why do we have to use a British epithet?
Why can't we use a good old American term like fuckin' jerk off or jag off?

Can I get a 'spot on'? I'll just take the lift to my flat

Finally, some old lunatic has the guts to tell the truth. Discussing waterboarding only causes Al-Quaida to adapt their techniques. It is dangerous to even use the word. Half of Al-Quaida has already become mermaids and discussing it further will only cause others to do so, or grow gills.

Good job, old man, good job.

The tape of Nicholas Byrd getting his head cut off was done by the CIA. Yes America does torture and kill Incocent people like Pat Tillman. Why doesn't MSM have Buddies of Pat's on National TV. What about Cindy Sheehan? It is always the same GD Shills who are as evil as J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover was the embodment of evil.

The media is doing a terrible job educating people what waterboarding really is. They (PBS, BBC, ABC, etc) consistently describe waterboarding in gentle terms, "face is covered with a cloth or cellphane and water is poured on the face to simulate drowning." This does not accurately describe what happens and people listen to these descriptions and think, "That doesn't sound bad." As I understand it, this is what happens during waterboarding, correct me if I'm wrong:

- water goes up a persons nose, which burns the nasal passage causing great pain
- person's gag reflex activates, causing them to choke and gag as if they were to throw up
- water is forced into a person's lungs and the drowning is real, not simulated, which is why there are reports of interrogators having to hit the victims chest to empty their lungs of water
- physiologically and psychologically the person believes they will drown and the whole body goes into a sort of state of shock, tensing up, clenching, trying to fight imminent death

If that isn't humiliating and degrading treatment, the American government has some serious empathy issues.

pissed off patricia @ 19:

tony @ 13:

sorry, I don't know how to use the quote this comment thing. But just wanted to say lived in missori for 10 years, and they do keeping voting for idiots like Bonds, I believe partly because he appeals to the hate crowd.
the only thing I miss about KC is the barbecue

Which ever comment you want to quote, just click on that little blue wording at the bottom right in that comment (it says, Quote this Comment) and the quote will appear in the box where you are making your own comment. Just drop down a couple of lines below the end of the quote code (the last word you'll see in the code is "blockquote" and start typing your own comment. I hope this helps. :)

pissed off patricia @ 19:

tony @ 13:

sorry, I don't know how to use the quote this comment thing. But just wanted to say lived in missori for 10 years, and they do keeping voting for idiots like Bonds, I believe partly because he appeals to the hate crowd.
the only thing I miss about KC is the barbecue

Which ever comment you want to quote, just click on that little blue wording at the bottom right in that comment (it says, Quote this Comment) and the quote will appear in the box where you are making your own comment. Just drop down a couple of lines below the end of the quote code (the last word you'll see in the code is "blockquote" and start typing your own comment. I hope this helps. :)

Thanks You also answered that question for me.

"Waterboarding is just like swimming"!?!

Senator Bond is an ignorant, immoral asshole!! Furthermore, he is unAmerican, unChristian, and inhuman. This fool should STEP DOWN! He is a disgrace himself and the American people he is supposed to represent. Torturer! He should be waterboarded.

One of you out there need to write an update Dante's book, The Inferno. Make sure there's a chapter on "Kit" (he'll keep that pussy name in Hell) anyway....Kit being waterboarded with thin-mix mortar by Scott Peterson who vivisects the cement from Kit's lungs, then shackles the blocks to Kit and himself before throwing the blocks into a fiery oil pit that leads to the next circle of Hell.

And you know there's some cia/military/mercenary fuck out there going "waterboarding with mortar...yeah!"

Even though I do not agree with Senator Bond's war stance and his torture stance I do have to applaud him for this:

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/washington/story/1FB9A...

Where are the Democratic Senators when it comes to this issue?

the public debate about torture in your ountry is frightening. Influental persons are beginning to make up all kinds of escuses for it. I dont care how many ifs and buts you attach to torture. Torture is always torture. It is illegal and and should always remain illegal.

I don't know if Bond is religious or not as well - but I almost hope he gets the chance to experience waterboarding and then report the results to us. I'll bet his opinion and attitude change pretty fast.

"its like swimming..." p'fah - Missouri should be ashamed of itself for putting this guy in such a position of authority.

Please allow me to be the 81st post. The man is a dinosour. An asshat. An asshole. A jerk. A time warp. Is he even an American? Does the Administration trot him out, or does the media call him out knowing he will certainly create disgust?

another Jack Bauerist rapture bunny showing the Clear Channelites how "tough" he is

jim @ 82:

what an ichy asshole. do these tought guy republicans really think this will help them. they look like a collective bunch of stupid corrupt morons...

Did you mean to say 'itchy' asshole? or did you mean to say 'icky' asshole? This is an important distinction and you did not spell either in a standard way. I would invite everyone to contemplate both images to decide which is most appropriate. If he is the wanker of the day, then his asshole maybe both itchy and icky.

"..including the laughable-on-its-face claim that discussing waterboarding enables “the enemy” to adapt to it."

Yes, and if they're managing to grow gills, then I, for one, surrender.

I expect the republicans to claim murder is not murder next.

Republicans are liars and cannot be trusted.

I heard NPR call waterboarding "controlled drowning."

Oh, that's okay--it's controlled, see. Everything's under control. Nothing can happen bad.

On behalf of the rational and intelligent voters of the state of Missouri, I apologize to the rest of the reality based community for the mere presence of Sen. Bond. Please remember that he is getting on in years.

Look At That Little Guy! Look at his face! Look at his hair! He's got a Red Striped Tie & a Lapel Flag! His name is KIT! He likes Torture! Oh Man! That guy is gonna be my forever LIL BUDDY! I'm gonna take him home and put him IN A JAR! OH MAN!