Administration: We'll torture again
By John Amato Friday Feb 08, 2008 2:31pmI've written about the GOP Party of torture at length so I'll let Froomkin take over with this:
After years of dodging and dissembling, the Bush administration today boldly embraced an interrogation tactic that's been an iconic and almost universally condemned form of torture since the Spanish Inquisition.
President Bush would authorize waterboarding future terrorism suspects if certain criteria are met, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said this morning, one day after the director of the CIA for the first time publicly acknowledged his agency's use of the tactic, which generally involves strapping a prisoner to a board, covering his face or mouth with a cloth, and pouring water over his face to create the sensation of drowning.
Olivier Knox writes for AFP: "The United States may use waterboarding to question terrorism suspects in the future, the White House said Wednesday, rejecting the widely held belief that the practice amounts to torture...read on
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Bush administration = sheer torture
We could waterboard Dubya. He's met the criteria, that's for sure....
"...President Bush would authorize waterboarding future terrorism suspects if certain criteria are met..."
In the future, they will "waterboard" any of us. It's just a matter of time.
If it's not torture, how does it extract information?
How freweaking CHRISTIAN of him......
Why does this torturous "director of the CIA" continually refuse to call this country the United States of America and keeps calling it "homeland"?
kablooie @ 1:
For the world. 'and beyond'
Terrible @ 6:
Okay, Fatherland.
Of course they will...they love it! http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Documentary_Military_brass_frequently_view...
you just can't have a successful dictatorship without it!
The Bush Administration is the band Wackiavelli's best promoter!
Torture in the name of the free, more misery for you and me
They ship ‘em out so we can’t see the way they bring ‘em to their knees
Judgement day is coming
They might not like what it’s gonna say
Judgement day is coming
The holy hypocrites are gonna pay
-Wackiavelli
Speaking of torture, Huckabee just won Kansas thanks to their larger-than-average special needs electorate.
Yeah, this story caught my eye the other day, and since then it's just gotten worse.
Imagine, it's no longer possible to take the high road when speaking of torturing dictators in so-called 3rd world countries.
Just can't quite get my head around that fact.
Why are these old white dudes so into torture? It rarely ever works and it has destroyed our credibility around the globe. Just to have these idiots embracing these tactics is alarming. I guess they watch to many episodes of '24'.
What would we call it if they force our prisoners to watch an endless loop of a video of John Ashcroft warbling, "Let the Eagle Soar"?
Don Henley must be worried.
Waterboarding has been going on for years and democrats/liberals have known about it for years. Only recently has it become an issue.
The Army/Navy/Marines/Air Force all subject special ops forces to waterboarding in SEAR school and other military training schools as preparation for war. If it were really universally considered torture, do you really think that the democrats in congress would have approved our own soldiers being subjected to it? They've known about this stuff for years. It may scare the hell out of you, but it's not torture. It's only recently become an issue because they're trying to nail Bush on anything.
Flame away.
pouring water over his face to create the sensation of drowning.
It doesn't create the sensation it actually drowns them just not to death. That is at least some of the time it's "not to death" Water actually enters the lungs and they must be resuscitated Sounds like torture to me
Well, John, are you, finally, willing to put your blogo-weight behind Impeachment? Kucinich, and more lately Wexler, have been putting their congressional careers on the line to bring the concept of justice back into the government but have had little support from the people who comment daily on the criminals who run our country. Impeachment is the only way to stop this insanity. It does not matter if removal happens or not. What does matter is that everybody in our political ruling class put their political future on the line. We have seen that no amount of subpoenas, scandal, or outraged speeches make a wit of difference to these criminals. Only impeachment will lay out the criminality in such a way that the people (remember them?) will make the judgment. And their judgment will determine who is sent to the political graveyard over the next few cycles. We are going into an economic downturn such as hasn’t been experienced in many, many years and tinpot and his cronies will bare, in the public’s mind, much of the blame. Impeachment will focus the public on the criminal side of this administration but it will be the wrong headed and incompetent ‘management’ of the economy and war that will fuel the people’s anger. Pity those who stand up to defend tinpot and chainy, because by this year’s end, they will be lucky if they can get a K street doorway to sleep in.
But it takes impeachment to make this happen. Impeachment is the only weapon justice has left. Wont you, John Amato, get of the ironic, laconic sidelines and into the fight? You have influence not only through your own blogging, but within that circle of bloggers that made such a big deal out of telecom immunity in FISA (while ignoring the terrible basis of the bill itself!) and Valerie Plame but seem loathe to take on the cowardly and venal Pelosicrats that are the biggest impediment to real progressive politics. Please, think about it. Confer with your Hamshers and Greenwalds and digbys and see if you all wont make this, finally, the place you take a stand.
Impeach!
Who ever thought that the United States would become the dregs of the Earth?
What's the difference--the lack of impeachment proceedings is torture anyway.
Knowing about the Downing Street Memo's and the fact that nobody is doing a darn thing about it is torture enough.
Knowing the American people and bloggers themselves are allowing this to happen is torturous to witness as well.
U.N. says waterboarding should be prosecuted as torture:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKN0852061620080208
Prosecute them, our AG will not.
WE ARE A NATION OF WAR CRIMINALS.
Paul @ 17:
This dumb fuck thinks its OK if Democrats know that war crimes happen in our name.
They don't simply use waterboarding against terrorists; they have become the terrorists. They make me ashamed to be an American.
Aministration: We'll torture again............and again, and again, and again.
Feels like 1200 AD.
lucid fiction @ 27:
Wow, you're pretty old.
Oh, and in case you have missed it, here's Matt Taibbi's take on those fightin' dems.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/18349197/the_chicken_doves
Only a concerted, coordinated, relentless demand for Impeachment will change the direction and personnel of our ruling political class. Anything else is just bandaids on cancer.
James @ 12:
Can you just imagine State Dinners if he got in? Popcorn popped fried squirrel. The World must be shaking their heads at the possibility of him as a VP and McCain dying in the first term. His supporters would no doubt see it as a miracle.
So its finally official. The WH admits and approves the use of torture.
That's of course a war crime. But since the WH calls it "enhanced interrogation techniques" its OK! Like when you bomb a village and innocent civilians are killed, its OK because you call it "collateral damage". And its OK to deny habeas corpus to POWs and break international law because you call them "unlawful combatants".
busch thinks of america the way capone thought about chicago. anyone he couldn't buy has been killed, tortured or bought. I can't wait until blackwater replaces out national guard.
All hail exec order #51!!!!!!!
Scy @ 20:
I did! In late November 2000!
bush and cheney should be superglued to a board for eternal waterboarding.
anything less does not equate to their crimes against the USA and the
American Constitution.
...........the widely held belief that the practice amounts to torture..........
That 'waterboarding' is torture is fact, not belief. Japanese soldiers were hung after WWII for the very same war crime.
Problem is, Americans (being 'good') think that if the US of A does something, it can't be the same thing that the bad guys do. Massive mental block.
"...the tactic, which generally involves strapping a prisoner to a board, covering his face or mouth with a cloth, and pouring water over his face to create the sensation of drowning."
Can we PLEASE get past this tired trope. It doesn't just create the sensation of drowning. The victim IS drowning. There's nothing simulated about it. If they don't stop in time, the victim will die, and in fact, some have. We prosecuted and convicted people who have done this to our troops in past wars. This is no different than stabbing someone and then stopping the bleeding just before they die, except that it doesn't leave a mark.
We used to be the good guys. Now we're a bunch of cowards who reserve the right to torture people if they frighten us enough.
As a Canadian looking on I don't have the chance to
speak to many Americans directly. Do you talk with
neighbors, friends and co-workers about having become a nation
that now abides by torture? I find it incomprehensible
the most Americans aren't outraged, infuriated and crushed by
what is happening. We talk about it all the time. We
can't believe it.
So now, it is allowed for all to use this for extracting information.
I tell ya, when my son comes home late again, it's surfing time!
I am doing this purely for love and to protect my son and others from possible harm.
And if jr does not speak, I bet some of his friends might know something.
It is not like torture gets me the results I want. O/C I will stop as soon as he tells me the truth and not some lies.
Just like paul said, if it were that bad, would we do it to our troops?
I mean getting such a procedure performed by people you can trust and with a codeword that will stop the procedure, is just so like-like. I bet they went out for a beer afterwards, just like with a real 'victim'.
Last night a panelist on Bill Maher's show scoffed at the idea that Bush is a bad man. He preferred to think the dope was a dupe. The panelist came of as hopelessly naive and a little dopey himself.
Canuck @ 37:
I've talked to three types of people on this.
Group One is horrified and wants impeachment, etc.
Group Two says it's fine, because we only torture terrorists and we need to protect ourselves.
Group Three says 'huh?"
What really scares me is the fact that Group One is only about one-in-five and is no larger than Group Two (and I work for a university). That Group Three is the largest is no surprise.
While i firmly believe that we are all responsible for this in the end. We are also victims here, we've been tortured by this administration for a full seven years now, and i certainly feel like i'm drowning.
THEY DIDN'T WATERBOARD SADDAHM to find out about his "WMDs."
When it's REALLY important... they make NICE with the "enemy" and read his poetry and treat him with respect.
When this COWBOY-PUNK of a president wants to look tough and propogate FEAR... he orders TORTURE.
It is a GOOD MOMENT when the criminals admit their crimes.
The moment when their impunity turns to horror --for them-- is a beautiful one--and when they admit their crimes, they are bringing that moment on.
As others have said, it's not "the sensation of drowning", it IS drowning.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/waterboarding-is-tortur...
JTM @ 40:
Well, that's exactly my question, why is it no surprise that group 3 is a large as it is.
Clearly Canadians are no more astute or educated than Americans as a whole. But
what torture is, represents and the rationalizations by those
who use it seems commonly understood and accepted.
Robin @ 44:
It is also not the issue. Waterboarding is the fetish, the thing they are dangling to excuse the entire operation, which has tortured MILLIONS of people, including many of our own soldiers.
They want us to sign off on their madness, to excuse their waterboarding as the selected label on the whole adventure. All kidnapping (extreme rendition), all overseas torture (meted out in Egypt and elsewhere) of delivered victims, the hostage taking, and the actions within those black site prisons -- all of it is warcrimes.
ok hands up, anyone here honestly think the dems under pelosi would call it torture and put impeachment back on the table even if they started using iron maidens?
It appers the US government is leaving the option open to torture US citizens during martial law.
Canuck @ 37:
Yours is pretty much the reaction of my friends and co-workers. Outraged, helpless to do anything about it. They definitely blame Bush, and they blame the Congress for letting him get away with it.
Canuck @ 45:
Mike the Canuck @ 50:
A simple Canook doesn't really have a say in this fight however, he would be better off to know that the President does not make law. Congress makes law. If the Democratic Congress thought waterboarding was torture they would outlaw it. Since they won't make it illegal they can not impeach george because he hasn't done anything illegal.
Canuck @ 45:
I had my comments in the wrong spot my apology to all
I absolutely agree with Canuck’s comments. However I have to add
that if the united states goverment feels that it should retain the right to torture then they need to get off their high horse. You are no longer the shinning light in the world and the best place in the world.
Take your place along side all the other tinpot dictatorships
I'll be sooooo glad to see this bastard take his ass back to Crawford to cut some brush. It is going to take this country a long time to outlive all the harm this bastard has caused us and the world.
Evil motherfuckers finally told the truth. God, how I hate these freaks.
OldSarg @ 51:
What crap. Waterboarding is torture, it is already illegal, and the House has prepared a bill to specifically define it as torture, because apparently that's necessary.
Bushco has thinktanks (the Federalist Society, for one) which specialize in finding cracks in established law that they can subvert. You thought you had a public right to elect the President? Scalia pointed out you don't. No one accepts his reasoning, but that's not the issue. NO ONE thinks waterboarding isn't torture -- they all know it is torture -- they are playing at opening cracks, and in the MOUNTAIN of US law, there are always going to be plenty of cracks.
How is the crack-opening avoided? By JUDICIAL REVIEW. Not Congressional lawmaking in the absence of judicial review. So you are blaming the wrong branch of government, probably because it satisfies your biases.
James @ 49:
They also blame the wrong branch. Torture is illegal. It remains illegal. The Supreme Court pointed out that GC Article 3 is still in effect. The collapse of the justice system under this coup is why its not being prosecuted. The Congress does NOT prosecute crimes, it can only impeach and try to remove, but in a case of a COUP, with one party voting en block in unanimity, the only thing that will change things is REMOVING THAT PARTY FROM POWER at the polls.
Ask your friends if the laws are supposed to be followed, or if the Republicans are supposed to uphold THEIR oaths -- not just the Democrats, who are everyone's favorite scapegoats.
Someone informed me the other day that we actually tried Nazis as war criminals based upon waterboarding tortures. Does anyone know if that's true? If so, it makes me even more disgusted than I already was.
#57, I do not know if Nazi's were tried for this particular crime, but as bolloxref(#35) correctly states, after WW2, Japanese soldiers were tried and executed for waterboarding POW's. I guess its only illegal if the enemy is doing it, which doesn't really seem to make any sense. But when any nation allows fear to guide how policy is made, these are the types of decisions that happen. I'm sure the Japanese soldiers who were found guilty of war crimes thought that whatever they were doing was for the best, and a necessary evil, if indeed they thought of it as evil at all.
The Likud governent influence on the Bush Admin:
This report suppressed for five years
Israeli government report admits systematic torture of Palestinians
B'Tselem blames the widespread abuses on the government's 1987 Landau commission report, which allowed the use of "moderate physical pressure", including shaking of detainees, if investigators believed that the interrogation would uncover terrorist plots.
Yael Stein, a B'Tselem researcher, said yesterday: "We claimed for years that the minute you allow a little amount of physical pressure you can't limit that amount. Very quickly interrogators are going to use interrogation that is very much more severe."
Tony @ 57:
We tried and convicted the Japanese as war criminals for waterboarding.
Never in my life did I think we'd have a US President who could logically be associated with some of the worlds worst dictators and human rights abusers. Bush has given this country a black eye in ways it will take decades to recover from and along the way we'll be in more danger from extremists. Thanks for nothing George and enjoy the 'legacy' of Worst President in US History.
wily1 @ 58 :
I guess its only illegal if the enemy is doing it
This has always been the case.
Moral bombings in WW2.
Free-fire zones in Vietnam.
Bombing retreating forces in GW1.
Countless incidents in Iraq.
Not to mention countless incidents in the other wars.
Sad thing is, it seems that all people will condone the worst kind of things, as long as they are happening to someone else.
Thus also how those propagating such stuff pimp the situation.
When US forces slaughtered an entire iraqi wedding party, they simply tried to frame it as an 'insurgent' wedding party. That was enough for the sheep to be happy and worry about the next nipple scandal.
Someone once caught hellfire for saying after 9/11 that people in the US are mini-Goebbels. Those that flamed him, besides being the kind that will go up in flames if you dot your Is wrong, never even thought of wanting to understand what the person ment by it.
People who have read this thread and, well most of C&R, will know what it means.
It means that when the US was spreading fear and destruction into the world and the people let themselves off the hook with the silly 'spreading democracy' crap, they are allowing such to happen.
The government, for the people, by the people. They should be doing the peoples will and when that does not happen, it is the peoples job to do something against it.
It takes the 'all that evil needs to prevail is for good people to do nothing' the step further it was lacking and say, 'if you do nothing against evil, you carry part of the guilt'.
Bush is not incompetent but maybe only simply showing how far you can go (and he could go a LOT further) negative wise in the US.
If the US does not catch itself, it will fall prey to the same horror that has fallen over every other country in this world.
And if we are lucky, there will be something left over to salvage.
Then again, the others that fell did not have their hands on a stockpile of nuclear weapons.
And when I think of who is in charge and their moral fiber...
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