Bybee's Insect Ruling: Pat Leahy demands that he resign
By John Amato
I know that this is a few days old, but still deserves to be seen again. Rachel Maddow reports on Judge Bybee's CIA memo that involves torturing a prisoner with insects. It's 1984 all over again. This is sick and it shows how disturbed Dick Cheney and his henchmen at the OLC were and still are.
And this man is one step away from the Supreme Court, where he'd have a nice relationship with Scalia, I'm sure. He needs to be impeached.
Pat Leahy says that Bybee should just resign.
If that's the case, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), told reporters Tuesday, then Bybee should resign.
"The fact is, the Bush administration and Mr. Bybee did not tell the truth. If the Bush administration and Mr. Bybee had told the truth, he never would have been confirmed," said Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The decent and honorable thing for him to do would be to resign. And if he is a decent and honorable person, he will resign," he said deliberately.
County Fair has a long list of conservative reactions to the release of the torture memos.
It's one big laugh-O-thon.
Numerous conservative media figures have downplayed, mocked, and jeered the notion that the use on detainees of harsh interrogation techniques authorized by the recently released Justice Department memos constitutes torture.
Listed below are further examples of conservative media personalities making light of the idea that such practices constitute torture:
During the April 16 edition of CNN's No Bias, No Bull, convicted Watergate criminal G. Gordon Liddy compared the proposed technique of placing a detainee who "appears to have a fear of insects" in "a cramped confinement box with an insect" to his appearance on a game show, stating, "I went through worse on Fear Factor."
During the April 17 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, Fox contributor Mike Huckabee mocked the same proposed technique, saying: "Look, I've been in some hotels where there were more bugs than these guys faced." Huckabee went on to state that under the Obama administration, "We're going to talk to them, we're going to have a nice conversation, we're going to invite them down for some tea and crumpets." Co-host Gretchen Carlson replied, "That usually works with your kids, too, right? When they're in trouble for something, they just tell you everything." Co-host Steve Doocy then joked, "Mr. Moussaui, it's time for you over in the time-out chair."
During the April 17 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe, co-host Joe Scarborough commented that "if putting a caterpillar in a box will save your child, that's OK." Later, Scarborough stated: "Yeah, you know, millions of people are dead, but I feel good about myself -- we didn't put caterpillars in people's boxes." Scarborough went on to say: "God, I go through torture everyday."
During the April 17 edition of his radio show, Limbaugh said: "I just slapped myself. I'm torturing myself right now. That's torture according to these people."
During the April 17 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News contributor Karl Rove equated presidential candidates' campaigning to sleep deprivation of detainees, saying of the CIA: "They authorized up to several hundred hours worth of sleep deprivation. They used it three times for a total of 96 hours. Remember when Bob Dole ran for president, and said that he was going to campaign nonstop for 96 hours? Do you remember when Al Gore was campaigning and said he was going to campaign for two days straight? Both of those men were, according to the left, torturing themselves by engaging in sleep deprivation."
During the "Panel Plus" segment of the April 19 edition of Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol argued: "I'm not confident that forswearing the use of the techniques is prudent." Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume went on to characterize the technique of throwing detainees against a false wall as "very controlled," while host Chris Wallace called the technique "fairly cautious and careful."
During the April 20 edition of Fox & Friends, co-host Brian Kilmeade commented that he "feel[s] better" knowing that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was "waterboarded 183 times."
During the April 20 edition of his show, Limbaugh stated that "if somebody can be water-tortured six times a day, then it isn't torture."