House GOP voted unanimously yesterday to keep on torturing. The Democrats are clearly against torture. Like all else that's good in the world, this anti-torture bill will presumably suffer death by filibuster at the hands of Senate Republicans.
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The Torture Party
14 Dec 2007 11:58 am
Comments (34)
The Democrats are clearly against torture.
Sure, now. As opposed to 2002, when both parties were for it. Luckily the Democrats changed their minds when they saw it could be used as an effective political club.
yes, the bill will suffer death by Republican filibuster....and by Democratic spinelessness, as they will refuse to take a stand. You know, as always.
There is scummy slimy Al, being scummy and slimy again. Lie away, scummy slimy Al. The scummiest Al of all.
For a movie that leaned so heavily on a book written decades before it, Brazil was ahead of its time. Sure, Reagan (or what he represented) was the beginning of the end, but who would have predicted that the modern conservative movement, and with it, America, would have fallen so far into the unreal reality of the Bush/Cheney years.
Wow. My old GOP Congressman, Jim Ramstad of Minnesota, voted against the torture ban. I always had my beefs with him, but thought he was fundamentally a decent guy. He's retiring next year. And this is how he wants to be remembered in the history books? Wow. "Disappointed" doesn't capture it.
Wow. My old GOP Congressman, Jim Ramstad of Minnesota, voted against the torture ban. I always had my beefs with him, but thought he was fundamentally a decent guy. He's retiring next year. And this is how he wants to be remembered in the history books? Wow. "Disappointed" doesn't capture it.
Remind me again how, when she first learned about the waterboarding policy, Pelosi objected?
Oh that's right, she didn't. I'd be a lot happier if both parties did the right thing, and went back to our WWII era policies on interrogation- but it's a bipartisan failure.
Do we know that all no votes on this were cast because of the torture issue? "Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008" sounds like a pretty broad bill.
Why is there so little outrage about this? Even if a Senate filibuster doesn't kill it, Bush has promised to veto it. I wish that brought people pouring out of their houses into the streets in protest. I would pour out of my house if it weren't 2 degrees outside -- but nobody would notice.
I think that this issue finally makes me understand the anti-abortion crowd. I can think of nothing our government does that is more odious, and I would happily vote on this single issue until it was really outlawed.
Actually, James, if the account of Pelosi is true -- and it might not be -- it seems that she said nothing and waited until Bush and the congressional republicans were too politically weak to enact any sort of retaliation against her for speaking up, at which point she struck.
I'm all for stabbing malefactors in the back, not "bravely" getting yourself killed trying to whack them head-on when they have the high ground.
It's not a "bipartisan" failure when only one party proposed and implemented the idea. This is completely a Republican failure, and it behooves all good people to wrap it around their necks every chance we get. I'm slightly -- but only marginally -- amused that you're trying to escape culpability for your role in supporting the pro-torture bush/cheney faction by trying to say "we were all at fault." We weren't. You are.
"Oh, you support the Republicans? Please stay away from my children, I don't believe that people who support torture are morally fit."
It wasn't a unanimous Republican or Democrat vote on either side, if MY would get off his lazy ass and bother to look at the roll call.
We know that only two known AQ terrorists, plus one anonymous one - who all declared that no laws of war applied to them - were waterboarded. What we learned from the two named ones saved thousands of lives here, at Heathrow in the UK, in Singapore.
I would have more sympathy to treating AQ by Geneva Conventions if they followed them. But they don't. They always kill people they capture, sometimes painfully and after days of terrorization. They seek to kill civilians, and endager other civilians by hiding in their midst and firing on us from their cover.
As most of the terrorist targets are Blue State or Blue city ones....I think we should give the Dems what they want. (not in THEIR name) No interrogation if the radical Muslims seek to kill Democrat-heavy area civilians. Interrogation if the radical Muslims threaten innocent Red State civilians or a military or industrial target.
It should also help to cut down the sympathy for Blue sections of America being hit by the Jihadis. THEY - through their elected representatives - believed their lives had less value than a terrorist's level of comfort. If they get what they want, it makes it easier for the rest of us to shrug their deaths off, and not go overboard with taxpayers forking up huge victim compensation packages.
Chris Ford here makes the dumb assertion that thousands of lives were saved by waterboarding. But hey, it's all classified info, so there's no way to disprove it.
I'd offer some kind of counter to his suggestion that we let Democrats die for their refusal to torture by suggesting that Ford deserves to live in a police state, but let's face it, he'd like that.
...believed their lives had less value than a terrorist's level of comfort. ...
Oh noes the comfy chair.
I believe Chris has accurately and crisply defined the argument. Obviously opposition to torture means favoring the deaths of any number of innocents. Why, perhaps they are even in favor of the deaths anyway and only use an objection to torture as a cover. I mean, wouldn't that only follow?
You know, it's great that America's two parties are so perfectly sorted between asshole conservatives and kindly liberals; so the world can just hate the Republicans and not blame our whole country.
I'd wager waterboarded dollars to genitally electrocuted doughnuts that Al, James, and Chris all share the same I.P. address.
Actually, not even Kiriakou said that "thousands of lives" were saved by that waterboarding -- he said only that it "probably saved lives" and was "perhaps justified", but that nothing like it is conceivably justifiable now. He also said that all the operations that were (possibly) broken up were "overseas" ones ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/10/AR2007121002091.html ; http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/12/the-witnessing.html ).
So, Chris Ford's little tantrum only returns us to the central question: if you think that interrogative torture is ever justified, when should you NOT do it -- and why should one man, by himself, be allowed to make that decision? Should it be allowed for every POW in a conflict in which the enemy doesn't reciprocate by not torturing our POWs? George Washington and FDR didn't when the British and Hessians during the revolutionary War, and the Japanese in WW II, didn't reciprocate -- and they did so for extremely good STRATEGIC reasons, which also apply to our current conflict with (potentially) the entire worldwide Moslem community.
Of course, there's also today's editorial by those draft-dodging liberals and civilians who edit the Armed Forces Journal ( http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2007/12/3230108 )...
It wasn't a unanimous Republican or Democrat vote on either side, if MY would get off his lazy ass and bother to look at the roll call.
Yeas: 227 Democrats, 0 Republicans
Nays: 191 Republicans, 0 Democrats,
Not Voting: 5 Democrats, 8 Republicans
I would have more sympathy to treating AQ by Geneva Conventions if they followed them. But they don't.
Well, that's (supposed to be) the difference between us and them -- we are civilized, we follow laws.
If we act the same way they do, what does that make us...?
Chris Ford -- at this point I'll just assume HTML code offends your sensibilities, as despite several requests to provide links to support your accusations, you've managed none. Also, I certainly hope one of your AQ sources of 'actionable' intelligence wasn't Mssr. Zubaydah, unless Heathrow Airport happens to be in Candyland. The man was a lunatic.
Although I'd rather you spared us a link to whatever sort of Soldier of Fortune wankery inspired the rest of your invective -- its been a long week, y'know?
I would have more sympathy to treating AQ by Geneva Conventions if they followed them. But they don't.
Well, that's (supposed to be) the difference between us and them -- we are civilized, we follow laws.
If we act the same way they do, what does that make us...?
Posted by Thlayli
Um, Thayli, that makes us as parties willing to honor Geneva if it is reciprocal, as the Conventions mandate. We are thus obligated to OFFER a foe Geneva treatment if they reciprocate in turn. If not, we are not legally obligated.
You suffer from the widespread ignorance that Geneva is a law that we are supposed to follow regardless of how the enemy behaves. Not so. It is a treaty requiring mutual assent between warring parties.
Hague, which is not reciprocal treaty but unilateral, requires all who sign onto it's laws to honor the goal of striving to minimize civilian casualties, provided the enemy is doing the same, and to not deliberately target civilians unless it cannot be avoided as a war fighting measure...
That is why we took no Jap prisoners on several Pacific Islands. No Quarter granted, none given. We even let a few garrisons on isolated atolls starve to death after we cut off their supply lines.
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Yeas: 227 Democrats, 0 Republicans
Nays: 191 Republicans, 0 Democrats,
Not Voting: 5 Democrats, 8 Republicans
Posted by Antid Oto
Incorrect, Roll Call shows crossers. Including some curious ones like Kuchinich and Woolsey voting "Nay" because they oppose the whole appropriation bill as not Leftist enough.
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Epicurean Quaker - at this point I'll just assume HTML code offends your sensibilities, as despite several requests to provide links to support your accusations, you've managed none.
I'm not your research assistant, EQ. You are just another anonymous internet asshole I have no obligations whatsoever to. If I link, it is when I think it is worth the time and effort and I believe the person I am going through the bother for has an open mind. In your case, neither criterion applies.
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Bruce Moomaw - not even Kiriakou said that "thousands of lives" were saved by that waterboarding.
You speak of Kiriakou as if he was some sort of God of waterboarding, rather than some CIA guy not involved at all in the waterboarding of any of the 3. He said "saved lives" because he didn't know the number because he was completely uninvolved in activities to get the 9/11 Mastermind's brain picked, and not in any position to assess how many lives were potentially saved. The "thousands of lives saved" came from, besides Bush Administration - the 9/11 Commission members of both parties. Plus Democrat Jane Harman talking about the West Coast Plot, and Blair reporting to Parliament on the thwarted Singapore and Heathrow plots. The Left's sudden glorification of this peripheral CIA guy follows the usual pattern of attributing God-like wisdom to any high ranking military officer or CIA that agrees with them.
Also, Washington and FDR and Truman held military tribunals and offered many enemy outside POW protections the opportunity to live if they disclosed everything. Or, they'd be hanged. In Washington's case, slow-hanged so it took 10-15 minutes of strangling to finally die.
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If you liberal Dems believe your lives have less value than a terrorist's level of comfort. ...great! It sure makes it easier for the rest of us to shrug off future deaths the Jihadis cause in liberal parts of America. And oppose overly generous "victims" compensation packages from tax payers for what could be argued were preventable deaths but for the love people like the victims had for terrorist rights.
Chris Ford is a lying degenerate.
Huh. There's Chris Ford. And when no one responds to his "if we don't torture terrorists then the Japs will win WWII", 'Jennifer' shows up with the same one or two sentence insults which 'she' says each time. Gosh.
Jennifer: I agree with most of your sentiments, but perhaps they could be expressed with a little more grace and wit. Try it; I know you can do it.
As for C. Ford, I've already said all I have to say, and others can say it better, except for this: if you're this angry now, I can only imagine what your comments are going to look like after the next election.
I like Jennifer's posts. I haven't really read any by Chris, so I can't comment on that.
I'm not sure Jennifer is sentient enough to pass the Turing Test. She reads like a spam bot.
As for Chris, Gary's idea is best. Just don't read his posts. I never bother to read through his whole rant, it's just pointless. I try to pick out any coherent point that is clearly wrong and occasionally respond to that just to make sure somebody else reading his crap isn't misled that anything he said has any support anywhere in logic or reality.
But fundamentally it's a waste of time. Ford might as well be a Republican/neocon spam bot as well.
Eventually, morons like Ford are going to end up shooting their wife or a cop who gave them a ticket or blowing up a building in Oklahoma - and then they'll get executed.
I look forward to Chris's turn in the chair - probably under some Governor named Bush.
Gee, that's odd. The 9-11 Commission said absolutely nothing in favor of torture (indeed, Kean and Hamilton are currently raising public hell precisely because the CIA concealed the existence of those videotapes from them as well). And neither did Blair, and Harman (of course) explicitly denounced torture.
As for Zubaydah being "the 9-11 Mastermind": haven't you got him mixed up with Khalil Shaikh Muhammad? And as for Washington being a torture enthusiast -- well, you know, there is that order of his to the Northern Expeditionary Force: "Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner] ... I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause... for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country," (Sept. 14, 1775.) Doesn't really sound like a patriotic admirer of the Marquis de Sade to me.
In short, we have here still further confirmation (if any was needed) that Mr. Ford's treehouse is missing several important slats.
Footnote: Here's the House clerk's official record of the final vote on the torture resolution (http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2007/roll1158.xml ).
Like EpicureanQuaker, I must confess I'm dying of curiosity regarding Mr. Ford's information sources. The fillings in his teeth, perhaps?
2nd footnote: Given Ford's obsession with the precise text of the Geneva Convention, it's interesting that the official legal advisor at Guantanamo, during a Dec. 11 Senate hearing, flatly and repeatedly refused to tell Lindsay Graham whether it would be "torture" for the Iranians to waterboard American POWs ( http://thinkprogress.org/2007/12/11/graham-waterboarding-iran/ ). Which, I think, tells you all you need to know about the grotesque nature of the knots the Administration and the GOP have now managed to tie themselves in on the torture issue.
Hmm, it seems that Chris Ford is right.
According to RollCall No. 1160, the final vote on the bill as I understand it, 5 Republicans votes for and 10 Democrats voted against the bill, among them Rep. Kucinich.
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2007/roll1160.xml
Or do I misinterpret this bureaucratic stuff?
Chris Degenerate Racist Fraud -
"That is why we took no Jap prisoners on several Pacific Islands."
There are degenerated cowardly people who simply need to be called such. Chris Scum Fraud goes about dripping racist hatred, and this diseased mind to be pointed to as diseased.
Chris Scum Fraud lied about the vote, but the slug is not capable of truth. Yglesias was right, but Fraud wants to destroy all that is right. A lying degenerate racist, that is Chris Scum Fraud.
No, Chris Ford is NOT right. That first roll call -- to quote Congressional Quarterly ( http://public.cq.com/docs/cqm/cqmidday110-000002642383.html ) -- was to "adopt a conference report for the fiscal 2008 intelligence authorization bill that would block the CIA from using several controversial interrogation techniques"; that, as CQ confirms, is the pure party-line 222-199 vote. The final vote on the authorization bill itself was the one with a few dissenters on both sides.
Now, it's interesting that the five GOP dissenters on the final vote were all members with a reputation for being moderate -- and one of them, Walter Jones of NC, is so monumentally fed up with the Bush Administration's war strategy in general that I think he might have joined the Democrats on the first vote if he'd bothered to show up, which he didn't. (Naturally, he's regarded as a sure loser in his upcoming GOP renomination primary.) As for why the other four switched, I have no idea -- maybe there's some other aspect of the final total CIA appropriation that they object to, or maybe they had second thoughts.
Ron Paul, by the way, didn't show up for either vote.
I suspect that, whatever their reasons for voting no on the conference report, the five Republicans who voted yes on the final vote voted that way at least in part for anti-waterboarding reasons. Here are their names and profiles:
Roscoe Bartlett (MD) - Not really a moderate, but a bit of a maverick. Opposes the death penalty and has, if I recall correctly, opposed anti-habeas corpus provisions in the past.
Wayne Gilchrist (MD) - A moderate. Has turned against the war, like Jones.
Tim Johnson (IL) - Fairly moderate, but conservative on social issues. A Pentecostal.
Walter Jones (NC) - The description above is accurate.
Chris Smith (NJ) - The leading pro-lifer in the House.
Where was Paul? Off campaigning, I assume, but sheesh.
Comments closed December 28, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
I watched Terry Gilliam's Brazil a few days ago for the first time in a while. It's fascinating in to watch in the current era. Turns out to be all about terrorism and torture.
Recommended.
Posted by Petey | December 14, 2007 12:24 PM