Am I reading this right? Intel czar Michael McConnell thinks waterboarding would be torture but no waterboarding that was actually done was torture, because torture is a crime and so that would mean that the people who ordered waterboarding (i.e., his bosses) are criminals. But what does this mean? If it's torture, it's torture.
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The Waterboard-go-round
14 Jan 2008 08:54 am
Comments (25)
Doesn't Hillary support torture in the "right" circumstances?
Doesn't Hillary support torture in the "right" circumstances?
I am just grateful for the tidbits of sanity we are getting from some of the new people in this administration. They could be as big a hack as the people they are replacing but instead are moving our policies very slowly back in the right direction. The last year of the Reagan administration started the restoration of sanity then, and I support any movement by this crowd. Soft bigotry of low expectations, I know.
Another GOP loyalist asserts: Waterboarding is or isn't torture-- depending entirely on who does it--and anyway, we stopped innumerable terrorist plots by using it, but we can't tell you any details about any of them because it's all super-secret.
This is hardly news anymore.
What was really striking to me about the cites I've seen from the New Yorker article was how unfamiliar McConnell seemed to be with the practice of waterboarding. He said the awful thing about waterboarding would be how "painful" it would be to have water poured up your nose; that's why it would be torture, if applied to him. But of course having water up your nose isn't particularly painful, and that's not what's peculiarly excruciating about waterboarding. It's not the pain; it's the panic drowning reflex that sets in. That's the horror: being subjected to the panic drowning reflex again and again. That's why it breaks people so fast. Not pain, but pure terror.
It's amazing to me that after five years of discussion about this, McConnell still apparently has no idea what waterboarding is or how it works as an interrogation technique, unless he's playing dumb, perhaps for legal reasons.
brooksfoe-- I don't think he knows. I spoke to a mid-level Vast Right Wing Co-Conspirator one time about the Taliban in Afghanistan. He said, "up until they blew up those statues, I thought they were freedom fighters."
That's just a mere straw in the wind, but I think that many right-wingers live mostly in the Conservapedia version of reality. The real story about Valerie Plame is that Joe Wilson's a jerk. The Surge was successful. The Islam-o-fascists want to kill your family, so we have to make them sit in a cold room sometime. Saddam worked with al Qaeda. Etc.
It was an incredible comment out of this administration, and reflective of a sea change.
He just threw Addington and Gonzo under the bus, may be Cheney and Bush too — All facing War Criminal trials!!
Of course the facts ultimately do speak for themselves. No, Neocons, the sky is not pink, no matter how many times you say it is, even when your top propagandist gets rewarded with a prestigious post at the Grey Whore.
What is hard to understand about it? If you waterboard me, then it is torture. If I waterboard you, it is Glorious Patriotic Life-Saving Fun Time.
What is hard to understand about it? If you waterboard me, then it is torture. If I waterboard you, it is Glorious Patriotic Life-Saving Fun Time. Posted by jim
jim nails it.
We don't torture - even when we do.
I think my favorite defense for waterboarding came from a rabid right-winger on another site (don't remember where). It boiled down to "because we sometimes waterboard our soldiers for conditioning, waterboarding cannot be torture."
How did America get to a point where we can argue about whether or not torture is okay?
If it's torture, it's torture.
Except no one has come up with definitions that separate what is torture from what is incidental treatment related to the need to interrogate and control unlawful enemy combatants in custody.
Suits assert sleep depravation, cold cells, the humiliation of being questioned by female guards or Shiite heretics, or Jews - as all being "torture".
The funny thing is the terrorist rights lovers temd to be the ones right next to the most likely targets in Jihad. And if many Americans have to die on the stupidy of not being allowed to get info from senior Jihadis, I suppose it is better that Leftys who wished American lives be lost rather than force a Jihadi tob talk end up being more likely the ones that die for it, rather than regular Americans that have no problem with unlawful enemy combatants being stripped of all Geneva prototections for violating all it's laws as a deterrence to other Jihadis doing the same..
If it's torture, it's torture.
NO. No more than all killing is murder because some killing is true murder. Other killing that protects a society is actually commendable.
Brookesfoe - that's not what's peculiarly excruciating about waterboarding. It's not the pain; it's the panic drowning reflex that sets in. That's the horror: being subjected to the panic drowning reflex again and again. That's why it breaks people so fast. Not pain, but pure terror.
Oh, the horror, the poor terrorists! The poor terorists! What true horror and terror is deciding whether to burn alive or jump from WTC offices, or a mother after her family was deliberately targeted by a market place truck bomb hoping that one daughter dies quickly in the Hospital given her face and arms were blown away rather than live. The terror and horror of wondering if the second with a nail in his brain will ever be normal again, and why the 2nd daughter is still screaming in fear days later despite only having light schrapnel wounds.
I have no problem if they feel a little terror themselves as we tried to save lives by interrogating them. They chose to violate the rules of war, not us.
I think more cities in Europe and in Blue America need to be attacked before common sense comes back into the debate and the anti-American ACLU is again marginalized.
chris ford-- I understand your comment to argue (1) that conservatives want another attack on America because then fewer people will object to the torture and war that excites them, and (2) that conservatives are unconcerned with getting accurate information; they simply want to torture people the government has declared to be terrorists to satisfy their basest urges.
It's bloodlust, not policy. And it's the mentality that's been governing our country for the past 7 years.
I have no problem if they feel a little terror themselves as we tried to save lives by interrogating them. They chose to violate the rules of war, not us.
That callousness is indicative of chrisford's terroristic mindset. I think we need to waterboard him to check our suspicions.
That callousness is indicative of chrisford's terroristic mindset. I think we need to waterboard him to check our suspicions.
Posted by pseudonymous in nc
And here's your anticipated response:
"Oh yeah? Did I whine about 'waterboarding' when I was leading the Confederate troops through Guadalcanal? You whiny Jewish cowardly left liberals may want to cry in your coffee and give up your coffee, but you don't know a damned thing about what it was like fighting the Apache, and no one cried when I parachuted in a night jump to go scalp them! If you cheap punks had been with me as I led our forces across the Delaware and stormed the Kraut's machine gun nests while their Shaka Zulu allies flanked us, we would have draped your useless bodies over our shields while our longbowmen took out their IED factories!"
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Except no one has come up with definitions that separate what is torture from what is incidental treatment related to the need to interrogate and control unlawful enemy combatants in custody.
Excuse me, but the horror and panic someone feels when he is waterboarded is hardly "incidental treatment to the need to interrogate" It is the very point of waterboarding: the horror is supposed to "break" the interrogee's will. Besides, it really annoyes me when people suddenly claim that the definition of torture is fuzzy, just because they have pushed the limits into territories formerly deemed forbidden.
I have no problem if they feel a little terror themselves as we tried to save lives by interrogating them. They chose to violate the rules of war, not us.
Do I really have to point to the fact that if you torture someone to get information that is supposed to save lives it is hardly ever certain that the person concerned actually has that kind of information, let allone that he/she is actually involved in terrorism? How often will they turtore someone to find out if he has valuable information?
And the argument clearly shows that the problem is not to find a workable definition of torture. The point is that they want the right to torture if they deem torture expedient.
That's the right wing's logic nowadays: A whole class of people (defined by the Great Decider without legal scrutiny) is denied the quality of a human being and therefore everything done to them is fine and dandy.
The funny thing is the terrorist rights lovers temd to be the ones right next to the most likely targets in Jihad.
It amazes me that this simple fact -- that the likeliest targets of terrorism are also the ones that most oppose torture -- doesn't give people like Chris ("Jews!") Ford a little more pause.
The people in New York, or in DC (about 2 miles from the pentagon, as I am) are the ones in the crosshairs, and we aren't ready to throw our basic decency and humanity overboard for the perceived safety of a torture state. Could there be any more softheaded idea than that New Yorkers, who actually lived through the horror that he catalogs in such detail, are "terrorist lovers"?
I suppose it is better that Leftys who wished American lives be lost ... I think more cities in Europe and in Blue America need to be attacked...
I'm not sure which is more disgusting: assuming that your fellow Americans want to see harm to their neighbors because you disagree with them politically, or the fact that you express this exact same wish. You should be ashamed.
chris ford: you are fortunate to be out of the military, because if anyone were still putting you in a position to exercise your convictions, you might end up on trial for war crimes in a few years.
Suits assert sleep depravation, cold cells, the humiliation of being questioned by female guards or Shiite heretics, or Jews - as all being "torture".
Where was it that I first heard sleep deprivation and cold cells described as "torture"? Oh yes, that's right -- Solzhenitsyn.
But perhaps Stalin never really tortured anyone either.
People who support torture sound suspiciously similar to al Qaeda operatives, who also have no concern for quaint things like human rights and the laws of war. Ergo, I hope the new Democratic CiC will round up these al Qaeda sympathizers and label them enemy combatants, detain them without trial, torture them for years, lose the evidence against them, and then start vigorously waving the American flag in support of our Glorious Democratic Principles.
Would you rather waterboard and coldcell chrisford or let his allies nuke Los Angeles? If he is innocent, he has nothing to fear.
I still see a lot of difficulty with Lefties wrestling with the concept of the enemy of my enemy(Bush) is therefore my friend.
And rather enjoy seeing them try to term any discomfort deliberately inflicted in war as "torture and/or genocide".
1. Killing the enemy is torture if they suffer any agony before they die.
2. Weapons designed to hopefully maim as much as they kill to take more enemy out of action caring for wounded (5.56mm ammo, artillery, mines, cluster ordnance, IEDs, grenades, flame) must be torture because it is more painful than waterboarding. Endure 1 minute of interrogation or lose one arm, 1/3rd of your face, and both your eyes to an RPG? Choose. That is the true nature of war and combat reality.
3. Traditional actions against the population of the enemy as a whole such as trade embargoing all goods they normally import in war - food, medicine, oil, etc. is now termed "torture" - if it generates civilian mortality, suffering, even discomfort.
4. THe claim that torture is also any act of humiliation because that is what PC liberal lawyers decided at a UN meeting opens up preposterous new grounds for American human rights lawyers to make new "abuse claims". Now we have Koran abuse, touching a Jihadi with the left hand when the right could be used, female guards as abusers because they are female, the humiliation ergo torture of being questioned by a Jew..
The list goes on a long way and now the Left has had success swaying the American Herd to go with them because many believe there is no longer a threat because we have the Jihadis hiding in caves and unable to do more than kill Marines in Iraq while their sweet asses in Seattle or the West side of Manhattan are perfectly safe. But strategic thinkers are convinced that more deadly Jihad attacks are just to be a fact of life in the early 21st Century and the main targets are now outside America - moderate Muslims, Jews & Jewish-owned enterprises overseas, and Hindis and Euros and African Christians.
It will take further attacks or WMD use somewhere to refocus the Herd's attention. That is simple reality, that societies require lessons written in blood before they regard enemy as more than misguided children "acting out". 9/11 wasn't enough.
chris ford: you are fortunate to be out of the military, because if anyone were still putting you in a position to exercise your convictions, you might end up on trial for war crimes in a few years.
Posted by brooksfoe
If soldiers or leadership somehow disregard "precious terrorist rights" in the process of saving American lives, good luck to you and others who are acting on the notion that the enemy (radical Muslims) of your enemy (Bush) must be your allies. At best you will be seen as defeatist Copperheads, at worst traitors when you try prosecuting the 1st US soldier who interrogated to save American lives or the 1st leader who authorized it. The 1st soldier to stand up to the coalition of outraged liberal Jews and Gentile Lefties in testimony to Congress, and pull an Ollie North, which had the Lymans, Bidens, Metzenbaums scurrying to duck under rocks.
Or worse, after a significant attack, people testifying that the career and freedom threat they say Russ Feingold, Dick Durbin, and Arlen Spector represented to them led them to fear interrogating terrorists so they let them alone and did not develop any intel unless a lawyer gave them something in writing....
chris, have you ever actually read the Convention on Torture, ratified by the US? Or the US Army Field Manual? Because you don't appear to have the faintest clue.
As a matter of law, inflicting excruciating pain on the enemy in the course of combat is not torture. Torture is pain or humiliation inflicted on captives in order to elicit information or compel behavior. It's not a matter of how much it hurts. Raping or sexually abusing a captive, for instance, doesn't necessarily hurt at all. But if you do it in order to compel them to admit to being a terrorist, it's torture.
We've been over this a dozen times here with Ford.
He's a fucking Ku Klux Klan lunatic who will one day be arrested for shooting his wife, or running over a cop who stopped him for speeding - or shooting speed, or shooting up a Post Office - or shooting something up his nose.
He's a whack job. I could rant about ninjas all day and not be as whacked as this nut.
"The enemy (Islamists) of my enemy (Bush) is my friend?"
Who the hell ever said that here, or anywhere else?
See? Whack job.
It's been established that torture does not work as well as other methods and thus in particular does not "save lives" as well as other methods. It's that simple. It doesn't even matter if in some specific case that could be pointed to by the proponents of torture - and there are no such cases, despite the rhetoric - it actually did work and did "save lives", it STILL wouldn't logically follow that it would normally do so better than other methods. That's Logic 101.
You simply have to be a whack job to believe in torture being effective or appropriate.
Comments closed January 28, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
As I read his argument in that article, McConnell says that waterboarding would be torture if done to him. However, if we get information that saves "Tons!" of lives-- and even other Bush appointees in DOJ and NSC are willing to say so!-- then it's not torture.
Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | January 14, 2008 9:04 AM