When the
Spanish Inquisition used it, it was torture.
When the
Khmer Rouge in Cambodia used it, it was torture.
When the Japanese used it during World War II, it was torture, and WE
prosecuted their officers for it.
So when and how did waterboarding stop being torture?
Why, when George Bush started using it, of course.
America has gone through the looking glass it seems. Our friends on the right are so immersed in authoritarianism, and so hungry for the leadership of an absolute power -- a single, imperial presence that can tell them what to do, and what to think, and that is prepared to use all necessary force to protect them from the dangers that only their leader can fully understand, they are willing to suspend American history, American law, and even basic reason, in order to decide that no, waterboarding is NOT torture ... so long as we're the ones doing the waterboarding.
...or maybe not...
Two days ago, the legal advisor at Gitmo actually refused to even admit -- to a Republican questioner, JAG officer and Senator Lindsey Graham, that the waterboarding of an AMERICAN soldier by the IRANIAN MILITARY would be torture. Stunning, but true. They've taken their madness to its logical conclusion. ThinkP
has the video.
Today, that same legal advisor, Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, further testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that evidence obtained through waterboarding torture could actually be
admissible in Bush's kangaroo military tribunals, saying that “If the evidence is reliable and probative and the judge concluded it is in the interest of justice to use that evidence,” it would be admitted.
So now, the right has admitted that not only do they support torture, but they would also condone the torture of Americans, and the introduction of evidence in foreign kangaroo courts, against American prisoners that was obtained by torture. Who ARE these people???
As a matter of fact, some Republicans, like Missouri Senator Kit Bond -- the ranking member on the Senate Intel Committee, no less -- thinks that such torture is really no worse than doing the backstroke. I swear to you,
that's what he said... It would be funny if it weren't so damned tragic -- and so damned illegal!
So I have a few questions for my Republican friends. We now know that you would condone the waterboarding of Americans by the Iranian military. And we know that you would deem such torture of Americans to be akin to a nice dip in the Euphrates.
... If someone were to shove your head down into a toilet bowl so that the water was flowing into your nose, mouth and ears, and they held your head down until you thought you were drowning to death, and didn't let you up until you literally began to feel the lights go out, would you consider that torture? Because that's the same as waterboarding...
... And if you were to learn that that is exactly what had been done to an American POW in, say, Iraq, how would that grab you? What would you want done about it?
... And if Saddam Hussein, who was under constant threat of assassination and overthrow, deemed torture necessary in order to put down a very real insurrection by the Shiites or Kurds, then on what basis did people like YOU label him a torturer and a criminal? The torture of his own people was one of the charges leveled at Saddam by YOU, in order to justify overthrowing him. It was among the crimes that ultimately sent him to the gallows. If George W. Bush and his people truly believe torture to be justified in the defense of the United States, and Saddam truly believed torture to be justified in defense of Iraq's sovereign government, then what is the difference between the two? That Bush is nicer, although he too orders torture? That's he's American?
Or is it that you really don't have a logical place to go with your defense of torture. You're actually only justifying it because you are a partisan, and the torturers are on your team...?
