Conason: If It's Not Torture, Rudy Should Try Waterboarding Himself

Salon:

Echoing Michael Mukasey, his friend and associate who likely will soon be the next attorney general, Republican presidential front-runner Rudolph Giuliani claimed Wednesday that he doesn't know whether waterboarding is torture. Having become accustomed long ago to making the most absurd declarations without fear of challenge, Giuliani went further than Mukasey's hesitant demurral.

"I don't know what is involved in the technique," Mukasey replied during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, when Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., a former prosecutor, asked whether Mukasey thinks waterboarding constitutes torture and is therefore illegal as well as unconstitutional. Perhaps Mukasey (and Giuliani) should be subjected to the technique for strictly educational purposes so that they will become aware that it involves reclining the victim on a bench or table, covering his face with a cloth and then pouring water over his nose and mouth to make him feel as if he is drowning.

Read the whole story: Salon

Comments

[anastasiabeaverhousen]

05:18 PM on 10/26/2007

Joe: Thanks for the excellent post. I miss hearing you on Al's radio show.....you were/are my favorite voice of reason.

[MrBritesnide]

03:48 PM on 10/26/2007

Why not waterboard him while he's in drag?

[cognate]

03:24 PM on 10/26/2007

Israel has tortured thousands of jailed Palestinians. Doesn't that make it alright for us putzes too?

[Ping]

02:15 PM on 10/26/2007

Let's be fair...Rudy said,

"I think the way it’s been defined in the media, it shouldn’t be done. The way in which they have described it, particularly in the liberal media. So I would say, if that’s the description of it, then I can agree, that it shouldn’t be done."

Read the story first. And Salon is a piece of sh*t.

[gappedtoothgodwarrior]

03:21 PM on 10/26/2007

So Fox is the Liberal Media according to Rudi?

The only thing I've seen about Waterboarding was a piece on Fox where one of their presenters was unable to go through with it after two rounds.

[hannitizer]

12:04 AM on 10/27/2007

Hey P, Rudy said "The way in which they have described it, particularly in the liberal media" As if anything the "liberal" media is somehow indapable of describing anything realistically. He is indefensible. How else can you describe it sir? And he said, " if that"s the description of it,", what in fuck does he mean by "if". Of course it's torture when someone is repeatedly brought to the brink of death never knowing if this is it, I'm going to die only to be revived and tortured again and again..

How can you defend his "if's" and buts? He is devoid of honor. He is replete with disgrace.

[johnnyjust]

01:53 PM on 10/26/2007

Don't really care if terrorists get wet.

[Grunty1]

02:23 PM on 10/26/2007

You mean you don't care if you accidentally drown or kill people not charged with any crime

[gappedtoothgodwarrior]

03:27 PM on 10/26/2007

Willing to try it out.

[gappedtoothgodwarrior]

03:27 PM on 10/26/2007

There should have been a ? at the end of that.

[sinnerjizm]

01:12 PM on 10/26/2007

Ghouliani's 9/11 commission testimony leaked by the Village Voice. This was supposed to be kept sealed until after the '08 elections.


This is pretty damning information, and the MSM seems to be ignoring it.

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0743,barrett,78158,6.html

Runnin' Scared
Rudy's Pants On Fire
Secret testimony shows that Rudy's stump speech is inflated, at best
by Wayne Barrett
October 23rd, 2007 9:25 PM

In a recent broadside deriding the Clinton administration's response to Al Qaeda, Rudy Giuliani told an audience at Pat Robertson's Regent University: "Bin Laden declared war on us. We didn't hear it. I thought it was pretty clear at the time, but a lot of people didn't see it, couldn't see it." Other tenets of his standard stump speech include the assertion that he's been "studying terrorism" for more than 30 years, and that "the thing that distinguishes me on terrorism is that I have more experience in dealing with it" than the other presidential candidates.

[sinnerjizm]

01:12 PM on 10/26/2007

However, in private testimony before the 9/11 Commission in 2004, Rudy gave a very different version of how much he knew about terrorism when the World Trade Center was attacked. That testimony isn't scheduled to be released publicly until after the 2008 presidential election, but the Voice has obtained a copy of it. And it reveals a New York mayor who was anything but an "expert on terrorism."

A 15-page "memorandum for the record," prepared by a commission counsel and dated April 20, 2004, quotes Giuliani conceding that it wasn't until "after 9/11" that "we brought in people to brief us on al Qaeda." According to the memorandum, Giuliani told two commission members and five staffers: "But we had nothing like this pre 9/11, which was a mistake, because if experts share a lot of info," there would be a "better chance of someone making heads and tails" of the "situation." (Such memoranda are not verbatim transcripts of the confidential commission interviews, but are described on the cover page as "100 percent accurate" notes taken by staffers, stamped "commission sensitive/unclassified" on the top of each page.)

[sinnerjizm]

01:15 PM on 10/26/2007

Asked about the “flow of information about al Qaeda threats from 1998-2001,” Giuliani said: “At the time, I wasn’t told it was al Qaeda, but now that I look back at it, I think it was al Qaeda.” He also said that as part of one of his post-9/11 briefings, “we had in Bodansky, who had written a book on bin Laden.” Giuliani was referring to Yossef Bodanksy, the author of Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America, which was published in 1999 and predicted “spectacular terrorist strikes in Washington and/or New York.” Giuliani wrote in his own book, Leadership, that Judi Nathan got him a copy of Bodansky’s prophetic work “shortly after 9/11,” and that he covered it in “highlighter and notes,” citing his study of it as an example of how he “mastered a subject.” Apparently, he also invited Bodansky to address key members of his staff.

Giuliani attributed his pre-9/11 shortcomings in part to the FBI, which was run by his close friend (and current endorser) Louis Freeh, and to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, an FBI-directed partnership with the NYPD. "We already had JTTF, and got flow information no one else got," he explained. "But did we get the flow of information we wanted? No. We would be told about a threat, but not about the underlying nature of the threat. I wanted all the same information the FBI had, and we didn't get that until after 9/11. Immediately after 9/11, we were made a complete partner." He added: "Without 9/11, I never would have been able to send an adviser to FBI briefings."

[pizzmoe]

12:50 PM on 10/26/2007

Why is this man even considered for a position in any capacity, let alone President?

[forpeace]

12:56 PM on 10/26/2007

*

"pizzmoe (See profile | I'm a fan of pizzmoe)
Why is this man even considered for a position in any capacity, let alone President?"
=========================

Simply because there are still some 23-27% Morons living in this country who will vote for people like him!

*

[offred]

12:42 PM on 10/26/2007

I'd love to see the Colbert Report do an interview with Mukasey in which Mukasey is waterboarded, so he could speak knowledgeably in the future. Or how about a reality show in which Bush-worshipping yahoos prove their allegiance to their Prez by showing that our interrogation tactics are really no more serious than frat boy pranks?

[forpeace]

12:31 PM on 10/26/2007

*

Let's do it backward on Rudy!

*

[gappedtoothgodwarrior]

03:24 PM on 10/26/2007

Cover his face with water and then pour cloth onto it?

[godlessclif]

05:52 PM on 10/26/2007

Backward waterboarding? You mean give Rudy Kazootie an emema?

[Felicty]

12:24 PM on 10/26/2007

Let me waterboard the motherfucker myself. I'll make him wish he'd never opened his mouth.

[forpeace]

12:32 PM on 10/26/2007

*

"Felicty
Let me waterboard the motherfucker myself. I'll make him wish he'd never opened his mouth."
=====================

He is all yours!

*

[tomjust]

11:44 AM on 10/26/2007

Dress 'em both in wet suits and dildoes and waterboard away. It's good, clean Republican fun!

[Dandy12]

11:43 AM on 10/26/2007

I suggested yesterday that Mukasey ought to visit the CIA and take a spin on the waterboard! I hope some of these people get a chance to explain some of their actions/inactions at the Hague one day!