Rep. Rohrabacher On Using Women's Panties For Torture

WASHINGTON — Rep. Dana Rohrabacher on Wednesday dismissed the idea that taunting terrorism suspects with women's panties is a form of torture.

In a debate about detainee treatment at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the California Republican cited panties eight times, arguing that making suspected terrorists wear women's underwear on their heads isn't demeaning and degrading enough to be called torture.

"You're suggesting that the behavior of, what, panties on his head ... is unacceptable interrogation technique for a man who was involved in a conspiracy to kill tens of thousands of Americans?" Rohrabacher asked during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing.

Rohrabacher was taking issue with FBI complaints about inappropriate and potentially illegal tactics used to get al-Qaida detainees to talk in the years following the Sept. 11 attacks. He said interrogation-by-panties was more akin to a "hazing pranks from some fraternity," not torture.

Some interrogation tactics used _ even if not torture _ might not be pleasant, Rohrabacher said. "I mean, OK, describing his mother and sister as whores, that's certainly not a nice thing to do," he said.

An exasperated Rep. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass., reminded Rohrabacher that interrogators were also seen physically abusing detainees.

"This isn't about panties on the head," Delahunt said. "This is about physical pressure, waterboarding and other techniques that apparently were utilized at Guantanamo."

Rohrabacher made a final point.

"I, in no way, will ever apologize that someone put panties on the head of this 9/11 terrorist and treated him without respect," he said. "That man should have no respect."

Comments

[Gericault]

Please help us get rid of this guy!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.debbiecookforcongress.com/

Help support his opponent. This is the same guy who said Global warming was caused by Dinosaur farts.
We are such a republican county but this is the first time we have actually had a decent contender.

[Rockwell]

Sounds like the guy named Dana is obsessing about panties on the face. The committee was talking about serious abuses, but Dana kept coming back to panties. Give the man a gift certificate to Victoria's Secret and send him away so the adults can talk about real issues.

I've also gotta ask, is panties on the head what passes for professional interrogation techniques these days? Isn't there something in between panties and waterboarding they can use?

[MTGradwell]

Putting women's panties on prisoners' heads is not torture, but it is throughly demeaning and degrading - for everybody in the Western world.

"I, in no way, will ever apologize that someone put panties on the head of this 9/11 terrorist and treated him without respect .. That man should have no respect." - That's how to miss the point.

To a world that hates us for our degradation, hatefulness and stupidity - NOT for our freedoms - such episodes demonstrate that the people imposing the panties are the ones who have no respect either for themselves or for any others, and who are themselves therefore utterly undeserving of any respect. Such episodes tell us NOTHING about the detainees. We don't know whether they committed any crimes or not, and in any case the use of panties doesn't affect their criminal nature or lack thereof in any way. However, these episodes tell us almost everything that needs to be known about the interrogators. I say "almost" because we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that far worse things have been done. When the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, some horrific videos became public, but far worse was withheld. Reportedly, things like people having their heads bashed against a wall untill their skulls cracked open. You know - stuff that almost goes beyond the acceptable limits of pranks and hazings.

[research]

How 1984. Find out what your prisoner fears and use it as torture.

What do you fear?

[RhymesWithRight]

Well, maybe it is -- if you are so insecure in your sexuality that you are afraid of anything that puts you in a subordinate role to women.

I've got it -- the terrorists must all be closet queens!

[voicefromafar]

depends on who's panties

[rwt1138]

Is it just me, or is anybody else embarrassed that the parliamentary wing of our government is having a heated debate over whether or not, in the wake of the September 11th attacks, putting panties on someones head is an appropriate response?

What about wedgies or wet willies? what about getting them drunk, shaving their bodies and covering them in grafiti with a permanent marker? too harsh?

If this is what passes for professional, state of the art intelligence gathering in this country, it's amazing that the intelligence agencies were even aware of the attacks by September 14th.

Dana Rohrhbacher: passionate defender of fraternity-prank-inspired interrogation techniques.

[ufty44]

"REP." Rohrabacher should sit on the next sub committee meeting with a pair of large pink panties on top of his inflated and disallusioned head.

....and these incompetent fools get into to Congress and stay how??????

[Moshe]

It's not just you. To any rational person this is the theatre of the absurd.

But what Mr. Rohrabacker and the whole troop of neo-con flying monkeys don't understand, or care about as the pander to the reich-wing nuts who applaud torture, is that these absurd debates will have deadly consequences.

The Geneva Conventions were a response to deadly serious problems: The abuse, torture, and murder of enemy prisoners.

In Rohrabacker's mindlessly simplistic world view, "enemies" are bad guys, so you can do any horrible thing you want to them.

FYI Mr. Rohrabacker: In time of war, OUR SOLDIERS, our sons and daughters are "enemies" from the perspective of those that oppose us in war, and if you, Mr. Rohrabacker, publicly declare that you will torture, humiliate, and abuse "enemy" prisoners at will, so will our enemies.

Your actions, Mr. Rohrabacker, in clear violation of our own laws against torture and humiliation, will make our own sons and daughters, now and in the future, far more likely to be tortured, publicly humilated, and abused.

And what will you say then Mr. Rohrabacker? That is it wrong? That it is illegal? Immoral?

The Geneva Conventions are mutual agreements or they cease to function.

Mr. Rohrabacker, you are defiling our laws, our Constituion, and endangering our troops.

Either follow the law, including the Geneva Conventions Mr. Rohrabacker, or resign. You cannot violate our laws and continue to claim to act in our name.

[BobSF94117]

Professional, state-of-the-art intelligence gathering in this country didn't include waterboarding and actually killing "suspects" until Dubya told 'em to. You can thank him for having to discuss these things...

[Furby]

Are we talking chantilly lace or fruit of the loom? Let's not get our knickers in a knot until we have the facts.

[MikeDu]

Do you remember at the start of one of the gulf wars (I can't remember which) Iraq captures some Americans and at least one of them, a black woman i recall, was seen in a news video clip simply walking down a hall. I remember the U.S. screamed "GENEVA CONVENTION!" at the top of its lungs over the film clip. No country, according to the U.S. protest, had the right to display or degrade its prisoners. Fast forward to the Bush admin leaking degrading snapshots of the captured president of iraq stripped to his underwear. The fascist right in this country are little more than a pack of degenerate schoolyard bully-boys, Rohrabacher included.

[Durango]

Another example of the IDIOTS who call themselves Republicans

there was a time when lack of intelligence was not a prerequisite of membership in that party. But for the last 8 years stupidity has run rampant.

Get a clue fool. It was the FB fricking I who were complaining about mistreatment and possible illegal treatment.

If I heard the FBI was complaining I would stand up and pay attention.

But that is too much to expect from this partisan hack.

[ChiGuy]

The guy's a fetishist.

[Moshe]

Mr. Rohrabacker:

The relevant concern here is not your preferences, it's the Rule of Law as defined by the Genvena Convention which the U.S. agreed to, and which prohibits humiliation and degrading treatment of prisoners.

Do what you wish with panties in your personal life Mr. Rohrabacker, but unless you are prepared to resign from Congress, you swore an oath to uphold the law. That law includes the Geneva Convention.

Either follow the law or resign Mr. Rohrabacker.

[NoFactsJustTruth]

Another neoCONman attempting to obfuscate waterboarding WARCRIMES, only this time as being somehow akin to those PREverted drunken panty-raids someone 'forced' him to participate in when he 'pledged' at Delta House. It must have been so cruel to him he thought it was 'torture'. Uh huh...

Idiot.

[mgloraine]

The Geneva Conventions prohibit all types of coercive behavior:

Third Geneva Convention Part III Section 1 Article 17

"No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind."

http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/7c4d08d9b287a42141256739003e636b/6fef854a3517b75ac125641e004a9e68

It doesn't matter whether the panty treatment (or waterboarding for that matter) qualifies as "torture" in anyone's special dictionary, because its intent is clearly unpleasant, disadvantageous, and coercive, which makes it against the law.

The legally permissable amount of humiliation and abuse which can be directed at prisoners is zero.

Rep. Rohrabacher (along with all other loyal Bushies) likes to forget that most of the detainees at Guantanamo (and elsewhere in the CIA gulag) have not been formally charged with specific crimes, let alone having been found guilty of anything. Yet they are quick to refer to any and all detainees as 9/11 terrorists in the absence of charges and evidence, as if proclaiming someone to be a 9/11 terrorist thereby makes the accused fair game for any and all abuse, regardless of any federal or international laws prohibiting such treatment.

[sxm342]

I expected more from our nation than fraternity hazings.

[Gericault]

Please help us get rid of this guy!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.debbiecookforcongress.com/

Help support his opponent. This is the same guy who said Global warming was caused by Dinosaur farts.
We are such a republican county but this is the first time we have actually had a decent contender.

Support Debbie Cook for Congress