On average, the same number of Americans who were killed on September 11 will die from cancer over the next two days. 40,000 people this month. More than half a million throughout the course of the year.
Your chances of being killed at the hands of a terrorist, on the other hand, are comparatively remote. Some estimates show the odds at one in 9.3 million.
Why, then, are Republicans -- from the very serious moderates to the buggy-eyed Glenn Beck spasmodics -- embracing the broadly condemned and immoral act of government sponsored torture, while, often in the same talk radio segment, predicting the end of the world due to government plans guaranteeing that Americans will be able to afford healthcare? Somehow, irrational fear wins the day once again over a very rational desire to be treated for an illness without, you know, going broke.
Without explanation or logic, and following months of screeching about tea parties and tyranny and big government, the usual suspects on the right appear to be demanding that the government retain the power to do anything -- anything! -- in order to protect us from a terrorist attack. This, naturally, includes torture, but from what I'm hearing, there's no limit to what they'd allow. Whatever it takes, right? As FOX & Friends' Brian Kilmeade remarked on Monday: "It feels good" that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in a single month. And here I thought only shiny jingly objects made Kilmeade feel good.
But it's not just Bush administration officials they're defending here. Extrapolating what the torture superfans are suggesting, they appear to believe that in light of the threat of terrorism, any administration should be able to torture, including the current president. In other words: they're simultaneously accusing President Obama of being an oppressive and tyrannical "fascist," while also insisting that he should exercise the power to do whatever he wants in order to prevent another terrorist attack. Put yet another way: unchecked government power is awful, unless Sean Hannity is scared. Then it's excellent. Put a third way: WTF?
Meanwhile, your very real fear of bankruptcy, homelessness and illness is not "my problem." You liberal pinhead you.
As closely as I've been following the wingnut right lately, their ability to contradict themselves never ceases to confound. Stir into the mix a resurgence of irrational fear harkening back to 9/11 and the incongruities multiply faster than Newt Gingrich's wives.
For example, Rush Limbaugh this week both underscored the so-called efficacy of the Bush administration's torture policy, while also downplaying it by slapping himself in the face (ostensible with the same flappy arm gesticulations he used to mock a guy's Parkison's symptoms). He's wheeled out this argument before, most memorably after the Abu Ghraib photographs went public. Downplay the severity. Torture? Feh. It's nothing! Smack-smack. Splash-splash.
But if it's nothing more than slapstick and some splashy water antics then how effective can it really be, Rush? How could something so innocuous (as described by Limbaugh and others) be even the slightest bit effective -- not to mention a crucial weapon in America's anti-terrorist arsenal? It can't be both. Either the torture methods described in the Bush Office of Legal Counsel memos were harsh enough to create adequate anguish so as to elicit actionable intelligence (as is falsely claimed by Bush Republicans) or the techniques were nothing more than comfy chairs and soft cushions.
The reality is that the Bush torture methods were both horrifying and ineffective. The procedures we've read about in the OLC memos were clearly forms of torture as have been previously defined by America's own standards (you might recognize waterboarding from such famous torturers as the Khmer Rouge, Imperial Japan and North Korea), and by most accounts they're absolutely ineffective at acquiring decent information. And in fact, as McClatchy reported on Tuesday, the Bush administration used these torture techniques to gather intentionally false information about a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
With regards to defining The Waterboard as a particularly brutal form of torture, it's well worn territory to mention how we executed Japanese war criminals for waterboarding American prisoners. However, it takes on a different and stomach-churning dimension when we read a firsthand description of how the Japanese did it:
They laid me out on a stretcher and strapped me on. The stretcher was then stood on end with my head almost touching the floor and my feet in the air. . . . They then began pouring water over my face and at times it was almost impossible for me to breathe without sucking in water.
Compare that with the Bush OLC memo dated May 10, 2005:
In this technique, the detainee is lying on a gurney that inclined at an angle of 10 to 15 degrees to the horizontal, with the detainee on his back and his head toward the lower end of the gurney. A cloth is placed over the detainee's face, and cold water is poured on the cloth from a height of approximated 6 to 18 inches. The wet cloth creates a barrier through which it is difficult - or in some cases not possible - to breathe.
If you thought the second method was worse than the Japanese version, you're not alone. The cloth gag creates a sensation of being smothered -- on top of the drowning sensation itself. (It's also worth noting that American soldiers were court-martialed in for waterboarding Filipino prisoners. That was 1898.)
In terms of efficacy, one of the most successful detainee interrogations didn't involve torture of any kind. The detainee was named Saddam Hussein and the American interrogator was a Lebanese-American named George Piro. Piro was able to extract volumes of information about Iraq, WMD, terrorism and Hussein's regime through a process whereby Piro "manipulated Saddam, creating a relationship based on dependency, trust and emotion. Piro alternated between acts of kindness and provocation."
But even in the face of this sort of success, the Bush regime, driven by a desire for power and enabled by the irrational, ginned-up fear of a mostly supportive electorate, orchestrated one of the darkest chapters in American history.
And I'm still baffled how anyone in their right mind can possibly defend these torture policies in the face of overwhelming evidence condemning it. I mean, it's torture! Yet the right continues to chug from their bottomless mug of contradictions -- even Senator McCain, who endured unspeakable atrocities at the hands of the North Vietnamese, has fallen into this trap. Last year, in the heat of a presidential campaign, the senator voted in favor of allowing the CIA to continue to use the same techniques described in the OLC memos. Only now has he condemned the CIA's use of torture.
As I wrote in my book, if we can't protect ourselves with our morals intact, we don't deserve to be protected in the first place. I suspect that by allowing this gaping hole in our national morality, the Bush administration has successfully created more threats than it claims to have thwarted. And hearing the irrationally fear-driven arguments from unapologetic cowards like Hannity and Limbaugh understandably leads us all to think that certain Republicans will gladly acquiesce to anything -- any trespass against our values or even basic logic -- in the name of protecting you from that one in 9.3 million chance.
And no, the Dumb & Dumber "so you're saying there's a chance" defense won't work.
Follow Bob Cesca on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bobcesca_go
the Obama administration and it worked like a charm. Remember, this president is the one who was a community organizer for ACORN and he has always said-take advantage of a crisis-which is exactly what he is doing and we are falling for it lock, stock, and barrel....While we all remain seperated by our individual views on what was or was not necessary in a time when Americans peed themselves if a car backfired or a tire blew out, we just wanted the terriorists dead or punished or stopped anyway that was necessary..So get real, all of you, and look at this issue realistically. I can't stand torture, either, but if a kidnapper had my child, the cops catch one, he's smiling and says nothing, what would you want the cops to do to get to your child before the other one killed, raped, or tortured her or him??? We need to let this issue go-we don't do it again-we stand together in this economic crisis and demand that congress at least know what they are passing in a bill and just how will it be paid for. I assure you that if cap and trade and the health care reform passes, we'll all be paying lots of money for what we will find we don't want.
So your individual view is that torture *was* necessary, is that correct? I dare say that the vast majority of Americans would disagree with you that torturing in their name was somehow "necessary".
"We need to let this issue go-we don't do it again..."
If we just "let this issue go", it WILL HAPPEN AGAIN. That's the whole point! If no one is held accountable for letting this happen this time, then there's no reason for it not to happen again in the future. Whatever happened to your conservative love of personal responsibility? Officials in the Bush Administration are PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE for for the US's program of TORTURE. They need to be held accountable for their actions. It's basic justice.
And your off-topic comments make it clear you're of the fringe right, 30%er persuasion for whom reality and facts have next to no meaning.
If you need to apply "rough investigating methods" to a person over and over agian isn't that torture? How much true information can you get using such methods?
“Tortured Logic” will chronicle Voodoo Court’s experience as the official American representatives to the first ever Olympic water boarding competitions. Although surfing had been identified as a sport by the international Olympic committee, it had not been included as part of the summer Olympic games, partly because it was deemed unfair to landlocked countries or ones with lousy surf. However, since water boarding did not require access to a tidally impacted coastline, and since those who advocate its use tend to be easily confused, it was decided that water boarding would take surfing’s rightful spot as part of the summer Olympic Games.
Torture is the last straw, the last topic for right-left discussion. I've had my last conversation trying to reason with a Republican. They are impervious to reason. They're driven by something bestial.
"..how we executed Japanese war criminals for waterboarding American prisoners."
the most famous japanese criminal got only 15 years.
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~warcrime/Japan/Yokohama/Reviews/Yokohama_Review_Asano.htm
others were executed because of numerous OTHER infractions.
pssst. pass it on with the real facts.
Orwell
Fischer writes that leaders in both the Continental Congress and the Continental Army resolved that the War of Independence would be conducted with a respect for human rights. This was all the more extraordinary because these courtesies were not reciprocated by King George's armies. Indeed, the British conducted a deliberate campaign of atrocities against American soldiers and civilians. While Americans extended quarter to combatants as a matter of right and treated their prisoners with humanity, British regulars and German mercenaries were threatened by their own officers with severe punishment if they showed mercy to a surrendering American soldier. Captured Americans were tortured, starved and cruelly maltreated aboard prison ships. Washington decided to behave differently. After capturing 1,000 Hessians in the Battle of Trenton, he ordered that enemy prisoners be treated with the same rights for which our young nation was fighting. In an order covering prisoners taken in the Battle of Princeton, Washington wrote: "Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren�. Provide everything necessary for them on the road."
I really hope that the torture superfans see the light, and soon. But since I'm not being waterboarded(yet), I won't be holding my breath.
Remember the almost cliche saying, "Truth, Justice, & the American Way." Well that never falls out of fashion. Our freedoms and principles defined in the Constitution have been defended by too many Americans who suffered and even died so that we could live in a dignified democracy and be a role model for the world.
The Bush/Cheney administration actions corrupted our morals, weakened our nation's laws and defense capabilities, and pushed our nation in the wrong direction. They were the source of the infection.
Nothing else we did kept us safe. It was the torture that did.
We couldn't have gotten the information we did without torture.
The Constitution is an invalid , useless piece of paper.
International law doesn't apply to America.
American law doesn't apply to the executive branch.
Torturing people made fewer terrorist hate us rather than more.
Torture is a moral act.
The torture apologists were cowards who abandoned America's values to save it. Thus almost destroying America, because it is nothing without its values. Shame on every one of you. You're disgusting.
You people hold yourselves up as some kind of armchair constitutional scholars but can't even come to grips with the simple fact that most of what our federal government does today is in fact unconstitutional. Can we stop with the cherry picking of the constitution and have an honest conversation of what it really says?
If you are looking for specific wording in the Constitution then you will not find it. That is the beauty of the Constitution and one of the reasons we need a Supreme Court to interpret its meaning as it applies to the modern world.
But if you will look at the 8th ammendment you will note that "cruel and unusual punishment" is mentioned. I think that pretty well covers it. Don't you?
Article VI
...This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
Reagan signed the treaty banning torture, and requiring prosecution when it occurs, under the constitution this becomes the law of the land, ergo breaking this law, or refusing to enforce it is unconstitutional.
How about Lincoln for suspending habeas corpus?
Let's hold posthumous trials for these shredders of our constitution!!
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/10/BAND128EF7.DTL&feed=rss.bayarea
Lincolns actions were undone by the courts
Any foreign government may ignore the Geneva conventions and hold me in detention indefinitely while torturing me because I am not a citizen of their country.
The conclusion is inevitable.
In any event, I'll assume for the moment that you're not part of a foreign army or other organization that is in a state of open warfare against the countries to which you travel, which makes your post moot. We're not talking about civil matters here, we're talking about how the US government conducts itself within the context of the so-called "War on Terror". Furthermore, we're talking about how America conducts itself, not how any other country does business.
I'll quote a reply I made to an earlier post: It's a pretty simple concept: We are a country of morals and laws. What morals our enemy has or hasn't is beside the point. We maintain our morality under all conditions because it's the right thing to do. Falling short of at least the attempt to do that falls short of what it means to be American.
Falls short of what it means to be human.
I've sorted that for you.
Torture should be defined. It should be a matter of principal that we don't generally use it. But it should never, ever be off the table.