Little Timmy was in trouble. He had swiped a candy bar from Mr. Bob's corner grocery store, and now his parents knew about it. The dreaded "time out" was imminent. As his Obama-supporting parents eyed him sternly, Timmy blurted out: "I also waterboarded Mr. Bob yesterday!" His parents were thwarted. They could no longer punish little Timmy.
Our Democratic president doesn't want to punish CIA operatives even though Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was reportedly waterboarded 183 times. When thinking about the Bush administration-sanctioned use of this brute force, I wondered how the torture guys decided on the 183 figure. Was it some kind of homage to Hank Greenberg driving in 183 runs in 1937? After all, Greenberg was baseball's first Jewish superstar, and Israel has a big impact on U.S. foreign policy. Or did the torturers have a secret "Hank-ering" to become members of 183 Club, the Taiwanese boy band? Maybe not -- the CIA doesn't like to star in videos.
Then I realized that the word "waterboarded" has 12 letters, and that 1 plus 8 plus 3 equals 12. Coincidence? I think not. But if the CIA waterboarded me, perhaps I would change my mind and think it WAS a coincidence. Although torture doesn't elicit reliable information, so the 12-12 comparison may not be a coincidence after all.
I also reminded myself that waterboarding is a "near-drowning technique." Perhaps that's one reason why "Waterboarding" hasn't joined "Guppy" and "Minnow" as a kid swim course at the "Y"?
This blog post is a bit haphazard, but it's hard to write coherently when one is upset! I'm upset that there might be no punishment for the people who waterboarded prisoners and for the people who authorized this torture. They're getting away with a very serious crime, and CIA operatives might torture again in the future because they won't fear prosecution. I still think that if Nixon had been jailed in '74, George W. might have thought twice about some of the shenanigans he pulled three decades later.
As for little Timmy, he's pondering the effectiveness of waterboarding after Mr. Bob confessed to flying a plane into the Lighthouse of Alexandria in 280 B.C.