said Bachmann and Cain.
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
If Dr. King would have watched the GOP presidential debate on Saturday, I’m certain that he would have felt that the responses given by Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain on the “necessity” of waterboarding would perfectly characterize the “dangerous” people he referred to in his quote. These people aren’t just dangerous, they’re insane.
They repeated the neocon talking point that waterboarding was not torture but rather a form of “Enhanced Interrogation Technique” (a term coined by Dick Chaney and continually repeated by the beltway echo chamber). By now, rational people in this country recognize that waterboarding is indeed torture, and it is indeed a crime.
As I mentioned in previous posts:
1. Reputable legal analysts have noted that waterboarding is illegal based on the following international treaties:
A. Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (which the Senate unanimously ratified in 1955).
B. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (which the Senate ratified in 1992).
C. The United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment (which the Senate ratified in 1994).
2. The US has executed foreign aggressors for waterboarding US troops.
3. Domestic waterboarders have been tried and sentenced (in Gov. Bush’s Texas court) without any public outcry.
Furthermore, there have been many reports by FBI officials (here and here, e.g.) that Cheney’s “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” were (contrary to the Bachmann and Cain speeches) totally ineffective. Yet the beltway media continually bring this up as if it is a “controversial issue.”
It’s not.
There is no controversy. Waterboarding “is torture" and it is an internationally recognized crime. I was particularly incensed when one of Saturday’s debate moderators, Major Garrett, referenced “the long running debate we’ve had whether waterboarding is torture..” There is no debate Major. Waterboarding is torture, and every time pundits and journalists refer to this as a fictional "long running debate" they look more and more like uninformed journalistic morons.
I was even more incensed when I viewed the audience at Saturday’s GOP debate. As you may have noticed, many of them applauded loudly when Michele Bachmann said that, if she were elected president, she would continue to use waterboarding as an accepted US practice.
This follows previous GOP debates when the audience cheered Rick Perry’s execution record, cheered the idea of letting uninsured patents die, and booed when a gay soldier expressed his concerns on our wars in the Middle East.These people are not patriots. They are deranged citizens of our country.
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Comments
In any event, every now and then, the Israelis liked to shake people to make them talk; no marks.
They worried though that if they did that, someone would be criminally liable for it, and so, it was legalized under a process.
What happened then was it happened a lot more, since it was now officially ok to do. In the past, people had done it when they really thought that it would save lives.
Long and short of it is there are times, rare, but they exist, where information is needed, and it won't be easy to get unless one gets pushy; regularizing the use of force to do so isn't a very good idea, since it tends to make it more acceptable, and therefore far too common.
But, if you are a small unit, and a large one is somewhere in your area, and you have two captives, you are going to do what you are going to do; see Sole Survivor for that dilemma in Afghanistan as a real case, where they let people walk away, and.... see the title. That is also rare, and something that people just have to be on their own about, and accept the consequences, and argument of course, for avoiding force using situations in the first place.
The GOP crazies have become disgusting.
R
At least the GOP tells you that they're gonna forcibly ass rape you from the get-go. The DNP pretends that they do not want to use this tactic of fear and control until it suits their needs to scare and control people.
I'll take an honest asshole over a closet douchebag any day of the week, and twice on my scheduled torture day.
Our vulnerabilities due to our freedom, are worth the risk to me.
Waterboarding doesn't pass the sniff test.
It's time for us to all be adults, put aside the ridiculous idea that the 2 party system cares about any of us, and vote for the only candidate in this election cycle, left or right, who actually gets it.
But what about the other 99% of cases where we don't know if there is a bomb, who might have set it, or really much of anything. We don't even know if our captive is really the high-level terrorist or inoffensive guy who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Is that justifiable? Morally acceptable?
Let's not forget that any prisoner who wants to escape the torture will name names. But who is to say those people are really terrorists?The KGB and Stasi files were full of denouncements of annoying neighbors and other people who got denounced to pay off private scores --- or because the denouncer felt he had to say something. So, it is obvious that innocent people will be tortured.
And, let's not forget that torture creates enemies and hatred.
Finally, before Bush, the consensus was that torture doesn't yield reliable information. After Bush authorized the use of torture, there was tremendous pressure to justify it, which is not the way to produce an unbiased study.
In short, torture is clearly morally wrong, clearly bad foreign policy, and of dubious efficacy.
Hey, euphemisms work.
They love Jesus and love torture.
They love Jesus and do everything they can for the rich to get richer.
They love Jesus but hate thy neighbor.
They love Jesus but would let an unisured person die.
They love Jesus but accumulate vast wealth.
Have they read the bible?
UGH!! And Bachmann got applause for it. We SO need to get these people out of power and KEEP THEM OUT OF POWER!
rated
one answer was, if we torture, they will. if we wish to protect our soldiers, we must respect the human rights of the enemy.
but american governments, and many americans, have forgotten this principle.
of course, once you wage aggressive war, for profit, you have left ethics behind, and torture merely becomes tool. a tool peculiarly attractive to the creeps in big suits who have never been near the sound of angry gunfire.
so it's rafferty's rules now, and god help the soldier who falls into the hands of a afghan guerrilla band.