Waterboarding, formerly known as the "water cure" is torture. That is a fact beyond dispute, unless you are willing to argue that the Japanese interrogators who used it on Americans during World War II were wrongfully convicted of torture for that practice. There is very little in the interrogation arsenal of the CIA which was not also used by the KGB and when the KGB did those things, we had not problems condemning those methods as torture.
John McCain has no trouble condemning those practices as torture and he should know.
The only explanation as to why Mukasey cannot condemn torture as torture is because he knows full well that torture techniques were used and were approved for use by the highest levels of our government. If Mukasey were to concede those techniques were torture, then he would be as good as denouncing George Bush and his cabal of evildoers as war criminals.
And that, to Mukasey's discredit, he cannot do, even if it means that history will trash his reputation.
We are a nation that practices torture. We are no longer the "shining city on the hill," we are just another village in a stinking swamp.
1 comment:
Here's a handy tip for deciding whether something is torture or not. If you do it to a two year old, will you be sent to jail for child abuse? If so, then it is torture.
So: Lock up a 2 year old child naked for 24 hours a day in a cold room where she is shivering all day long, with a lightbulb that never goes out? You'd get your ass in jail for child abuse so quick that the jailer would have trouble getting his key in the lock before your butt got slung at the door. Do it to a 22 year old? Torture.
Convince a 2 year old that you're drowning her, until she is screaming and crying uncontrollably and has a psychotic break, and do it more than once as a "discipline" method? You'd be in jail SO quick for child abuse. Do it to a 22 year old? Torture.
Chain a child to a wall so she can't sit down, and leave her there in a "stress position" for days at a time? Man, man man. Your butt would get buried *under* the jail for child abuse. Do it to a 22 year old man? Torture.
The two year old test is the easiest test in the world for determining whether something is torture or not. Anybody who would justify treating a 22 year old in ways that would get them jailed if they treated a 2 year old that way is not to be trusted around animals or small children, because they have something wrong with their heads that ain't fixable.
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