Shorter Comey: "Now That I Want This Job, Waterboarding is Torture."

Nothing like a guy with the courage of his convictions:

James Comey, President Barack Obama’s choice to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told senators Tuesday that he thought waterboarding interrogation techniques used to try to get information from al Qaida prisoners held at Guantanamo were “awful” and illegal.

But Comey insisted that the 1994 law on torture was “very vague” and that as second-ranking official in the Justice Department in the Bush administration, he couldn’t find that use of waterboarding violated that anti-torture statute.

Bullshit.

This is the definition of torture under the law (18 USC § 2340):

(1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;
(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from—
(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;
(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;
(C) the threat of imminent death; or
(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality

Note that the statue is not a "how to" manual on torture. It takes a pretty perverted fuck to come up with the conclusion that subjecting a person to the sensation of drowning is not inflicting mental pain and suffering. Comey's twisted rationale ignores the fact that people have been convicted by American courts, both criminal and courts-martial, for waterboarding prisoners.

Comey would have a ten-year term as FBI director. If the next president wanted to start tearing out people's fingernails, would Comey go along because maybe he thinks the pain isn't just all that bad? Would he go along with denying food and sleep to prisoners because maybe that's not severe suffering by his lights?*

Comey should go take a job better suited to his flexible morality, maybe being a harpoon gunner on a Japanese whaling ship or clubbing baby seals up in Canada.

We do not need his talents as the Director of the FBI.
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* The phrase "just another good little German" comes to mind.