Letters to the Editor
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A real patriot
Of course we should use waterboarding.
We should use every means necessary to secure der Fatherland,(ahem) America.
We should put THOSE people on trains to secluded camps to be purified. Or exterminated. After all, we're only trying to keep our country safe and pure.
God is with us! Start the ovens! Heil Rudy!
p.s. I vas only following ze orders.
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Waterboarding is torture
Here is an article published at jurist.law.pitt.edu:
Is waterboarding torture? Judge Mukasey says he doesn't know
3:59 PM ET
Gary Solis [Adjunct professor, Georgetown University Law Center and former Marine Corps judge advocate and military judge]: "[During his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing last Thursday,] Attorney General-nominee Michael Mukasey could not or would not say if he considers waterboarding torture. “If it is torture, it is unconstitutional,” he responded when asked. By now, most of us know what the interrogation technique of waterboarding is. It is widely reported and generally understood that the U.S. employs it. Waterboarding is often described as inducing the sensation of drowning. That bland description hardly does justice to the agony, distress, and terror that the enhanced interrogation technique induces in victims. But Judge Mukasey doesn’t know if waterboarding is torture.
The U.S. Army has long known. During the U.S.- Philippine War (1899-1902), five Army officers, Major Edwin Glenn, Captain Cornelius Brownell, 1st Lieutenants Julien Gaujot, Edwin Hickman, and Preston Brown, were convicted by courts-martial for employing the “water cure” in interrogating Philippine prisoners. Although Brownell’s victim, a local priest, died while being subjected to the water cure, Brownell’s conviction was set aside on jurisdictional grounds. Army juries rejected the defense of “military necessity,” recognizing the water cure for what it is. The Army’s Judge Advocate General, the reviewing officer of Glenn’s case, derisively noted, “the resort to torture is attempted to be justified…as the habitual method of obtaining information from individual insurgents.” In the Vietnam War, Army Staff Sergeant David Carmon was disciplined after he was pictured torturing a prisoner with the water cure. But Judge Mukasey doesn’t know if waterboarding is torture.
After World War II, several nations prosecuted former enemies for variations of waterboarding. The U.N. War Crimes Commission, in its Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals, details convictions for the near-drowning of prisoners during interrogations. The Sawada case was a U.S. military commission in which “the water treatment” of captured Doolittle raiders was a basis for convicting Sawada and others. A Norwegian military court convicted Karl-Hans Klinge of the same torture. American military commission convictions reported elsewhere include, U.S. v. Chinsaku Yuki, U.S. v. Yagoheiji Iwata, and U.S. v. Hideji Nakamura and Others, all resulting from the water treatment of American or Philippine prisoners. The Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East says, “The practice of torturing prisoners of war and civilian internees prevailed at practically all places occupied by Japanese troops…. Among these tortures were the water treatment….” But Judge Mukasey doesn’t know if waterboarding is torture.
U.S. domestic courts describe “the water cure” and “water torture” as human rights violations, and a means to coerce confessions, in In Re Estate of Ferdinand E. Marcos (D. Hawaii, 1995) and U.S. v. Lee (5th Cir., 1984). In Chile, the 2005 National Commission of Political Imprisonment and Torture, investigating abuses of the Pinochet era, documents the common use of water torture during interrogations. Argentine and Chilean criminal prosecutions continue today. But Judge Mukasey doesn’t know if waterboarding is torture.
Some suggest that waterboarding cannot be torture because it is part of U.S. military Survival, Escape, Resistance, and Evasion (SERE) training. But the difference between medically-monitored training and real-world abuse is like being inoculated against a disease and being injected with the disease. They are hardly the same. It remains amazing that, in 2007, any intelligent person can have any question that waterboarding constitutes torture, morally and ethically wrong, and contrary to U.S. law, U.S.-ratified multi-national treaties, and international criminal law. But Judge Michael Mukasey doesn’t know if waterboarding is torture."
Opinions expressed in JURIST's Hotline are the sole responsibility of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of JURIST's editors, staff, or the University of Pittsburgh.
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All people who advocate this sort of stuff
should be required to undergo the experience themselves. All these political bozo talk big, but that's all they are, just bluster. We have buffoons and blowhards running for President, so that's what we get.
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Questions for Rudy and Mikey
Both Giuliani and Mukasey try to mumble their way past the question of whether waterboarding is torture. Isn't it time we asked them whether being unclear on this question is acceptable for someone interviewing to be in a position of authority?
It seems to me the most important quality of leadership is making clear determinations on issues of great import. Perhaps neither finds torture a terribly significant issue, but that is just as troubling as tacit acceptance of torture. There's another question: do you consider the question of torture to be a significant national and international issue, or would you rather it be resolved situationally?
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Maybe Rudy's ex-wives knew something
All this macho bluster about the desire to torture may be covering up some severe deficiencies in real masculinity. Given that he graduated from law school, he can likely read more than 3 pages at once, so I think its fear of his real self.
Let's ask the ex's!!
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ethos
I think anyone who has a problem with the cops should be a cop first. Oh wait, that would be crazy.
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Joe Conason should try waterboarding
When Rudy goes waterboarding
The former mayor says "liberal newspapers" have exaggerated the technique's brutality. Perhaps he should try it himself, no maybe since you are writing about it I think you should try it. You liberals make me sick and jimmy carter made me a republican. I'm Pro family, pro life, pro president G.W. Bush, pro Israel, pro U.S.A. pro fox news only & they are kicking ass. Ron Dennis
By Joe Conason
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May Rudy can also
have his lower back beat with a phone book, to avoid bruising, so he pisses blood for a week. What a piece of shit he is.