Letters to the Editor
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Maybe Jonah will get swallowed by a yuppie?
And then be upchucked on the meanest old neocon's shores of
Nineveh?
Minerva?
Watch out!
'Um mean.
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Nauseating
But does my nausea mean anything to these sickening people? They have the big megaphone, I am lowly commoner commenting on a blog.
In any case, the same mentality that promotes the use of torture is the same mentality that would manufacture terrorism, such as 9/11. Torture didn't spring from 9/11-- 9/11 sprang from these sick people.
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How about...
Just give him a yellow rubber duck.
O, and a bar of lye soap to eat and blow bubbles?
MR. Bubbles is in town. Bubbles is looking for GOP's.
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Goldberg
I think the more relevant point is why does anyone pay attention to Jonah Goldberg? He is making a living being a provacateur with little say except to defend his right wing masters.
He is like many of right wing pundits who claim that they are independent because they agree with the Bushies only 98% of the time.
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Steve Boylan
Forgive me for changing the subject, but what is happening with the Col. Steve Boylan fiasco? Just curious.
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Pro-war
This is a topic I've been thinking a lot about lately. I can't remeber the particular place I was reading when it struck me, but it was some freeper-lite spot where people could be counted on to be railing against anti-war types. It was there that I realized that I was dealing with people who saw dichotomy between the two viewpoints clearly and they were adamantly and unapolegetically "Pro-War".
At least Jonah can see to repudiate the view and at least pay lip-service to war being a necessary evil, but there's a large contigent of people (including most of Jonah's fans) who actually LIKE explosions and burning flesh and abusing POW's and mowing down lines of people with automatic weapons. To me it would be like coming out and declaring yourself in favor of pain. But then again, I suppose that's not so uncommon either.
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Asl sandiego
I think the more relevant point is why does anyone pay attention to Jonah Goldberg? He is making a living being a provacateur with little say except to defend his right wing masters.
The benefit, in my view, of paying attention to and dissecting what people like Jonah Goldberg say is that it is useful in illustrating what that political movement is really about. Most people with political views don't spend a lot of time writing down their views and defending the rationale behind them. Those who do enable one to demonstrate what the true impulses are driving those beliefs. That's valuable.
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Red Snapper:
Forgive me for changing the subject, but what is happening with the Col. Steve Boylan fiasco? Just curious.
There's nothing new to report. I have a several pressure points I'm working on to try to get them to respond further, give more information, etc., but their interest is in trying to stonewall, hope it all goes away. Don't worry - I'm doing what I can not to allow that to happen, but without a lot of other media willing to write about it -- and for multiple reasons, most are unwilling -- it's difficult to create the necessary pressure.
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Putting the torture argument aside for a moment . . .
As disgusting as Jonah comments about torture are, I'd like to ask Jonah and certainly his friend Michael why, if they were so in favor of the war, why they aren't in Iraq right now, helping the cause? Jonah looks able-bodied enough. Hell, if during basic training, he was as enthusiastic as he put on, he could go special forces and get water-boarded in that training. It'd be a real two-fer. Then we could learn about war and water-boarding in a way a bit more visceral than his previous experience (ie, the blogosphere).
What's that you say? Jonah is a chickenhawk?! Come on! Really?
(disappointment sets in)
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Complicated
Goldberg's entire rationale that there are "degrees" of torture is ridiculous; there is a Great Wall of China between torture and tough questioning. Having a spotlight in your face while the cop asks the questions is a very far cry from being drowned very slowly.
This is about one step up from Rush Limbaugh and his inane remarks comparing Abu Ghraib to a Madonna concert or a Skull and Bones initiation. Are these people truly sadists, finding sheer pleasure in others' misery?
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I had read Nance's account, too,
as well as other posts about his account.
One question that I haven't seen asked yet is: what about the doctors who are (supposedly) present?
How much of this the victim is to endure depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim's face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs that show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral.
A few months ago, the APA banned psychologists from participating in interrogations involving torture.
http://psychcentral.com/news/2007/08/22/apa-bans-psychologists-from-torture-interrogations/
What about the AMA? Haven't they done something similar? And, if not, why not? (We already know that (many) physicians have an issue with assisting with capital punishment... )
Perhaps someone reading/lurking here might know... ?
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Why?
I think the more relevant point is why does anyone pay attention to Jonah Goldberg?
-asl sandiego
[To] Tend and cultivate the truth.
-bebop-o
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Look at me! I'm pro torture!!
Well, maybe not.
But I am sympathetic to the pro-torture club's ticking time bomb argument - I mean shit, if some dude has the key to a nuclear bomb in the middle of Times Square and we need to smack him around a bit, then I don't want to be the one standing in the way of having 1.5 million people incinerated. And I don't think you do either.
That being said, I will never condone or support a "legalization" of torture, no matter how limited that legal bearing may be. Here's why:
That "ticking time bomb" scenario is not only patently absurd, it is ridiculously hypothetical. Apart from that cliche that you can't make laws based on the extreme hypotheticals, there are too many assumptions in this scenario. a) that we know where the bomb is b) that we can find the guy who knows the key c) that we're positive that he's the right guy and that the key he gives us will be the right key that will stop the bomb.
If we are going to torture this guy, I want whoever is doing the torturing to be DAMNED sure that it will yield "actionable intelligence" that will stop that bomb from going off. That is, he'd better be DAMNED sure that the suspect is the right suspect, has the right info, and is willing to give up that info after a few euphemistic smacks to the head.
And the ONLY way to be DAMNED sure about this is to make the interrogator accountable if he is wrong. And the only way to make this interrogator think long and hard about this is to make it draw a fat black line around it making it illegal. Not with some weak 1-year prison sentence, but the full harshness of the law that Republicans are so fond of unless it applies to any of their buddies.
All this of course assumes that torturing someone is an effective way to gather intelligence, which as most everybody agrees, is generally not the case. But that's a different argument.