Letters to the Editor
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Ghouliani: "It depends on who does it."
In His Words: Giuliani on Torture
By Michael Cooper
NY Times
October 25, 2007, 8:20 am
DAVENPORT, Iowa — At a town hall meeting here last night, Rudolph W. Giuliani expanded upon his views of torture. Here is a transcript of the exchange.
[...]
Ms. Gustitus said: “He said he didn’t know if waterboarding is torture.”
Mr. Giuliani said: “Well, I’m not sure it is either. I’m not sure it is either. It depends on how it’s done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it."
So, when the good guys do it, it's not torture.
Well, that clears that up.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/25/in-his-own-words-giuliani-on-torture/
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Half-a-Bee
GG:
Is it even possible to ponder the intellectual depravity
I am amazed and grateful that you can make it through their nonsense. I won't even go near the Times' editorial pages as long as Goldberg is there.
"one half of his brain's problem with the debate"
I'd suggest he try using his whole brain for once, but I really don't think we'd notice a difference.
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Curious
I'm curious, is rape an acceptable form of questioning according to the esteemed Mr. Goldberg? If your terror suspect happens to be a woman, is it okay to rape her (or threaten to rape her) to get her to talk? I mean, rape doesn't kill you or cause irreparable damage to your vital organs (usually), so it should be okay, right? And if it isn't, why not?
(And really, the same question applies if the suspect is a man - I've just noticed that what some people will say is okay for a man suddenly becomes not-so-okay when it is applied to a woman.)
Now that I think about it, I wonder if any of the people who have been waterboarded are women. We always seem to assume they are men.
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That Jonah--whatta card...
>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?<
He addressed this back when people really started calling scum like him out for what they are. He noted he was 1) in his 40s --too old to serve; 2) he had a wife and kids. Seriously. His reply was such a perfect encapsulation of the selfishness, and "anybody but meeeeee," and the "fuck you--I got mine, Jack" of chickenhawk-think that I've never forgotten it.
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Time to bleach my computer
I just sat through the entire disgusting spectacle.
Near the end, Goldberg decides to waffle some and present a side of the discussion he can use later to show that he is against torture. What struck me was how he framed the argument. It was directly associated with his example of animal rights. He said something to the effect that he doesn't believe that animals have rights, but that humans have responsibilities in their actions toward animals. It was clear that this is how he views the torture question. We have responsibilities toward those Islamofascist animals we torture. Geez....
OT: can someone get Beinart some flea powder? I've never seen anyone fidget so much.
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Liberal ignorance and bliss.....
The whole fricking point of the Constitution is that it establishes a base line for what is NEVER allowed, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
Crossing those bright lines (totally self-evident for any sentient human being) simply crosses what we collectively decided over 200 years ago were minimal standards for being an American. (Which I am still proud of, by the way, despite the sociopaths currently inhabiting the White House.)
Torture (and many of the other reprehensible treatments of human beings that the Bush administration has engaged in) represents exactly the worst sorts of impulses in humanity that we sought to banish forever in 1776.
It seems the fight our fore fathers fought for "America," is still on. -- sanfranciscovalues
I see this fairly often from those whose sense of history began last month. Should Mr. values do any wiki searches he/she/it would find that common punishments in the early US for petty theft, or even kissing one's wife on Sunday, included the pillory, stocks, whipping, branding, hanging, and for women that were common scolds the early equivalent of waterboarding the ducking stool. Ah, the good old days.
The reality is that "cruel and unusual" has been defined down from the rack, to rack of lamb for lunch at Gitmo (halal). Looks like progress to me, but I certainly wouldn't expect anyone here to make that observation.
Even the idea that interrogation measures are a topic of conversation is so far removed from the world potential captors inhabit, it's laughable. Who has more humane treatment of prisoners of war, than we do? -
"Complicated." "Nuanced"
NPR's "On the Media" did an extended segment on this very question of the Complicated Nuance of Enhanced Interrogation via Simulated Drowning, and they had on Mr. Nance and some bozo from the Chicago Tribune and another from the LA Times.
Lead in:
Robert Mukasey was confirmed this week as attorney general. The process moved the definition of waterboarding into the spotlight. As media struggle to find out what the interrogation technique entails, the working definition has been "simulated drowning." But those who've experienced and performed it say it is drowning. Two newspaper editors weigh in.
It's worth a listen just to experience what brazen weasles run our Corporate Media, and to begin to understand how impossible it is to reason with them. The term "mook" was invented for people like these.
Check it out.
http://www.onthemedia.org/
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@deering
He noted he was 1) in his 40s --too old to serve;
-- deering
Goldberg is actually only in his 30's. Born in 1969.
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torture and empathy
First, it ought to be said that video game violence, movie violence, and porn are merely another way of converting violent behavior from "unspeakable" to "speakable." Art good and bad can do this. But exposure to bad movies can only lead to a taste for bad movies. Only exposure to violence can lead to a taste for violence. Better for a child to be beating virtual hookers than blowing up cats.
Similarly, only getting paid or otherwise encouraged to talk like an asshole can encourage one to talk like an asshole, if the urge isn't already there to begin with, and in Jonah's case I'd bet it started with potty training.
Second, there is a potential "nuance" to the APA situation. It's my understanding that one point of debate in the medical community regarding torture is that some doctors fear losing their role in certain settings, because suffering may increase in their absence. Whatever you may think of that argument, it seems clear that if no psychologist were willing to care for a torture victim in Guantanamo, then those people would probably get no professional psychological care at all. You can always change the venue or hire someone who majored in psychology to oversee the dirty work. That's what rendition is for.
For medical doctors, the choice may have been more clear. You can't have prisoners dying for no reason, and so every prison must have an MD. But even prison doctors need to deal with patients who are suffering abuse that no one, especially a ward of the state, should suffer. (I'm speaking of abuse at the hands of other prisoners.) And regular medical care is bad enough in prisons. Imagine the dilemma for psychologists, who as a profession had to work hard to become fixtures in the prison setting at all. Imagine going to work every day to deal with patients who are severely depressed, but who would be fine if they only weren't incarcerated. How would you keep your sense of mission? All you could do is bind the wounds inflicted by the torturer.
The key to a sustainable torture program, whether the torture works or not, is not to leave visible marks. And this obviously puts a prison or military intelligence psychologist in a tougher position than a medical doctor. If you don't know what went on in that room, and the prisoner comes out unmarked and no more depressed than he was before he went in, are you in any position to allege illegal actions? Is it any wonder some psychologists might want to avoid getting shut out of the room completely?
(Personally, I'd support policies of expulsion to be enforced on any member of a professional organization caught abetting torture, even purely psychological torture. But you can do no more than that, without clear laws against such activities.)