Letters to the Editor
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Waterboarding
...is scheduled to be an exhibition event at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The U.S. team is expected to win the gold medal.
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So ...
Torture only works when you have the subject's full cooperation. Or is it the element of surprise that makes torture work? Certainly it isn't the torture itself, according to these experts.
Are Al Qaeda people told they will not be asked any tough questions? That they will be housed in luxury and fed delicious chicken entrees? Perhaps they are lazier than we thought, and this apparent desire for calories and a little peace and quiet could be exploited.
Maybe it already is!
But that would mean that talking about the food at Gitmo is also revealing secret practices.
My head is spinning!
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honey-glazed chicken and rice pilaf
but can they substitute a baked potato for the rice pilaf?
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Show me...
...one fucking high value detainee.
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If I hear one more friggin comment about how the detainees are well off because they're getting three meals a day,
whoever says it should be condemned to spend a month living on the actual diet that they served at Abu Ghraib, and the recipes should be as true to historical fact as possible, using the evidence of camp guards who repeatedly reported finding rat parts in the food.
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But the super sad part of all of this is...
...the majority of Americans who answered a recent CNN poll favor the use of waterboarding in certain situations. People still favor the technique even though John McCain, who says he was waterboarded, screams that it doesn't work.
Why don't we just install an "Easy Button" like the commercial says. Even though it doesn't work, a majority of Americans will favor pushing it in the event of an emergency, just in case.
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I've said this before...
But when did it become acceptable in the United States to even discuss a technique that is considered torture? How is it even morally acceptable that this conversation has actually occurred?
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Problem is ...
Hunter is right. There are "levels" to waterboarding. That's why we need to quit focusing on waterboarding and instead focus on torture. It doesn't make sense to outlaw one specific torture technique. They'll just employ another.
As an example, consider assault. Threatening someone with a knife is an assault (if they feel they are immediate risk of bodily injury ...). Stabbing them with that knife is also assault. There's a big difference between threatening and stabbing, but they are both assaults.
Now consider waterboarding. Does holding someone down and threatening with a hose count? Do you have to actually spray the victim? Tie them down? The strict definition can cover a fairly wide range of asshole activities ranging from intimidation to drowning.
Returning to the assault example. We have a broad definition of assault and the courts use it well. We don't have assault with knife being all that different from assault with gun or car.
Torture is already legally defined in international law. I think we need to establish that it is bad - and prosecute the tortures. Focusing on waterboarding just serves short term prurient interest.
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Hey, saintzak...
...I believe all potatoes, baked or raw, are reserved for jamming into appropriate orifices of detainees' bodies. All part of the "enhanced interrogation" techniques we've heard about, of course...
Brings to mind the great scene in "A Fish Called Wanda" in which Kevin Kline jams ketchup-drenched chips up Michael Palin's nose -- and since it DID work in the movie, it HAS to work in real life!
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Keep talking, guys
Every insane, completely divorced from reality sentence that comes out of the mouths of idiots like Hunter (the joker from my state who wanted to turn the nearly-100% pristine Channel Islands into a hunt club for veterans) just drives the spikes in a little deeper for the public: Republicans are completely off their rockers.
It's a sweet time to be an independent. The GOP's top White House contenders are a born-again nutjob, a would-be tyrant whose only trump card is to keep repeating "9/11," and a Mormon who couldn't get the evangelical vote if he nailed himself to a cross. Add wackos like these and their vile beliefs and you have a recipe for 50 years with the Repugnant Party as the political equivalent of the Toledo Mud Hens. Minor league, baby.
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It is unambiguously torture
We need to keep reminding people that the US prosecuted the Japanese after WWII for waterboarding our troops. It's torture, and everybody in the administration knows it. Unfortunately, our citizenry has no historical memory.
Write your local paper. Waterboarding is torture. We're supposed to be better than that.
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"once you describe what techniques are being used ... then the high-value detainees will never speak to us."
I agree. It's awfully tough to talk while your being drowned. Besides, why would they want to talk to us if we are going to be so mean.
This article has illuminate how completely wrong-headed this country has become. That anyone is even giving air time to these lunatics is nauseating. That the air time is plentiful and ongoing says legion as to how awful we have become to even put up with it. My life span has included the Kennedy and King assassinations. America has gone straight into the shitter since these clear thinkers were thinned from the herd.
Picture this: Pelosi and Hunter skipping hand in hand as they saunter into the sunset showing solidarity to torture, milking the middle class and nodding in smiling approval to the nomination of Hunter for Secretary of Defense. Pelosi has shown time and again she's in lock-step with these cretins. Gag me with a spoon.
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Is waterboarding more like swimming or eating rice pilaf? Let's ask Triple gold medallist Jodie Henry and TV's cutest cook, Rachel Ray!
"Is waterboarding more like swimming or eating rice pilaf?"
Jodie Henry: "Well you know Garry, we train pretty hard for the Olympic sprint swimming event. We often don't have time to stop to eat. So our favorite training meal is a ziplock bag full of delicious rice pilaf.
Garry Owen: "Are you saying you eat and swim at the same time?"
Jodie Henry: "Oh yes. It's quite easy once you get used to it. Just wash it down with a gulp of pool water."
Garry Owen: "Aren't you afraid you might aspirate some of those rice grains into your lungs?"
Jodie Henry: "Lungs? We have gills."
Rachel Ray: "Delicious rice pilaf is great any time, even while getting waterboarded."
Garry Owen: "I've noticed you are getting a little, ah, chubby, lately Rachel."
Rachel Ray: "This interview is over."