Torture By Any Other Name Would Be "All-American Harsh Interrogation Techniques Move Along Don't Think Twice It's Alright"

How could anyone think that chinese water torture was unfit to become american water torture, eh?

Yes, it's that funny. Blame for torture now goes to failure to understand the lessons of history, thus being condemned to repeat it.

Haha.

According to several former top officials involved in the discussions seven years ago, they did not know that the military training program, called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, had been created decades earlier to give American pilots and soldiers a sample of the torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War, methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans.

Even George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director who insisted that the agency had thoroughly researched its proposal and pressed it on other officials, did not examine the history of the most shocking method, the near-drowning technique known as waterboarding.

The top officials he briefed did not learn that waterboarding had been prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II and was a well-documented favorite of despotic governments since the Spanish Inquisition; one waterboard used under Pol Pot was even on display at the genocide museum in Cambodia.

The top officials, not having studied that particular part of history, you know, the "we don't do shitty things to others" part, couldn't see that, well, drowning someone might, well, you know, be regarded as -- well, chinese water torture. No mirror neurons. Slept through that class in college?

Cyclic existence? Samsara as usual? We're sorry, nobody told us that pulling the wings off butterflies was wrong? What about putting lit firecrackers in toads? No one could have foreseen . . .

None Dare Call It Torture. Not Quite "None," But Close

However, turns out that NOT prosecuting torture is a violation of international law. Oopsie.

The United Nation’s top torture investigator has suggested it is illegal under International law for President Barack Obama to announce that the United States government has no intention of prosecuting low-level CIA officers who carried out torture sanctioned by the Bush Administration.

President Barack Obama’s release on Thursday of four Bush administration memos sanctioning torture has been widely praised. However, word that government will go so far as to offer a fully-paid legal defense for agents who applied torture techniques to terror war prisoners has triggered loud criticism.

“Like all other contracting states to the UN convention against torture, the US has committed to conduct criminal investigations of torture and to bring all persons to court against whom there is sound evidence,” Manfred Nowak, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on torture, told Austrian weekly paper Der Standard.

“They are party to the convention and the convention is very, very clear,” Nowak told the paper. “The fact that you carried out an order doesn’t relieve you of your responsibility.”

“In a brief telephone interview with The Associated Press, Manfred Nowak [...] said the United States had committed itself under the U.N. Convention against Torture to make torture a crime and to prosecute those suspected of engaging in it,” reported the San Francisco Chronicle.

Technorati Tags: torture, Bybee, CIA, memo, moral bankrupcty

Torture. It's a Tough Job, But Somebody Has To Do It.

The US has to torture. The CIA has to torture. Preferably torturing by trained medical professionals, eh?

Because -- we can torture if we say it isn't what it obviously is.

Sort of like "a rose by any other name would ---" except backwards.

Anyhow, no wonder humans who did stuff like this -- you know, torturing -- might not want word to get out about it. Oh but wait. It's out. Well never mind. We'll get out of it somehow. Heck, we only torture because we must. We was only following orderss.

Here's some fun facts about the CIA's notion of patriotism in action:

Raise your hand if you think doing unto others the following things puts you in the category of "good person" (sic):

*Suffocation by water poured over a cloth placed over the nose and mouth...
* Prolonged stress standing position, naked, held with the arms extended and chained above the head...
* Beatings by use of a collar held around the detainees' neck and used to forcefully bang the head and body against the wall...
* Beating and kicking, including slapping, punching, kicking to the body and face...
* Confinement in a box to severely restrict movement...
* Prolonged nudity...this enforced nudity lasted for periods ranging from several weeks to several months...
* Sleep deprivation...through use of forced stress positions (standing or sitting), cold water and use of repetitive loud noises or music...
* Exposure to cold temperature...especially via cold cells and interrogation rooms, and...use of cold water poured over the body or...held around the body by means of a plastic sheet to create an immersion bath with just the head out of water.
* Prolonged shackling of hands and/or feet...
* Threats of ill-treatment, to the detainee and/or his family...
* Forced shaving of the head and beard...
* Deprivation/restricted provision of solid food from 3 days to 1 month after arrest...

The ICRC report further clarifies the report's frequent use of the term 'ill-treatment':

The general term "ill-treatment" has been used throughout the following section, however, it should in no way be understood as minimising the severity of the conditions and treatment to which the detainees were subjected. Indeed, as outlined in Section 4 below, and as concluded by this report, the ICRC clearly considers that the allegations of the fourteen include descriptions of treatment and interrogation techniques -- singly or in combination -- that amounted to torture/and or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

"Furthermore, nine of the fourteen detainees reported that they had been subjected to threats of ill-treatment that included waterboarding, electric shocks, infection with HIV, sodomy, arrest and rape of family, torture, being brought close to death, and interrogation sessions where "no rules applied."


How do torturers sleep at night?

Answer: not well.

Technorati Tags: torture, Bybee, CIA, memo, moral bankrupcty

Torture Is As Torture Does

Voices From the Black Sites.


Hat-tip to Anonymous Source.

Gitmo Torture Victim Cut Loose at Last

So, Binyam Mohamed's been subjected to "medieval" tortures -- once again, our tax dollars at work.

Some say Binyam's brutalization continued past the end of the Bush regime.

Into, you know, the next one.

In any case, I'm not hearing a whotta lotta outrage from Obama and Holder as yet.

Is anyone else? Am I missing something? Or does their silence give consent?

Update: Statement of torturee Binyam Mohamed upon release from Gitmo.

You Say Depression, I Say Recession - - - Oh Wait, No I Don't

No wonder I've been feeling irrationally depressed all day. (Sigh.)

Day of Shame

Yes.

That's it.

It's that time of year again.


Commemorating yet another anniversary of the Day of Shame.

A wholly-pwned subsidiary of the Presidency of Shame.

Na na na na, Na na na na, Hey hey hey --- Good-BYE!! Parrty in SL. Inauguration Party Coming Right Up

More info at Jesus' General's "Celebrating the Inauguration on Your Computer.".

"What's In a Name? A Rose By Any Other Name Would Smell --- " Um, like Torture?

No, Mikey, let's SO not call a spade a spade.

Let's keep throwing obfuscatory Orwellian propaganda-spin-chaff-labels around and see if anyone will notice.

Or if anyone will even mind.

So far so good, after all. The real problem is -- gay marriage! And a horrid failure to fill the universe with more and more unwanted children!

MukaseyCites Risk in Using Term 'Torture'.

(At this, NBFH, in a very unladylike manner, spits.).

No, no risk in torturing.

Truth-telling? Whoa, now that's risky business!


Question from non-media-whore media Foreign Press: Uh, Meester Mukasey, Meester Bush, Meester Rumsfeld, Colonel Geoffrey Meeller, een your Eenglish language, how you say "consciousness of guilt"?

.

.

Bush: Never Having to Say He's Sorry

Sydney morning Herald: Bush admits mistakes but is unapologetic.

No really. He's not?

Sarah Palin: Waaay Terrored by Blogtopia!!

Sarah Palin is angry. And Sarah Palin is scared. Apparently Sarah Palin was assassinated by the media and blogtopia, and now, she's LASHING OUT!

Now I thought it was Hillary Clinton who got assassinated by the media and blogtopia, but hey, I could be wrong.

Poor thing. Poor poor Palin.

One does feel Palin's pain.

One feels her moose's pain, too. Ok her caribou. Moose, caribou, what-everrr.

Its dead now.


------------
Skippy coined it.

Bushist Fascists to Vets: It's All In Your Heads, Suckers!

No purple hearts fer vets with post-traumatic stress disorder.

No wounds. No actual wounds, you see. It's sort of like waterboarding. No wounds there, either. No biggie.

Oh, except there are wounds generally speaking after one shoots oneself in the head in the process of committing suicide. So wouldn't that count? Wouldn't count if you just take pills, though. And what about wounds inflicted on other people by people with PTSD? Would those wounds count as wounds, ya think?

Suicide Attempts Jump for Vets by 500% In Five Years and Government Ignores It.

Bush
Vets with PTSD
Vets and suicide

Panetta: Anti-Torture American

Why are we even having this discussion?

What is wrong with the pro-torture crowd, anyhow?

Screws loose? Child abuse?

"Obama Picks Anti-Torture Chief for CIA" at Mother Jones.

Bush Breaks the Economy as If It Were a Toy He Got & Didn't Like; Broke Americans Can't Even Afford to Keep Their Pets

A very sad Christmas story.

Stories that go on and on as The Third-Worlding of America continues.

WaPo Wants Pro-Torture Crowd to Get Away With Murder: Pardon Me While I Vomit Blood, Ma'am?

What is f*cking wrong with these people?

WaPo uses up column-inches on a column on why the US pro-torture crowd really ought to get off scot-free. And it's a real knee-slapper. Well, forehead-slapper, in this case.

Catch this:

"In the end, [stopping additional US torture] may be more important than punishing those who acted wrongly in pursuit of what they thought was right."

Oh. So all is forgiven if the torturers' hearts were in the right place?

Final Solution much, ma'am?

Pol Pot killing fields excusable since motivated merely by misguided childhood dweams of agwawian utopia?

(Slaps forehead. Hurts self. Groans.)

Hey lady, torturers' hearts are always in the right place, had you not noticed?

People are always doing really shitty things for the very best of reasons. That's why we have the rule of law.

Or used to. Till the feckless, reckless, out of control Bushist fascists came along, fueled by hubris and contempt for the rule of law. Oh, and you know, by a sharp streak of sadism .

But hey. That was then, this is now. Marcus [e.g. the establishment] wants these guys [Rummy, Cheney, Gen. Geoffrey Miller, etc.] to get away with it.

Well, I don't. How about you?

-----

Oh, and don't miss:
How Do I F*ck My Base? at Jesus' General.
Mike Flugennock
Obama's Divisive Choice of Rick Warren
The Daily Howler
In Which VastLeft Apologizes For Being Prematurely Correct

Apple Pie, Motherhood & Worker Exploitation

Yep, it's the The American Way.

Hat-tip to democommie.

Miscellany

Anglachel on the stupidity that is Clinton Derangement Syndrome.

Dirty Bush Stuffs Gov't With Dirty Bushists to Continue Failed Bushist Fascist Policies -- Because Bubble Boy Is Still the Deciderer!

Options for shutting down Gitmo.

Iraq Stands Proud and Tall For Fraud

Quoth Preznit Toad-Exploder's Toadies: All Those Things That Were His Fault Weren't Really His Fault

" . . . [I]nside and outside the administration . . . upbeat talk masks disappointment and frustration among many White House staffers, who believe Bush's reputation has been unfairly maligned for a series of calamities -- from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to the financial crisis -- that were beyond his control and which he handled well. GOP nominee John McCain's escalating attacks on Bush's tenure have added to irritation, these people said.

Ha.

The fault lies not in the stars, but in George Bush.

To wit:

9/11 (for ignoring Clinton's warnings)

Fiscal bankruptcy (for pissing away the Clinton surplus, then drowning the budget in Grover Norquist's bathtub).

Moral bankruptcy (starting a war based on lies about WMDs in the service of an Oedipal conflict between Dubya and Dubya's Daddy, making torture patriotic, killing a million people, ignoring habeas corpus, stuffing government with Talibangelical crazies, etc.).

Etc., etc., etc.

Cowboy up, George. It really is all your fault.

Sarah Palin Creatively Re-Interprets The Constitution

What would one do without Sarah Palin? I mean, really. What would one do?

Here, she asserts her newfound right to attack Barack Obama without fear of vicious horrid reprisals from the media in the form of them daring to question her wisdom in attacking him.

That's pretty creative.

Glenn Greenwald calls her assertion "so dumb that it hurts."

She's quite the fascist, really, is she not?


Growing Doubts On Palin Take a Toll, Poll Finds.

"Struggle to the Death for the . . . Soul (sic) of the [Republican] Party"

Mm. If it had a soul, that would frame well.

From the party that brought us moral AND fiscal bankruptcy! A fight to the death!


A civil war in which insufficiently rightwing very rightwing rightwingers get excommunicated, and the litmus test is -- Sarah Palin!

Sarah who? Oh you know, the winky mavericky demagoguey stealth Talibangelical! The pro-government-forced maternity gal with pesky ethics and grammar issues.

But, wait, it gets better! Sarah Palin then turns into Ronald Reagan! No, really, she does!

From the Guardian UK:

But the real bile has been saved for those conservatives who have balked at the selection of Sarah Palin.

In addition to Mr Frum, who thinks her not ready to be president, Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan's greatest speechwriter and a columnist with the Wall Street Journal, condemned Mr McCain's running mate as a "symptom and expression of a new vulgarisation of American politics." Conservative columnist David Brooks called her a "fatal cancer to the Republican Party".

The backlash that ensued last week revealed the fault lines of the coming civil war.

Rush Limbaugh, the doyen of right wing talk radio hosts, denounced Noonan, Brooks and Frum. Neconservative writer Charles Krauthammer condemned "the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama", while fellow columnist Tony Blankley said that instead of collaborating in heralding Mr Obama's arrival they should be fighting "in a struggle to the political death for the soul of the country".

During the primaries the Democratic Party was bitterly divided between Barack Obama's "latte liberals" and Hillary Clinton's heartland supporters, but now the same cultural division threatens to tear the Republican Party apart.

Jim Nuzzo, a White House aide to the first President Bush, dismissed Mrs Palin's critics as "cocktail party conservatives" who "give aid and comfort to the enemy".

He told The Sunday Telegraph: "There's going to be a bloodbath. A lot of people are going to be excommunicated. David Brooks and David Frum and Peggy Noonan are dead people in the Republican Party. The litmus test will be: where did you stand on Palin?"

Mr Frum thinks that Mrs Palin's brand of cultural conservatism appeals only to a dwindling number of voters.

He said: "She emerges from this election as the probable frontrunner for the 2012 nomination. Her supporters vastly outnumber her critics. But it will be extremely difficult for her to win the presidency."

Mr Nuzzo, who believes this election is not a re-run of the 1980 Reagan revolution but of 1976, when an ageing Gerald Ford lost a close contest and then ceded the leadership of the Republican Party to Mr Reagan.

He said: "Win or lose, there is a ready made conservative candidate waiting in the wings. Sarah Palin is not the new Iain Duncan Smith, she is the new Ronald Reagan." On the accuracy of that judgment, perhaps, rests the future of the Republican Party.

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Full Metal Meltdown.