As the caption mentions, people were drummed out of the military for this and now we call them ‘patriots’.
Vice President Dick Cheney has confirmed that U.S. interrogators subjected captured senior al-Qaida suspects to a controversial interrogation technique called “water-boarding,” which creates a sensation of drowning.
Cheney indicated that the Bush administration doesn’t regard water-boarding as torture and allows the CIA to use it. “It’s a no-brainer for me,” Cheney said at one point in an interview. Article
Opps. So then come the damage control:
Lee Ann McBride, a spokeswoman for Cheney, denied that Cheney confirmed that U.S. interrogators used water-boarding or endorsed the technique. “What the vice president was referring to was an interrogation program without torture,” she said. “The vice president never goes into what may or may not be techniques or methods of questioning.” Transcript
I think it bears mentioning, Chris Cannon and Jim Matheson voted for this bill too.
States have been using...
#1 by Outraged [former] Repug - October 29th, 2006 at 15:01
Where is the moral outrage from our moral values friends.?
Hypocrites ALL!
#2 by Unitary Anne - October 29th, 2006 at 15:57
I don’t want to be to bitchy… but … didn’t that photo came out while Johnson was president? Became a campaign issue, Johnson dropped out? Correct me on the details. BUT,
GREAT WORK ONEUTAH, YOU ARE THE ONLY MEDIA IN UTAH TO HAVE RUN A PIC OF WATERBOARDING FOR THE MASSES.
So…don’t forget to hang the corp media slug (if guilty after due process) when you string up the non jewish neocons.
#3 by Unitary Anne - October 29th, 2006 at 15:58
PLUS, our new nazi style helmets look so much better than those old WWII style helmets. Just look at the difference.
#4 by Richard Warnick - October 29th, 2006 at 16:18
The Bush administration has two definitions of torture. One was set forth in an August 2002 memo by Alberto Gonzales, who is now the U.S. Attorney General. It says that only “organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death” constitute torture. Under that definition, water-boarding is “OK” as long as the victim doesn’t actually drown or suffer permanent brain damage. Needless to say, this definition has no basis in law.
Although the Gonzales torture doctrine was repudiated by Acting Assistant Attorney General Daniel Levin in December 2004, shortly before Gonzales’ confirmation hearings, many people still believe that Dick Cheney and other high government officials are playing word games when they say the U.S. government does not employ torture in interrogations.
#5 by cassandra - October 31st, 2006 at 08:57
No matter what the laws are, it is pretty clear that the law ship left the port long ago, and we weren’t on it. A waterboard?, sounds like fun, is that like a wake board? No it can’t be, because america is hardly awake.
#6 by gordon - October 31st, 2007 at 06:21
You do what you have to do in times of war…
#7 by MonkeyBoy - October 31st, 2007 at 21:31
Wow.
“You do what you have to do in times of war…”
Could there be finer distillation of the banality of evil?
That’s pretty much the Nuremburg defense isn’t it? … “yeah, well, you do what you have to…”
So dispassionate. So matter-of-fact. So “so what.” … so willfully ignorant of the horrors we are complicit in. Torture is real. Torture is HELL on Earth. It happens to real people on the orders of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush (and you. and me.). And people like Gordon make a meaningless abstraction of it with a few thoughtless words…
What WOULD jesus do? (Interviewer: Leaving crucifixion aside for the moment, what are your thoughts on waterboarding? J: “Well, you do what you have to do…”)
Waterboarding, Simulated Drowning, whatever you want to call it, has been around since the Spanish Inquisition. And it’s been recognized, morally, explicitly, and legally as TORTURE by anyone with even a modicum of intellectual honesty… and there’s the dark twisted heart of the matter: as long as we defend waterboarding, we are as clearly sociopathic as “the terrorists”… “they” have already won, because they have convinced us that depraved cruelty is the answer.
#8 by gordon - November 1st, 2007 at 06:18
Someone (monkeyboy) has never been to war. So if it is the option of water torturing an enemy to save your own men, would you not do it?? How about you have to cut the throat of the enemy to get intel. to save your men? Would that be not as bad. Answer this then….Do you think Germans were not tortured to give positions away?? Fight Fire With Fire. Join the Marines if you want to get a close look at evil, horror, and the loss of a friend.
BTW: The Nuremburg trials were for genocide and the killing of millions of innocent people, not water torture where the victims survive. Don’t tell me its the same moral theory, because it’s not. That comparison is ridiculous.
#9 by Anonymous - November 1st, 2007 at 07:13
In 1947, the United States prosecuted a Japanese military officer, Yukio Asano, for waterboarding a U.S. civilian during World War II. Yukio Asano received a sentence of 15 years of hard labor.
Professional interrogators (not the writers of “24″) will tell you that torture is useless for obtaining correct information. It’s only a sadistic means for coercing false confessions.
#10 by gordon - November 1st, 2007 at 08:39
Don’t take what I say as being a license for the Bush administration to maintain the Guantanamo prison. It is illegal. Torture is illegal. The idea that the Bush administration would amend the Geneva Convention is preposterous. If we examine the picture above, we see war weary American soldiers who must have recently been part of an assault (note the muddy boots of soldier on left). Probably Americans in their company were killed. It is important for us to remember that waterboarding is a way of extracting information from enemy short of mutilation. Again I believe this form of torture be used only on the battlefield. Bush and his military are using this torture as a fishing expedition and it must stop.