It's hardly a secret by now that Fmr. Assistant Attorney General Daniel Levin underwent the process of waterboarding and said it was equivalent to torture. It's also no secret that those comments led to a forced resignation in 2004. And it's no secret that Rudy Giuliani (911911911911911911911911911911) is running a smear/fear campaign. But this goes a little bit far.
For those of you who don't know what waterboarding is, retired Rear Admiral John Hutson gives a good definition (source: ABC News):
"There is no question this is torture -- this is a technique by which an individual is strapped to a board, elevated by his feet and either dunked into water or water poured over his face over a towel or a blanket."
Thompson, Romney and Giuliani have all come out in favor of this (FSP can't be far behind). While I'm not trying to ignore Thompson and Romney's support of several horrendous interrogation practices, I find Rudy's especially disturbing because, well, Rudy Giuliani is an arrogant dickhead. John McCain (a former prisoner of war) came out against the practice, along with several other torture techniques. Rudy's response?
"I can't say that I [know more about torture than Sen. McCain] but I do know a lot about intensive questioning and intensive questioning techniques. After all, I have had a different experience than John. John has never been - he has never run city, never run a state, never run a government. He has never been responsible as a mayor for the safety and security of millions of people, and he has never run a law enforcement agency, which I have done."
That's not the whole quote, but I need to interrupt to point out that Giuliani never ran a state either, nor did he do a bang-up job with the safety and security of millions of people (see: FDNY). Yes, yes, he did great on crime control (mind you, many of those "criminals" were potheads; he flaunts the mafiosos, of course, but I have a feeling that Tony was outnumbered 3 to 1 by Chong), but is there honestly nobody who would have managed crime control AND had the common decency to support the FDNY adequately?
I also need to point out that John McCain has been much more intimate and familiar with the presidency and (this is a huge one) foreign policy than Giuliani; by his own logic, the only position Rudy's really qualified for is Mayor of New York; by mine, the only position Rudy's qualified for is head of security at the Concord Mall. Maybe.
"Now, intensive questioning works. If I didn't use intensive questioning, there would be a lot of mafia guys running around New York right now and crime would be a lot higher in New York than it is. Intensive question has to be used. Torture should not be used. The line between the two is a difficult one."
This begs the question, which techniques did you use, Rudy? Would you honestly say that controlled drowning is a gray area between being the bad cop and risking a casualty? Of course, I couldn't have expected anything less from the asshole who said this:
"They talk about sleep deprivation. I mean, on that theory, I’m getting tortured running for president of the United States. That’s plain silly."
I'm only in a high-school level psychology class, but they've already taught us that without sleep, we become incapable of speaking or thinking correctly, our immune systems go all to hell, we become much more prone to cardiovascular disease, fainting, hallucinating, hernias, hypertension, memory loss, psychosis, Type 2 Diabetes, etc. Just plain silly.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Newsflash: Rudy Giuliani Is A Twit
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12 comments:
Mat: I am happy you'll be able to proudly proclaim how "morally superior" you are that we didn't use that evil water boarding to extract vital information about that dirty bomb that was planted in NYC.
Let's see ... up to 1 million dead and dying vs. water boarding a known terrorist for vital information.
Cripes, even Chuck Schumer has common sense in this area. You sure need some.
Oh, come ON Hube!! You and I both know that won't happen. Who were we going to extract that information from? Gitmo prisoners, most of whom have yet to reach any formal hearings? The Iranians? Who else are we trying to get to here?
If you want to talk about common sense, apply it to your own logic. Known terrorists? How do we know they're all terrorists? They don't have habeas corpus, so how are the unlawfully detained supposed to exonerate themselves? What exactly is the criteria for a terrorist, anyway? Do we detain them because they're terrorists, or are they terrorists because we detain them?
Not to mention the inherent hypocrisy of accusing me of being morally holier-than-thou (God forbid I say we operate in line with the eighth amendment) when you're displaying shameless fear tactics. Dirty bomb in NYC? Honestly?
Thought you were better than that, Hube.
I've noticed many of those in favor of torture love to invoke the names of Kahlid Shaikh Mohammed and Jose Padilla of shining examples of how successful the White House torture program is.
First, please provide me with the article that says a dirty bomb was actually planted in NYC. My understanding is that Mr. Padilla - a low-level Al Qaeda member - was arrested in connection with an effort to BUILD a dirty bomb, not plant one.
Second, when you say "up to 1 million dead and dying" are you referring to American soldiers and innocent Iraqi civilians? Does the figure also include our country's dignity, honor and pride? Just wondering.
All of this talk of torture begs the question - Why isn't the CIA capable of obtaining strong human (humane, if you will) intelligence?
We wouldn't be in a position where we're even DISCUSSING whether torture is acceptable if the CIA was doing its job. Of course, that's probably kind of difficult what with senior administration officials outing their spies and all.
Jesus, we're the USA. We are supposed to be the safe haven. Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free...sound familiar? We used to look down our noses at barbarians, or did you forget that?? I guess Fox Noise has probably conviced all of you pathetic bleeting sheep that the founding fathers were just fucking around when they wrote the Constitution.
Sorry, but I'm sick, sick, SICK of the typical Republican party line that justifies the most heinous acts in the name of fighting terrorism. You know, for a party that crows so much about how tough they are, the Republicans certainly are a bunch of girly boys (and, sadly, girls) when it comes to getting the piss scared out of them by fear mongerers.
01/20/09. It can't come quickly enough. Hillary, Edwards, Barack...shit, even Gravel would be better than the gallery of idiots in charge now.
Sorry for the rant.
What dominique and mat said! Right on both of you!
There is abundant evidence to show torture provides no reasonable chance of obtaining the truth and has a very good chance of getting whatever the interrogator wants to hear. People will say anything at all to end the process.
There are many ways to interrogate prisoners. Our Constitution guarantees fair and equal treatment. If we apply those guarantees to all in the world we stand a much better chance of being seen as a country to be respected rather than being seen as the bully on the block.
Those who condone or support torture in any measure are in fact torturers themselves by all rights. The distinction between being a supporter and being a performer is one razor thin line.
Peace. Jerry
Oh brother. You chardonnay sippers really crack me up. First Mat says my hypothetical "can't happen" (um, really? Says who?), then dominique fails to recognize that I was speaking of a dreadful hypothetical, then Jerry uses the 'ol "those who torture are torturers themselves." Nice. As I stated initially, I am happy that you blind elitists will be oh so happy that we didn't use something like waterboarding to prevent that dirty bomb (hypothetical, OK dominique?)
Can you limousine libs tell me WHEN we actually used waterboarding thus far? The only documented case is Khalid Sheik Muhammad who had info about [then] upcoming airline hijack/blow-up plots.
Next, have you ever read the Geneva Conventions regarding illegal combatants (terrorists), Mat? I loved the clamoring by the LLs about those al Qaeda captured on the battlefield were "entitled" to POW status -- even though the Geneva Conventions specifically state that terrorists are NOT entitled to it. Mat says unequivocally that these folks are entitled to habeas corpus, but we're NOT talking about standard civilian court "rights." If they are non-US citizens and especially captured on the battlefield, what makes them so entitled? After all, there is SCOTUS precedent that the Bush admin. has rightly used to make their case, like Ex Parte Quirin. In part, the decision said:
…the law of war draws a distinction between the armed forces and the peaceful populations of belligerent nations and also between those who are lawful and unlawful combatants. Lawful combatants are subject to capture and detention as prisoners of war by opposing military forces. Unlawful combatants are likewise subject to capture and detention, but in addition they are subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals for acts which render their belligerency unlawful. The spy who secretly and without uniform passes the military lines of a belligerent in time of war, seeking to gather military information and communicate it to the enemy, or an enemy combatant who without uniform comes secretly through the lines for the purpose of waging war by destruction of life or property, are familiar examples of belligerents who are generally deemed not to be entitled to the status of prisoners of war, but to be offenders against the law of war subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals.
The SCOTUS has agreed with Bush on some matters, and others not. (See Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, though I disagree with the SCOTUS based on the plain wording of the GCs and of previous US precedent like Quirin.)
But this is all water under the bridge. My point is that you whine about "fear mongering" all the while doing it yourself. BUSH IS A DICTATOR, WE'RE LOSING OUR RIGHTS, YADA YADA YADA. The truth of the matter is that our rights are fully intact, that the system is working, and that the admin. is seeking -- legally -- counsel on ways to protect the country from this new type of enemy (Islamic fundie terrorists).
You can deny it all you wish; however, if there is an imminent danger of a nuke in a US city and we have some detainees who have info as to its location, you know damn well you won't care if waterboarding is used to possibly get that info. If you say "Wrong!" then you're just plain cretinous. The Constitution is NOT a suicide pact. Hell, even Lincoln didn't worry about his much more egregious transgressions of the Constitution because he was trying to preserve the country. And how does history view him today, hmm? (And no, I'm not comparing Bush to Lincoln. Just compare what the two have done in terms of "dictatorial actions.")
Chardonnay sippers. I love the irony and hypocrisy behind that comment. Not only is the classically Republican trait of having wealth considered negative, but it's only considered as such when applied to liberal minds. The double standards crack me up. I know that the (conservative) media has spun the term "elitist" to give the image of a pompous snob, but all that it means (and mind you, I'm only going by my AP Government class, but Sean Hannity is likely the leading authority on the matter) is that we have a higher than average amount of some resource -- in most cases, money -- than most people. I will be the first to admit that I live in a well-off condition. I am extremely fortunate to have two parents who have made a good living for themselves, to have access to a mostly fantastic education, and to have enough taken care of for me that I can sit down and analyze what's going on around the world. I don't understand why it's a bad thing, unless you're calling me self-righteous, in which case my response is that I would rather be perceived as self-righteous when advocating human rights than be seen by history as one of the many who sat by and watched America dig itself deeper into the shithole it's created.
For the record, I never said that your hypothetical can't happen, I said that it won't. Much like how you say that, hypothetically, a global meltdown due to excessive carbon emissions COULD happen, it just (conveniently) won't.
The main idea I'm conveying isn't that we ARE using waterboarding, it's that Giuliani is a fear-mongering twit for even supporting it in the first place. It's like saying you're OK with genocide -- even if it doesn't happen, it's still wrong.
I never said they were legally entitled to habeas corpus, but rather than habeas corpus (not to mention our fourth through eighth amenments) should not be exclusive. There is a reason, you know, that we adopted these rights in the first place. Or perhaps Madison et al were a bunch of elitists. Tell me something, is your well-being, your security, your life, etc., more valuable than anybody else's? Because that seems to be implied when you mention that they're not U.S. Citizens, and that, Hube, is pomposity; advocating the rights of the accused is not.
Did I ever say that Bush was a dictator? Hell no. Don't put words in my mouth. He is our president, and however horrible of a job he does, he is still subject to the democratic process of elections and is still limited by the separation of powers. But aside from that, I never mentioned Bush in this post. In fact, I rarely complain about him. Show me once, Hube, where I have actually implied, without sufficient reason, that Bush is trying to take away our rights without offering a solution of some sort (the solution to the Rudy issue, mind you, is to vote for McCain or just about any of the Dems).
When we reach the day when the world hates us so much, and our intelligence is so poor, that there is a nuke planted in NYC, which we both know damn well won't happen (stop watching 24 for five minutes and you'll see that we are creating the "terrorists" when, in defiance of the U.N., we singlehandedly destroy a sovereign nation's infrastructure and unleash a civil war and a race for power in the world's most unstable region), I will not have to say that waterboarding is right or wrong; because the only situation in which that could ever, hypothetically, happen, is when we get a bumblefuck idiot like Rudy Giuliani in the White House. He will, undoubtedly, have placed FEMA HQ at ground zero.
Call me a cretin if you will, but perhaps our efforts around the world will be more widely supported (and therefore more likely to succeed) if we stop giving everybody else a reason to believe that we are barbarians.
Hube -
It's very clear that you, along with so many in your party, have completely lost sight of what our country is supposed to stand for.
Statistically speaking, you have a better chance of getting hit by lightning or dying in a plane crash than being killed in a terrorist attack. That said, it's sad that you think torture is an acceptable means to an end.
I don't live in fear of terrorists. None of us should. While I have not forgotten the horror I felt on 9/11 (my sister was just three blocks from the towers that day and still lives in NYC), nor have I lost sight of the need for greater security, I don't believe that suspending our core beliefs should be part of the solution.
Perhaps, instead, we could consider that our collective arrogance in imposing our beliefs (not to mention our military bases) on other cultures without any appreciation for their history may have contributed to the attacks. Of course, that would take a bit of introspection on the part of a party that has never demonstrated any capacity to accept that there's even a world outside our borders, much less a world with a variety of cultures.
As far as your petty comments about "elitism" and "limousine libs", you know as well as I do that the majority of affluent voters is registered Republican. In fact, GWB even referred to his base as "the haves and the have mores". "Elitist" is among the more recent of the Republican red-meat buzzwords/phrases (since you all seem to be so easily whipped into a frenzy by WORDS rather than actual injustice). Some of my other favorites are "they hate us for our freedom", "the sanctity of marriage" and "death tax".
Your seemingly limitless devotion to this administration in spite of their shameful record of dishonesty makes it clear that you shouldn't be accusing anyone of lacking common sense...unless, of course, you're standing in front of a mirror.
Thank God, a post against Giuliani. Mat, I say we start a massive anti-Giuliani campaign. We can't have this jerk be taken seriously.
Just how long is John McCain going to use his former POW status as the bedrock to his campaign? He has the audacity to call Guliani out on his sleep deprivation comment yet what McCain truly needs to do is look in the mirror. He has made it a personal mission, in the name of re-establishment of relations and later on trade with Vietnam, to "bury" those who were left behind in Vietnam after the war. He accuses Guliani of belittling the service and sacrifice of men who served as POWs, all the while he has done even more incredulous things to those who have yet to return from Vietnam and their families. Sadly, these are the same families who, while McCain was "tied up", were fighting with Washington to make sure that he and the others were not forgotten. Only to turn around and slap them all in the face with his refusal to address the POW/MIA Issue and then culminating in his treachery during the 1992 Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs.
He regularly tells POW/MIA families that it is time to move on and get over Vietnam, well, maybe he should take some of his own advice.
This is Mat and Dominique at their
very best !
No one could say it better. So there.
Hube, what is worse, water boarding or hunting with Dick Cheney ?
Yeah!! What JJ said! Congratulations mat and dominique. Nice going the both of you. You two make me proud to be an American.
What does not make me proud to be an American is the need for this discussion in the first place. This is America after all. "Home of the brave and land of the free." "Of the people, by the people, and for the people." Where has our country gone? Can we find it again?
The America I know and love would never tolerate the abuse of detainees we have seen in recent years. MY America would never consider a discussion of waterboarding as anything but a form of torture banned from all consideration as beyond civilized thought.
I am ashamed when discussions like this one are necessary to restore this country. I for one will be happy only when we find a way to take back our country and begin the process of healing the wounds brought about in recent years by the egregious behavior of the Bush administration.
Peace. Jerry
I believe this is one of the biggest non-issues being debated today.
Of course waterboarding is torture and of course torture should be against the law. And of course if I knew that a prisoner knew where the ticking nuke was or where the planes would hit murdering thousands of people, I would torture the prisoner myself and I wouldn't require a law legalizing waterboarding or the lack of one prohibiting waterborading to to do it. I would just hope after saving the lives of thousands of people I could cop a good plea bargain. But I still wouldn't think torture should be legal because I wouldn't want government permission for interrogators to use torture under flimsy and sophistical pretexts.
There is a principle of law that applies here: hard (rare)cases make bad law.
Also, while the Geneva convention is a debatable point, the UN Convention Against Torture (which the USA signed) makes it clear that even anything that causes psychological pain is torture and therefore illegal for the signatories of that treaty.
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