Torture, torture, torture ... We Do Not Torture Like The Spanish Inquisition ...

[L. Coyote]

"Torture, torture, torture ...," I was reflecting on the success
of the Rs in pushing TORTURE, a war crime that carries the death
penalty, off the front page with FISA False Fear (FFF) and their
sham walkout distractions (doing double duty providing cover for running from voting to support Bush!).

And this URL popped, I was thinking it is time to turn to torture
again, and ask the hard question,

"Is George Bush a War Criminal?"

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We Do Not Torture Like The Spanish Inquisition... It's More Like the Khmer Rouge
By Paul Kiel - February 15, 2008, 3:02PM - http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/we_do_not_torture_like_the_spa.php

Can there be a prouder moment in our nation's history? Yesterday Justice Department Official Steven Bradbury rallied to the defense of the CIA's use of waterboarding, arguing that the technique used by the CIA was nothing at all like the "water torture" used by the Spanish Inquisition. "The only thing in common is the use of water," he argued.

But as Marty Lederman, a veteran of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, writes, in distancing the CIA's technique from that used by the Spanish Inquisition and the Japanese in World War II, Bradbury made it plain that the technique he was describing was closer to "the sort popularized by the French in Algeria, and by the Khmer Rouge. This technique involves ............

[Junkdrawer]

1. If they were so innocent, they wouldn't float...

They're witches terrorists, I tell ya...

Tie them up and throw them in the river. If they sink and drown, they're innocent.

If they float, they're terrorists and should be burned at the stake.

[L. Coyote]

2. Excellent point and analogy. The false "witch" paradigm always seems false to the witch

What matters is seeing what is false in the "terrorist" paradigm TODAY, not centuries from now when terrorist, witch, infidel, pagan, commie, and pinko are confusingly blended.

When the Inquisition has you locked up, restrained on a modern torture table, or under water, it is too late to see through their BS!

[Junkdrawer]

5. The "trial" is a "cruel and unusual" punishment....

And the more innocent you are, the worse the punishment. e.g. The longer they have to torture you to satisfy themselves that you really don't know anything.

[L. Coyote]

6. The matter was not one they could legally redefine in the first instance. SIMPLE!

Given treaty, they had to obey the Geneva standard, and could not alter that. No way to wiggle under that one hurdle.

[L. Coyote]

3. TPM: The Calculus of Torture

The Calculus of Torture
By Paul Kiel - February 15, 2008, 2:06PM - http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/the_calculus_of_torture.php


Yesterday, Steven Bradbury, the Justice Department official who heads up the Office of Legal Counsel, testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties. We posted video of him explaining how the waterboarding practiced by the CIA was miles away from that practiced by the Spanish Inquisition -- it was a much more careful and controlled practice (there's no jumping on the victim's stomach or vomiting of blood).

But that wasn't even the most crucial part of his testimony. Bradbury writes the legal opinions that tell the administration how far they can go. And when he (and earlier John Yoo) advised the administration that it was legal to waterboard prisoners, they had their reasons.

With regard to waterboarding, Bradbury explained with chilling sangfroid his legal reasoning. We've provided a full transcription of his answers below

........

[L. Coyote]

4. VIDEO: Bush League Justice = Steven Bradbury on Torture: "may not constitute severe physical sufferi

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=385&topic_id=94252&mesg_id=94252

[L. Coyote]

7. Bush defends torture

Bush defends torture
Bill Van Auken, WSWS - 16 February 2008 - http://uruknet.info/?p=m41221&s1=h1


On the eve of his weeklong trip to Africa, US President George W. Bush Friday delivered an open defense of his administration’s criminal record of torture and repression, acts that have blatantly violated international law and turned the US into a pariah nation.

Bush’s intervention followed a carefully orchestrated propaganda campaign by administration officials aimed at legitimizing the use of torture by US intelligence agencies, and in particular defending the procedure known as waterboarding in which a prisoner under interrogation is strapped down and subjected to induced drowning by having water poured over his mouth and nose.

The intention of the campaign being waged by Bush and his aides is to consolidate during the little less than a year remaining to the administration the sweeping repressive measures that it has imposed since September 2001. At the same time, it has clearly signaled its desire to put terror back on the front burner of American politics with the aim of terrorizing the American people in the run-up to the 2008 election.

..............

[L. Coyote]

8. Sunday WA POST: Justice Official Defends Rough CIA Interrogations

This article is full-featured, with numerous links and a "A Grim History" at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2008/02/17/GR2008021700568.html?sid=ST2008021700633
GRAPHIC: The Washington Post - February 17, 2008

Fair Use Cited.

Justice Official Defends Rough CIA Interrogations
Severe, Lasting Pain Is Torture, He Says
By Dan Eggen, Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, February 17, 2008; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/16/AR2008021602634.html


The Bush administration allowed CIA interrogators to use tactics that were "quite distressing, uncomfortable, even frightening," as long as they did not cause enough severe and lasting pain to constitute illegal torture, a senior Justice Department official said last week.

In testimony before a House subcommittee, Steven G. Bradbury, the acting chief of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, spelled out how the administration regulated the CIA's use of rough tactics and offered new details of how simulated drowning was used to compel disclosures by prisoners suspected of being al-Qaeda members.

The method was not, he said, like the "water torture" used during the Spanish Inquisition and by autocratic governments into the 20th century, but was subject to "strict time limits, safeguards, restrictions." He added, "The only thing in common is, I think, the use of water."

................


washingtonpost.com readers have posted 118 comments about this item. >> View All Comments » POST A COMMENT

[L. Coyote]

10. VIDEO: Rep. Nadler Questioning Steven G. Bradbury, DoJ OLC Head. Torture “American Style”

Rep. Nadler Questioning Steven G. Bradbury, DoJ OLC Head. Torture “American Style”
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x94569

[L. Coyote]

9. Better than the Inquisition: Valentine's Day Torture Trifecta = by Scott Horton

Horton is great as usual! This lengthy article points directly to Administration lying on torture:

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The Valentine’s Day Torture Trifecta
Scott Horton - 16 February 2008 - http://pacificfreepress.com/content/view/2293/81/


On Valentine’s Day the Bush Administration was out on a mission, straight from the Orwellian Ministry of Love. That ministry of course served in Nineteen Eighty-Four as the center for torture.

And as the shortest month reached its middle point, three apologists appeared on behalf of the administration to explain to the American public that they needed to relax and start getting comfortable with torture.

.........

Act One: We Do It Better Than the Inquisition
The first appearance was by Steven G. Bradbury, who now heads the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department. ....
.....

Act Two: Be Very Afraid and Embrace Torture

It’s hard to imagine how the Bradbury appearance could be upstaged. But it was very quickly, by his boss’s boss, the Decider himself. George W. Bush has come under heavy criticism by the Government of Gordon Brown. Whereas the Blair Government had used private diplomacy in its efforts to push the Bush Administration to change its policies on torture ....
.....

Act Three: The Jester

Any well composed classical opera buffa brings us the crude, blundering sort of comic relief. The figure who wants to be one of the big guys, serious, but is a simple figure of derision. The Hofnarr, they call him, the jester. And our Valentine’s Day jester was Senator Lieberman. Here’s what the senator from Connecticut had to say in a phone conference with reporters:

* "The difference, he said, is that waterboarding is mostly psychological and there is no permanent physical damage. “It is not like putting burning coals on people’s bodies. The person is in no real danger. The impact is psychological,” Lieberman said. .....
.....

..... a Judiciary Committee staffer who carefully tracked Bradbury’s testimony earlier in the day drew this conclusion from it: “This is an official acknowledgment that we do not use these tactics only in (fanciful) ‘ticking bomb’ scenarios — we use them to find about ‘potential’ ‘planning’ of attacks and enemy ‘whereabouts’ — that’s just general intelligence gathering.” That’s precisely correct and it demonstrates the fraudulent way the “ticking bomb” argument is being used. .......

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[L. Coyote]

11. visibility kick