The waterboarding debate: Which works best - Khmer Rouge or Inquisition style?

[JohnyCanuck]

For the record, the US has paid a complement to Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge torturers by selecting the Khmer Rouge variant.


A tortured defense
The guessing game is over. We know the U.S. government OK’d and utilized waterboarding. So what — if anything — are we going to do about it?

By Jonathan Turley

Consumers are often faced with difficult choices between product styles in today's diverse market. There is Chicago vs. New York style pizza. Memphis vs. Texas style barbecue. Swedish vs. Japanese style massages. It is not surprising, therefore, that when the Bush administration decided to get into the torture business, it had to shop around.

This shopper's dilemma of choices was evident in the twisted testimony given this month by Steven Bradbury, the acting chief of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and one of the central figures in the Bush torture controversy. While it received relatively little attention, Bradbury not only acknowledged a formal program of waterboarding, he also casually distinguished President Bush's approach from historical models such as waterboarding by the Spanish Inquisition. Though Bradbury insisted that the "only thing in common is, I think, the use of water," he omitted that other common denominator: pain. Indeed, the primary difference appears to be that the administration rejected water ingestion rather than water saturation to cause the pain. It turns out that the administration thought seriously about its own style of waterboarding and opted for a Khmer Rouge style over the Spanish style.

SNIP

For months, both parties hid behind the rationalization that the torture program remained a mere allegation to avoid the looming criminal question. Indeed, Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused to recognize that waterboarding has been declared as torture by both domestic and international courts — noting that it would be speculative. After Democrats rescued his nomination from imminent failure over the torture question, Mukasey simply refused to answer the question even after the torture program was confirmed.

The company we keep

Even our closest allies, such as Britain, have stated the obvious: The United States is now an official member of torture-practicing nations. We share this distinction with such kindred spirits as North Korea, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Burma. It has been disclosed that both Democratic and Republican members of Congress have known for years about the torture program. Current and former officials have confirmed the use of waterboarding. One of the CIA's interrogators, John Kiriakou, publicly discussed the use of waterboarding on detainees and agreed that it was torture.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/02/a-tortured-defe.html

[leftchick]

1. I am not holding my breath....

After Bradbury's useful primer on torture, the only uncertain thing about waterboarding is not the program but any remaining principles in Congress. If Mukasey refuses to fulfill his oath and investigate a criminal torture program, Congress has the power to investigate these crimes and demand a special prosecutor. Regardless of whether we like our waterboarding with a Latin or Asian flare, it remains torture, and torture remains a crime — not a question of style. We just need someone in Congress who can see — and act on — the difference.

:(

[izzie]

2. did you see those new pictures out on the Iraq prison?

They ran over my mail and I pulled it up. I am not sure what the site was but may be just hunt for a site with new pictures. Really would get you to feel ill about the country. I can see why the DOD did not want us to see so many of those pictures. I find it so odd that Bush let this happen. He must be nuts.

[madrchsod]

3. Turley should have mentioned the use of the "water cure"

"Many Americans were puzzled by the news, in 1902, that United States soldiers were torturing Filipinos with water. The United States, throughout its emergence as a world power, had spoken the language of liberation, rescue, and freedom. This was the language that, when coupled with expanding military and commercial ambitions, had helped launch two very different wars. The first had been in 1898, against Spain, whose remaining empire was crumbling in the face of popular revolts in two of its colonies, Cuba and the Philippines. The brief campaign was pitched to the American public in terms of freedom and national honor (the U.S.S. Maine had blown up mysteriously in Havana Harbor), rather than of sugar and naval bases, and resulted in a formally independent Cuba."


http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/02/draft-the-water.html
Torture, Same As It Ever Was | Danger Room from Wired.com

links from boing boing

[Tyler Durden]

4. As a student of history, I've tried like HELL to find a time when the USA didn't suck...

I have come up with Small parts of the FDR administration. The rest have various degrees of suckage from not too bad to OH MY FUCKING GOD DO WE SUCK OR WHAT?

[Supersedeas]

5. Turley needs to put more pressure on the ABA and other legal organizations