Waterboarded 183 Times in One Month. Torture Issue Blows Up.

[Sigma]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/04/legal_torture_the_upturned_mor.html

April 29, 2009
Legal Torture: The Upturned Moral Universe of Progressives
By Miguel A. Guanipa
The topic of torture is in the headlines again, resuscitated by the Democrats, an assembly most grievously afflicted with the bane of idleness.

The reasons, of course, are manifold, leading among which is the fact that the Obama experiment is desperately in need of a compelling distraction from the dreadful economic results it has thus far yielded. There are also the latent vestiges of unresolved animus toward the previous administration from a boisterous fringe that refuses to be pacified. But one reason for having a renewed interest in this issue which liberal democrats can never be accused of is that they suddenly find themselves aggrieved with the unbearable burden of a heavy conscience. In fact there is not one lone liberal Democrat in Congress who cares one iota that prisoners of war have been or are being tortured. This may sound like a rather bold statement, but it is firmly grounded on historical fact.

To illustrate my point, imagine for a moment that you have been assigned a couple of prisoners whom you have been given complete freedom to torture. Neither prisoner is aware of the fate that awaits them. You enter the room of the first prisoner and begin by tearing off one of his limbs. The prisoner -- who is not privy to the reasons why you have committed such a dastardly act against his person -- writhes in agony. You then proceed to systematically sever other vital organs. The prisoner tries to flee in desperation, but you have blocked the only exit through which he may entertain any hopes of escaping his torturer. What the prisoner doesn't know is that prior to the moment you entered the scene you had already planned for him to die before being eventually removed from this chamber.

After the job is finished, you enter the next room in which your next hapless victim waits. He is also unaware that you are about to inflict intolerable pain upon him. But this time you decide to employ a more effective method. You bind this prisoner, and then dip him in a tank full of a corrosive solution that will gradually eat at his flesh, obstruct his breathing, and bring about a slow but certain demise. Within minutes of being submerged in this tank the prisoner expires. You could argue that his death was somewhat more merciful than that of the first prisoner.

Now imagine that you had been asked to torture these men, not because they were withholding actionable intelligence that could potentially save the lives of thousands of innocents threatened with imminent peril. It was not because they were active members of an itinerant terrorist organization responsible for wreaking havoc around the world. In fact, both these men were innocent human beings, physically incapable of defending themselves, who had been placed in these rooms through no choice of their own. To make matters worse, their painful deaths were commissioned by and discharged at the full behest of their closest family member.

What I have just described is a federally sanctioned procedure that is performed on a daily basis in one of the most vibrant democracies on earth, and which has been in place for almost forty years. It is part of the required curriculum for those who have demonstrated an interest in pursuing a medical career and it is methodically executed by highly trained professionals who are paid handsomely for their services. It is also executed strictly upon human beings who have committed no crime, and championed by liberals worldwide under the banner of reproductive freedom.

Millions of taxpayers are legally forced to finance this method of torture in their own country, and under the Obama administration, they now have to subsidize the lethal torture of thousands of other innocent human beings in foreign countries. And if that isn't enough reason for outrage, trained professionals who are conscientiously opposed to this gruesome practice will soon have to put aside their moral objections and provide this service lest they risk being sued by their less than satisfied patrons.

By now most of you know that I am speaking of abortion; a legal procedure which claims the lives of thousands of unborn babies each year and one that liberals in this country proudly endorse. In fact, opposition to this kind of torture is actually viewed by most liberals as a type of moral deficiency.

That is why I can unequivocally state that no liberal Democrat sitting in Congress truly cares that prisoners of war are being subjected to any amount of harsh treatment at the hands of U.S. military officials. Or else how could they justify their umbrage and still remain the willing accomplices in the virtual genocide of innocents taking place in their own backyard?

Forget their ostentatious claims that we are putting ourselves on a par with the very people we regard as barbarians. Dismiss their lofty rhetoric about betraying the fundamental ideals for which we stand as a free country. Ignore their admonitions on how torture not only robs us of the moral authority to accuse others of wrong doing, but compromises the core principles of human decency which undergird the very fabric of our society. Coming from the Democrats, these declarations are vastly disingenuous, the rhetoric rings hollow and such principles have long since been trampled upon from the time that we as a society affirmed in unison with them, that killing innocent human beings in the womb should be proclaimed the perpetual law of the land.

Just remember next time a liberal challenges you to discuss his moral objections against your implicit or explicit assent to torture, to simply look him straight in the eye and blithely respond that you have always been personally opposed to torture, but remain steadfast in your conviction that -- lest we jeopardize our freedoms -- torture should remain legal, safe, but rare.

[Sigma]

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=327018735406381

Debate Over What Constitutes 'Torture' Reflects A Dangerous Lack Of SeriousnessBy THOMAS SOWELL | Posted Tuesday, May 12, 2009 4:20 PM PT

One of the many signs of the degeneration of our times is how many serious, even life-and-death, issues are approached as talking points in a game of verbal fencing. Nothing illustrates this more than the fatuous, and even childish, controversy about "torturing" captured terrorists.

People's actions often make far more sense than their words. Most of the people who are talking lofty talk about how we mustn't descend to the level of our enemies would themselves behave very differently if presented with a comparable situation, instead of being presented with an opportunity to be morally one up with rhetoric.

What if it was your mother or your child who was tied up somewhere beside a ticking time bomb, and you had captured a terrorist who knew where that was? Face it: What you would do to that terrorist to make him talk would make waterboarding look like a picnic.

You wouldn't care what the New York Times would say or what "world opinion" in the U.N. would say. You would save your loved one's life and tell those other people what they could do. But if the U.S. behaves that way it is called "arrogance" â€" even by American citizens. Indeed, even by the American president.

There is a big difference between being ponderous and being serious. It is scary when the president of the United States is not being serious about matters of life and death, saying that there are "other ways" of getting information from terrorists.

Maybe this is a step up from the previous talking point that "torture" had not gotten any important information out of terrorists. Only after this had been shown to be a flat-out lie did Barack Obama shift his rhetoric to the lame assertion that unspecified "other ways" could have been used.

For a man whose whole life has been based on style rather than substance, on rhetoric rather than reality, perhaps nothing better could have been expected. But that the media and the public would have become so mesmerized by the Obama cult that they could not see through this to think of their own survival, or that of this nation, is truly a chilling thought.

When we look back at history, it is amazing what foolish and even childish things people said and did on the eve of a catastrophe about to consume them.

In 1938, with Hitler preparing to unleash a war in which tens of millions of men, women and children would be slaughtered, the play that was the biggest hit on the Paris stage was a play about French and German reconciliation, and a French pacifist that year dedicated his book to Adolf Hitler.

When historians of the future look back on our era, what will they think of our time? Our media too squeamish to call murderous and sadistic terrorists anything worse than "militants" or "insurgents"? Our president going abroad to denigrate the country that elected him, pandering to feckless allies and outright enemies, and literally bowing to a foreign tyrant ruling a country from which most of the 9/11 terrorists came?

It is easy to make talking points about how Churchill did not torture German prisoners, even while London was being bombed. There was a very good reason for that: They were ordinary prisoners of war who were covered by the Geneva Convention and who didn't know anything that would keep London from being bombed.

Whatever the verbal fencing over the meaning of the word "torture," there is a fundamental difference between simply inflicting pain on innocent people for the sheer pleasure of it â€" which is what our terrorist enemies do â€" and getting life-saving information out of the terrorists by whatever means are necessary.

The left has long confused physical parallels with moral parallels. But when a criminal shoots at a policeman and the policeman shoots back, physical equivalence is not moral equivalence. And what American intelligence agents have done to captured terrorists is not even physical equivalence.

If we have reached the point where we cannot be bothered to think beyond rhetoric or to make moral distinctions, then we have reached the point where our own survival in an increasingly dangerous world of nuclear proliferation can no longer be taken for granted.

[Midway ®]

So, from reading these clippings, would it be reasonable to assume that they express your thoughts?

Just asking the question.

Because it might be more effective for you to just express your own opinions, in your own words. That might be more compelling.

[Sigma]

If you read back in this post you will see that I did that along with others.  Stephen decided to start the blast of articles and videos - I felt that was pretty easy to do.  Since we will never see this issue the same way, this thread is nothing more than posting articles that are relevant to the issue.

Cheers,

[BridgeTroll]

First sentence...

Here's an actual news story:

Nothing about Nancy?

[Midway ®]

But Sigma, a trio of the American thinker tomes with an IBD editorial as the coup de grâce?


Thank you all for culling articles by the foremost minds in their field for our illumination.

[Sigma]

On ‘Torture,’ Holder Undoes Holder
The attorney general reveals his legal ignorance â€" or, his willful inconsistency.
By Andrew C. McCarthy

There was a little noticed bombshell in Washington’s waterboarding melodrama last week. And it wasn’t Nancy Pelosi’s implosion in a Capitol Hill press room, where she yet again tried to explain her inexplicable failure to protest the CIA’s “torturing” of detainees. No, this one detonated in the hearing room of the House Judiciary Committee. There, Attorney General Eric Holder inadvertently destroyed the warped basis for his claim that waterboarding, as administered by the CIA, amounted to torture.

As originally reported by Connie Hair of Human Events, Holder’s undoing was the result of deft questioning by two committee Republicans: Dan Lungren, California’s former state attorney general, and Louie Gohmert, the former chief judge of a Texas appeals court. The two congressmen highlighted a fatal flaw in Holder’s theory. Moreover, they demonstrated that â€" despite having accused the CIA and the Bush administration of war crimes by cavalierly branding waterboarding as “torture” â€" the attorney general has still not acquainted himself with the legal elements of a torture offense, particularly the required mental state. This is remarkable, given that Holder’s own department explained these elements less than a month ago in a federal appeals court brief.

Rep. Lungren pointed out that if the attorney general truly believes “waterboarding is torture,” he must also think we torture our own Navy SEALs and other special-operations personnel when we waterboard them as part of their training. “No . . . not in the legal sense,” countered Holder. You see, said he, it’s “a fundamentally different thing,” because we’re doing something for training purposes to try to equip them with the tools to, perhaps, resist torture techniques that might be used on them. There is not the intent to do that which is defined as torture â€" which is to inflict serious bodily or mental harm. It’s for training. It’s different.

But it’s not different because “it’s for training.” Look at the torture statute (Sections 2340 and 2340A of the federal penal code) and try to find a “training” exception. There isn’t one. What removes an act from the ambit of torture (besides lack of severe pain) is intent. Lungren pressed this point, and Holder admitted that the training was “not torture in the legal sense because we’re not doing it with the intention of harming these people physically or mentally.” Intent, he acknowledged, was the key question.

Then, Lungren pounced. The CIA interrogators who questioned top al-Qaeda captives like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah intended no more harm to them than Navy instructors intended to their SEAL trainees. In fact, we know that the CIA went to great lengths, under Justice Department guidance, precisely to avoid severe harm. Their purpose, Rep. Lungren observed, was to “solicit information,” not to inflict torture.

Holder was trapped. He responded with some blather about how “when the Communist Chinese did [waterboarding], when the Japanese did it, when they did it in the Spanish Inquisition, we knew then that that was not a training exercise they were engaging in. They were doing it in a way that is violative of . . . all the statutes that recognize what torture is.”

Let’s put aside that it’s unlikely the Spanish Inquisition had a torture statute â€" after all, the United States managed to get along without one until 1994. Let’s even ignore the fact that the regimes Holder cited are not known to have rigorously limited their practitioners to no more than six applications of water (none longer than 40 seconds long) during any interrogation session (none longer than two hours long) on any day (during which there could be no more than two sessions) in any month (during which there could be no more than five days on which waterboarding occurred). Let’s just stick with intent. Holder’s exemplars involve the sadistic, programmatic infliction of severe, lasting, and often lethal pain â€" “water treatment” nowhere near as benign as the CIA’s, frequently coupled with atrocities like beating, rape, burning, and other unspeakable abuses. The practices of those regimes were designed exactly to torture, whether out of vengeance, the desire to intimidate a population, or the coercion of false confessions for show-trials â€" not to collect true, life-saving intelligence for the protection of civilian populations.


When Rep. Gohmert followed up on the issue of intent, it became starkly apparent that our attorney general is either badly ill-informed about the law, or simply willing to misstate it. Gohmert asked: “If our officers, when waterboarding, had no intent to do permanent harm and, in fact, knew absolutely they would do no permanent harm to the person being waterboarded, and their only intent was to get information to save people in this country, then they would not have tortured, under your definition. Isn’t that correct?”

Holder summarily rejected this assessment, lamely attempting to fend it off by saying it would depend “on the intention of the person.” But of course, Gohmert had already stated the intention, very exactingly, in his hypothetical. In a corner again, Holder blundered. Whether Gohmert’s example would constitute torture, he surmised, suddenly depended not so much on the intention of the officers but on whether their act (i.e., waterboarding) would have the “logical . . . result” of “physically or mentally harm[ing] the person.”

Gohmert demurred, asserting: If “someone has to believe that they are doing harm to someone in order to . . . torture, then if . . . you knew without any question there was no harm being done, then there’s no torture.”

Holder replied, No, I wouldn’t say that. . . . You can delude yourself into thinking that “what I’m doing is not causing any physical harm, it’s not causing any mental harm,” and somebody, a neutral trier of fact . . . could look at that and make the determination that, in spite of what you said, that what you have indicated is not consistent with the facts, not consistent with your actions, and therefore you’re liable under the statute for the harm that you caused.

That is completely wrong. What Holder described is the legal concept of a “general intent” crime. Most crimes fall into this category. To find guilt, all the jury (the “neutral trier of fact”) has to determine is (a) that you knew what you were doing (i.e., you intended to shoot the gun or rob the bank â€" you didn’t do it by mistake), and (b) the result was the logical outcome that anyone who performed such an act should have expected.

Torture, however, is not a general-intent crime. It calls for proof of specific intent. As I recently recounted, the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals explained the difference in its Pierre case last year: to establish torture, it must be proved that the accused torturer had “the motive or purpose” to commit torture. Sharpening the distinction, the judges used an example from a prior torture case â€" an example that thoroughly refutes Holder’s attempt to downgrade torture to a general-intent offense: “The mere fact that the Haitian authorities have knowledge that severe pain and suffering may result by placing detainees in these conditions does not support a finding that the Haitian authorities intend to inflict severe pain and suffering. The difference goes to the heart of the distinction between general and specific intent.”

To state the matter plainly, the CIA interrogators did not inflict severe pain and had no intention of doing so. The law of the United States holds that, even where an actor does inflict severe pain, there is still no torture unless it was his objective to do so. It doesn’t matter what the average person might think the “logical” result of the action would be; it matters what specifically was in the mind of the alleged torturer â€" if his motive was not to torture, it is not torture.

One might have expected Holder to know that. The argument was used in a DOJ filing before the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals only three weeks ago. Indeed, the Haitian example cited by the Third Circuit is quoted here, word-for-word, from the brief filed by Holder’s own department.

The bottom line is, Rep. Lungren skillfully steered Attorney General Holder into the truth: As a matter of law, CIA waterboarding â€" like the same waterboarding actions featured in Navy SEALs training â€" cannot be torture because there is no intention to inflict severe mental or physical pain; the exercise is done for a different purpose. When Rep. Gohmert’s questioning made it crystal clear that Holder’s simplistic “waterboarding is torture” pronouncement was wrong, the attorney general â€" rather than admitting error â€" tried to change the legal definition of torture in a manner that contradicted a position the Justice Department had just urged on the federal courts. It seems that, for this attorney general, there is one torture standard for Bush administration officials, and another one for everybody else.

Good to see Holder has ended all that unseemly politicizing of the Justice Department.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjZkNGZiODM0YjNmODNkMWFhZDU5Mzk2ZDMwNGRmMDQ=

[Sigma]

What? Another lame attempt by you to marginalize any posting from any source that you don't agree with? while you post left-wing blog histeria?  I get that.

Stephen, do you notice how quiet it's been this week.  Since Pelosi and Holder and the rest of this self-aggrandizing administration have been embarrassed while attempting to politicize this whole issue, it quickly seems to be going away. 

As your original title goes - it truly has blown up. And you can't handle it.

And "gotcha semantics" is what your side is all about.

[ChriswUfGator]

What? Another lame attempt by you to marginalize any posting from any source that you don't agree with? while you post left-wing blog histeria?  I get that.

Stephen, do you notice how quiet it's been this week.  Since Pelosi and Holder and the rest of this self-aggrandizing administration have been embarrassed while attempting to politicize this whole issue, it quickly seems to be going away. 

As your original title goes - it truly has blown up. And you can't handle it.

And "gotcha semantics" is what your side is all about.

Oh ya, that makes lots of sense man...

Don't support torture on your blog? Then you're a left-wing 'hysteric'. WTF You just did exactly what you're accusing Stephen of doing, except he didn't actually do it, and you did. I gotta hand it to you, as you sure do have that 'special' republican sense of no-logic swagger down pat.

[Sigma]

Chris and Stephen, it's your premise that is still wrong and that we will never agree on.  Your premise is that waterboarding is torture.  What I'm saying is that I don't believe waterboarding is torture. I realize that the country is divided on this issue.  The other issue involves the decision of whether waterboarding or any other interrogation technique should be used to extract information that could prevent another attack.  Most of this country agrees that we should.  So we can go back and forth all day on on the proper definition.  It seems that is does not matter,since we will use the methods required when this country has a possible terrorist strike on the horizon.

For the record, I am against torture under the definition that it is a brutal form of revenge or punishment with no other intent other than pain and humiliation. 

And another thing - this issue with Gitmo would not be an issue except for the left politicizing the issue and attempting to de-rail G.W.  Fact is, Obama is running into the same legal problems with closing the detainee facility (not the base) that Bush did. 

[ChriswUfGator]

Fact is, Obama is running into the same legal problems with closing the detainee facility (not the base) that Bush did. 

Ya, I saw that the other day, when congress voted him down on closing gitmo because everyone's b!tching about not wanting the new prison camp to be located in their area. I guess O's hands are pretty well tied on this one.

[jaxnative]

What about drilling their joints with power drills?

I can't seem to find any reliable reports on US personnel using power drills on prisoners.  Would you please provide some links to some irrefutable evidence for this assertion?  Thanks

[Ocklawaha]

Giving an MMR shot to a 2 year old is a form of torture, but it's done for the greater good of the child and the civilized world. Following your girlfriend around the Beach all day is also a form of torture, by the end of the day you've turned into a lobster and MIGHT even go to the hospital. But the sacrafice is made for the joy of Pay Back! Having a 6 year old walk up to your best friend and ask for a candy bar, seconds before the bombs under his little shirt explode is mental torture. You non military types may never understand but when I catch up with the SOB that rigged that child I'm going to toss him out of a Huey at 2,000 feet... You have to ask yourself how clean you'd play it. (I don't have to wonder.)

CAMP 731  WARNING THIS IS A SICKENING VIDEO OF JAPANESE WAR CRIMES THAT REWRITE THE DEFINITION OF TORTURE... HONEST FOLKS THIS MIGHT BE THE SICKEST VIDEO YOU'LL EVER SEE. BEWARE!
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2zlrk_camp-731_shortfilms



OCKLAWAHA

[Sigma]

Sigma.

The issue of torture is not limited to waterboarding.

Do you agree that assraping detainees is torture?

What about drilling their joints with power drills?

That is what has happened.

Not just 'waterboarding'.

So, it is your thesis which is flawed from beginning, by pretending that 'waterboarding' is what people object to.

But as it happens, Waterboarding is torture, legally.  And we prosecuted the Japanese for committing torture when they did it.

You still havent answered my question.

When is torture a crime in your world?

Stephen, I DID answer your question.

For the record, I am against torture under the definition that it is a brutal form of revenge or punishment with no other intent other than pain and humiliation. 

And since the title of your post is about waterboarding, I must say I thought that's what we were discussing.  Ah, but I am debating Stephen "Straw Man" Dare, who one again is bringing rape into the mix (and the reason at least two frequent posters won't even discuss this with you any longer.)

Please Stephen, enlighen us on the use of ass-rapings and joint-drilling in the enhanced interrogation process at Gitmo.  I'd like to know since I have not heard or seen any discussions about it.

[Sigma]

http://townhall.com/Common/PrintPage.aspx?g=57b05d46-cdc2-4e3b-b6f9-ff595521a87d&t=c

WWJT: Who Would Jesus Torture?
Doug Giles
Saturday, May 30, 2009

A Christian radio show host asked me the other day how I could, as a believer, be cool with waterboarding terrorists for intel crucial to our national securityâ€"or, as I like to call it, the implementation of the Irrigation for Information Act. Irrigation sounds so much more pleasant than torture, oui? Oui.

I told my inquiring host that as a patriotic white male Christian redneck, as far as I can deduce from the holy text, Jesus and the balance of Scripture seem to be okay with dunking Achmed if said butt munch has the 411 regarding the 10/20 of the next mass slaughter of innocent Americans. Call me crazy. I’m well aware, however, that I could be committing an exegetical error given the fact that I’m white and male and all. This is my cross.

Please note: If Christ wasn’t cool with irrigating irate Islamicists for facts, I must admit, I would still have to green light our boys getting data from enemy combatants 007 style. Stick a fire hose up their tailpipe and turn it on full blast. I don’t care. I’m not as holy as most of you super saints or as evolved as some of you progressive atheists purport to be. Security beats spirituality in this scenario, as far as I’m concerned.

Now, as you can imagine, the holier-than-I show host was a tad bit taken aback by my confidence and giddiness over teaching captured terrorists how to snorkel minus the snorkeling gear if it would keep our country safe. He saw that as somehow incongruent with the Clay Aikenization of the sassy Christ a stack of Americans now worship. He then asked me, in kind of a tsk-tsk tone, for a proof text or two from Jesus’ lips and la Biblia that would come even close to him wishing or implementing ill on those who would harm or kill the innocent. This was like taking candy from a baby for me.

How’s this for starters, Slappy? In John 2:12-17 Jesus whipped religious hacks who were turning God’s temple into a Costco for religious crap. According to San Juan’s account, it was the second thing Jesus did after John baptized him in the river Jordan. The first thing he did was turn water into wine. That’s two things lame evangelicals can’t imagine Jesus doing: making wine or using a whip, but I digress.

Yep, Jesus opened up a can of whup ass on charlatans in the temple. He didn’t pray for them or write them an angry email with the caps lock on or call them “man-made religious disasters” that we need to apologize to for forcing them to sell overpriced spiritual curios. Nope, he methodically sat down, got ticked, made a whip and cleared the punks.

Having that snapshot of Christ violently snapping on the 1st century televangelists in the temple, I’m a thinkin’ that if he got that riled up over overpriced Precious Moments figurines, personally whipped the culprits for it and then ransacked their product display tables, more than likely he would be cool with submerging a couple of murderous morons who have information regarding the pending liquidation of thousands of innocent civilians. (And by the way, I’ll take water in the face over a whip to the back any day of the week.)

If you still think he would have problems with waterboarding the wicked who have the poop on potential terror plots, then what do you do with the story of Noah’s Ark? Correct me if I’m wrong, but those chumps got waterboarded to the max, right? Aw, what’s the matter? Does that 411 not fit with the Jesus you made up? Shame.

Not only did Jesus flog greedy religious freaks, he, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit, created this little place called hell for the wickedâ€"which makes Gitmo look like a Chuck E. Cheese. Although, come to think of it, Chuck E. Cheese is quite hellish. Bad analogy. You get my point.

In Matthew 18:6 Jesus said if you harmed a little kid it would be better for you to have a chunk of concrete tied around your neck and tossed into the drink off Miami Beach compared to what the Trinity has prepared for you in eternity (author’s paraphrase). Sounds bad, eh? Worse than waterboarding? I’m thinking . . . yeah.

And then we have the book of Revelation. Yikes. This book is one chapter after another of agony on steroids for those that war against that which is holy, just and good.

So, once again, I’m kinda thinkin’ Hey-Soos wouldn’t blink at how cautiously and methodically our intelligence gents have been in pouring some Zephyr Hills down Habeeb’s nostrils in the hope that such “torture” will make him spill the beans regarding his posse’s plans.

Y’know, maybe I would be more empathetic toward the terrorists who wish to kill us if I were a Hispanic woman from the Bronx, but alas, I ain’t. So, I say, in the name of Jesus, water baptize the bastards for an extra minute or two if that’ll persuade them to unveil their buddy’s macabre machinations.

Granted, it’s always great and right to err on the side of civility, except of course when saving many lives trumps the uncomfortable nature of sticking a garden hose in a terrorist’s snout.

WWJD indeed!