Surf’s Up ! Waterboarding and so much more stuff…
Waterboarding: Is it legal. I don’t know can you really make rules to govern the barbarity of war ? For an interesting look at the issue and the current AG discussion SuzieQ has a post.
Bush. Bush Derangement Syndrome should really be included in the DSM IV. The anti-Bush are ramping up their antics circa the rightwingers in the closing days of Bubba the First. Blackwater,waterboarding, Rove and Gonzo have taken the place of Whitewater and sperm on a blue dress. On the surface a logical and honest person would say there are clear moral differences. I disagree. They are equal in their inanity. The waterboarding issue since this is what the post is about. Bush isn’t trying to work out high school gym class issues by allowing waterboarding. Torture does work contrary to the opposing opinion offered up by many. That isn’t to say it should be the first course of action. As far as the rest. You sling and sling and nothing sticks. Is Bush slicker than Willy ever was ?
Congress not so bad ? There are those that think Congress’s poor polling isn’t honest. Supposedly Americans still support their individual congressional hack. Bulls@#t. It is a collective effort and the results SUCK !
Unless and until Congress stops prattling about presidential “usurpation” of power and asserts its own, it will remain derelict regarding its duty of mutual participation in warmaking. And it will merit its current marginalization. G. Will
Burma a different angle to the issue.
Hate to have this at the bottom. If the reader has stayed on long enough this story at SPEIGEL is excellent for showing a chilling side of the crisis.
November 5, 2007 at 11:25 pm
On one hand, I agree… Bush Derangement Syndrome deserves a spot in the DSM IV, but on the other hand, if it were to be included then we would be forced to pay higher insurance premiums to cover all of the people who would have to seek help for this (government mental health insurance mandates and all)…
November 5, 2007 at 11:29 pm
In the past, haven’t waterboarders been treated as war criminals though?
November 5, 2007 at 11:32 pm
with few exception, the idea of “war crimes” is a joke. It opens the door for “lawfare” instead of warfare and is responsible for our inability to fight a war efficiently. A war crime is rounding up millions of people and murdering them a’la the nazi holocaust… not waterboarding some asshole for information.
November 5, 2007 at 11:40 pm
This is what I was looking for:
Do as I say, not as I do, I guess. But you’re right. If war crimes really meant something, I’m sure Bush would have been tried at The Hague already.
November 6, 2007 at 4:16 am
lol arc…great queries my friend!
BDS in the DSM..great idea!
November 6, 2007 at 1:02 pm
Bush for war crimes? LOL
How would you get information from captured terrorists? Ask nicely?
November 6, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Hey guys/gals… Waterboarding is said to have only been used 3 times in an ABC article. Once was on Khalid “Shake Shake Shake” Mohammed who quite frankly should get the Lavaboarding treatment. A senior CIA official said KSM later admitted it was only because of the waterboarding that he talked. I got that and a fun video on the technique you are free to use. Have a good one and keep up the good work! Sanp… Crack… Woosh! Ti Kwan Leap!
http://edgruberman.wordpress.com/2007/11/02/%e2%80%a2-waterboarding-not-so-common/
November 6, 2007 at 3:57 pm
Thanks to all for the add ons. I served as a medic and carried the “card” The Geneva Convention card. It was meant to reassert the right of medics to provide care post capture etc. It was generally accepted the card would be ignored as a rule. The other possibilities were that you’d be targeted for extra hell or set aside to be exploited in a number of ways. @CZ
A good point that captures as a rule one groups hope of being morally superior to the other. I stand by my line.
As the WPBA members have added some good points I’d like to further that. ArcLightZero had a post arclightzero.wordpress.com/2007/11/01/what-is-civilized/
November 6, 2007 at 4:09 pm
“I don’t know can you really make rules to govern the barbarity of war ?”
No.
November 6, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Whether or not waterboarding should be illegal, I think we can all agree that it is torture. Which is not being admitted by those who advocate its use.
So just say you support torture. Although I have severe doubts about its actual usefulness as an interrogation technique (in fact, the Russians and Khmer Rough used it to purposefully obtain false confessions), one can certainly make a logical argument in support of it.
Unfortunately, the US has to moralize everything, chock everything up to good or bad. As a result, anything pragmatic (again, not saying I believe torture is) has to be spun into some moral version, i.e. waterboarding is not torture, the nuclear strikes against Japan and the intentional bombing of civilian villages in Vietnam were not terrorism, etc.
Of course that was terrorism! Of course it is torture! But that doesn’t necessarily make them morally bad. Sometimes viewing things through a lens of morality isn’t the best way to go.
Nietzsche is rolling in his grave over such moralizing.
November 6, 2007 at 8:10 pm
I love it that Chen Zen quoted the Swimmer for water boarding.
Hey Chen Zen, if anybody knows about allowing someong to feel like they are drowning, Ted would know. Right?
November 6, 2007 at 8:12 pm
edgar,
I could care less if its torture. We are at war and are on a race with the Islamic demogrpahic time bomb. ANd water boarding does work. Just ask KSM about it.
November 6, 2007 at 9:53 pm
I am pro torture, and not afraid to say it. Hell, I’m tortured everyday listening to liberals whine about waterboarding when it has only been used 3 times. They consistently try to make it a talking point… when there is no point.
I guarantee that should any of your/their kids were to be kidnapped and say you got a hold of one of the men who did it, and he wasn’t talking every one of you/them would have little or no problem pulling out their fingernails or water boarding them or caning them or electrocuting them with nipple clamps hooked to car batteries. Especially if you knew your child was being tortured.
We live in a world of animals and some humans just need to be treated as such.
Battery Cables… $10.00
Car Battery… $50.00
A one-way ticket to Cairo… $500.00
Getting to electrocute the taint of the man who cut off my son’s head and knows where a dirty bomb is hidden… Priceless!
November 7, 2007 at 4:56 am
I think waterboarding should be practiced on the California legislators while surfing offshore. California would be a better place and so would the rest of America. Then there those amber waves pounding against the heads of the current Congress, I think they should love waterboarding. I may have been actaually invented with them in mind. Hee! Hee!
November 7, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Does anybody else find it ridiculous that Ed is now stating as gospel that waterboarding has ” only been used 3 times” because he read it in an ABC article?
You really think our military and–especially–CIA are that transparent? And you think ABC does good investigative reporting? Come join reality, Ed.
November 7, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Edgar. On the flip side don’t you think the story and others are used from the other side of the issue ?
November 7, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Wait… the left can rag on every AG nominee, President Bush, Dick Cheney and every other person on the right for water boarding, then the liberal media puts out a story that says it’s only been used 3 times and we on the right are not allowed to quote it? That’s typical. If we don’t agree with the lefts nonsense and we argue with them then we are ridiculous, racist (immigration), crazy or out of line.
November 7, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Im disappointed we only used it 3 times. Thats the real scandal.
November 8, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Ed and In2thfray –
What I said has nothing to do with left vs. right. Ed — “allowed” to quote it? Of course you are allowed to. I’m just saying that you should try doing some critical thinking and realize how impossible it is for a news outlet to know what the CIA and military are doing in jails and detention centers in foreign countries. I really don’t think that is a very controversial statement.
November 8, 2007 at 6:16 pm
Edgar. I am the last person to take what the media puts out there without a grain of salt. However the media is the one that got the waterboarding fiasco all stirred up, for them to come out now and say that it has been only used 3 times does not verify to me that it has been used only 3 times, but makes the statement that they originally used it to push their and the left’s agenda forward to use it as a lawn dart on Gonzalez, Bush, Cheney, etc. If they are going to accuse them of condoning torture using this technique and make it appear that every day Club Gitmo detainees and Abduhl Kadurka-durka in some hole in Egypt are going swimming everyday, then they should have said from the get-go that they “think” it has only been used 3 times and called it a rare technique or something.
It is coming out this way now because the Left is losing their base by being too far left and not appearing hard enough on Terror and them appearing to just want to hug-it-out. So the media swings back to the right a bit by downplaying the exact same thing that they said was wrong with the right and right with the left.
The same goes for Border Security. 70% of the people in the US want the fence before anything else happens. The left accused the right of being out of touch and racist for shutting down the Shamnisty issue a few months ago and saying that our stance on the issue was going to be the end of the Republican party. Now the left is swinging to the right and are no longer dismissing the people’s wants by having the media stop calling us whom oppose it as racist and more stories coming out about deportation, illegals committing crimes and stories like here in Phoenix where an anti-illegal protester was beaten by illegal alien day-laborers with softball sized rocks and kicked into unconsciousness in a Home Depot parking lot. You can find that story with pictures and video on my blog. It’s the same concept, just a different story. They want us to ignore our feelings on the issues and adopt theirs calling us outdated and racist, until they need to take our side and then they act like they never took any other position.
We do not disagree on torture, however I think we do disagree on why it is even brought up.