TORTURE Bill PASSES!!!!!!
The Senate just enthusiastically endorsed a PRO-TORTURE bill that legalizes TORTURE! 32 Democrats, a RINO and an IINO bravely tried to say "No!" to TORTURE, but their voices would not be heard. The language of the bill reads in part:
"Not only do we like torture, we can't GET ENOUGH OF IT!! In fact, we can't WAIT to finish this roll call vote, so we can get right back to doing more TORTURE!!!! BREAK OUT THOSE THUMBSCREWS AND BAMBOO SHOOTS, BOYS!!!"
At least that's the impression you'd get from reading the lefty blogosphere this week. Jesus H., I think I liked these guys better when they were all about "nuance." Remember those days? One of the most reasonable reactions from the moonbats actually comes from the Daily Kos. That's saying something.
As much as the moonbats would like to reduce the whole exercise to a an up-or-down referendum on "TORTURE IS GOOD!" vs. "TORTURE IS BAD," we all know it's not quite so simple or straightforward. Even the moonbattiest libs can't possibly believe their own overheated rhetoric on this matter.
If we'd all settle down and be intellectually honest for a moment here, I think we'd have to agree that the current national divisions are not along some pro-torture/anti-torture fault line. The real debate has much more to do with which specific interrogation techniques comprise torture and which do not.
I think we'd all probably agree that thumbscrews and electrodes do indeed qualify as torture. We'd all also agree that the old "good cop, bad cop" routine probably doesn't. The problem lies in the gray areas in between. What about sleep deprivation? Loud music? Waterboarding? Forced standing? And are all these techniques that can simply be condoned or condemned across the board, or would it depend on circumstances?
I think this is a debate that desperately needs to be resolved. Congress had a real opportunity to clarify exactly what our policies are and aren't regarding specific interrogation techniques, and they balked. I'll admit that I haven't read the entire bill yet, but so far my main problem is not what it said, but what it didn't say.
It's well and good to say you're against "torture," but it's also meaningless unless we're willing to define what interrogation techniques are considered torture and which aren't. From a legislative standpoint especially, this debate is essential.
Unfortunately, Congress is afraid of that debate, and it's easy to understand why. The Right doesn't want to go on record as supporting brutal-sounding techniques, nor do they want to broadcast a guarantee to our enemies that they need not fear rough treatment at the hands of our interrogators. Likewise, the Left doesn't want to be seen as squishy, weak-kneed bleeding hearts, who get all woozy at the thought of poor Khalid Shaikh Mohammed having to sleep on a lumpy mattress.
It's understandable that Congress wanted to duck this issue, but it's also inexcusable. They had a job to do, and they didn't do it. They can complain all they want about unchecked executive authority, but let the record show that when the time came to delineate the boundaries clearly, they punted.
Comments
Hey Barry,
I also thought that this bill was an endorsement of torture and it is. It is very shameful indeed. And if you think that "waterboarding" is in a "gray" zone, take a look at this article and follow the links. Waterboarding is clear-cut torture....
Posted by: Blue Wind | September 29, 2006 05:54 PM
Not only does it OK torture, it does not protect Americans from torture. Bush can classify any one of us as a terrorist, torture us, and keep us in a secret prison for life.
Sorry, but that's the bill Republicans are so proud of ... welcome to Nazi Germany.
There is NO protection for American citizens. This is an incredible criminal power grab in direct contradiction of the Constitution.
Ah, neocons like Barry are so proud! Soon, maybe I will disappear for saying fuck Israel!
Posted by: Bailey Hankins | September 30, 2006 12:57 AM
"Torture" is a very specific term BW, that is defined as actions designed to inflict permanent harm and disability on a suspect.
Stripping suspects naked, placing them in cold rooms, sleep deprivation, loud noise, psychological abuse - from yelling, to berating, to threatening, and using manipulations like "Your pals are already giving you up. You don't owe them anything. They're not your friends anymore...none of them cares what happens to you. I'm the closest thing to a friend you've got," are ALL OK and once more, they're used EVERY DAY by police departments across this great country on American citizens suspected of all manner of criminal acts.
In fact, none of the things I mentioned above rise to the level of "cruel," or "degrading," or even "inhumane" treatment.
As one attorney said, the case made by the attorney's opposed to "torture" in the U.S. would consider a sniper who shot a target in the neck and let him bleed to death guilty of "torture," while one who shot his target in the head or in the heart not guilty!
Anyone (American citizen, or not) even suspected of supporting or having ties to international terorrism should be vigorously interrogated and detained until the issues surrounding them are resolved.
Terrorism is NOT a criminal act.
Terrorism is an act of unconventional warfare, and that is why the U.S. is now prosecuting it as such.
James Fox, the former head of the FBI's NY Bureau acknowledged that the "U.S. criminal justice system is inadequate to deal with the problem of state sponsored terrorism."
Posted by: JMK | September 30, 2006 11:57 AM
actions designed to inflict permanent harm and disability on a suspect.
No. Your definition of torture (and Bush's) is laughable. There are multiple forms of torture, including old-time beatings, that do not leave permanent disability. Anyway, you conveniently avoided waterboarding that is a crystal-clear form of torture endorsed by the administration and approved by the republican senate. Follow the links I posted above, and you will find pictures of that type of torture. If you dont think that qualifies for torture...what can I say...
Posted by: Blue Wind | September 30, 2006 01:37 PM
Brownshirt JMK is first to applaud the suspension of 230 years of American civil liberties.
I wonder if Clinton was deciding who was a "terrorist" and able to make them disappear forever if he would be so happy. Remember, this law will afford Hillary Clinton the same power if she is elected. She will decide, secretly, who is a terrorist and they will disappear and be tortured.
No oversight, no judge, no trial, no defense -- the most criminal piece of legislation ever passed in the history of this country, bar none. Worse than Japanese internment BY FAR.
Posted by: Bailey Hankins | September 30, 2006 04:37 PM
"Torture" is indeed the infliction of permanent harm or disablity upon a person, BW. That is the best, or most accurate/efficient definition.
Police Departments still, on occasion, "tune suspects up," that is take them somewhere where the suspect has "an accident" (a/k/a a beating) - blamed on a fall down a flight of stairs, or some such unfortunate happenstance.
A guy I used to work with in the Bronx as a fireman, had been a cop and used to laugh about how they "interrogated" the most serious suspects, those who'd shot at cops, molested children, etc. - taping two telephone books on either side of the guy's head and slamming it with a baseball bat.
No skull fractures, no blood, but the same concussive force.
As he said, "Worked every time."
That's not to say such techniques are "great," but they are often necessary in extracting information from hardened criminals.
Police work and soldiering are not fields for the squeamish, so in turn the squeamish, shouldn't cover, or even investigate such fields either, as they don't have the requisitre experience to understand why some very ugly techniques can often be necessary.
Poor Barely thinks these Presidential powers are "new."
They're NOT.
In 1995, in the wake of the Murrah Building bombing, Clinton authorized one of the few peace-time military actions within the borders of the U.S. (You can look it up)
An act supposedly forbidden under the Posse Commitatus Act.
He ordered the Army Intelligence to use dozens of its Arabic translators to decipher hours of telephone calls made by suspected Mideastern terror suspects (calls in which both sides were made within the U.S.) which were intercepted by the FBI & NSA.
Thankfully the U.S. government has been doing these kinds of clandestine operations within our own borders for quite some time.
Posted by: JMK | October 1, 2006 09:49 PM
If you are right JMK, then why did the legislation include amnesty for the Bush Administration and their war crimes?
The techniques you describe are felonies. Excuse me, they were felonies, I'm not so sure anymore. Your friend is a criminal, and belongs in prison right next to the child molester.
If Clinton violated the Constitution then he should have been impeached, removed, put on trial, and punished.
Why did Bush need a new law? Why did the Supreme Court, even with conservative stacking, find him outside of international law?
Posted by: Bailey Hankins | October 2, 2006 03:55 PM
Cops have been using "coercive techniques" for eons.
It's not actually criminal.
OK, the telephone book beatings were criminal, but in those days with no tapes and just a skell's word against two cops....welll.
In fact, a while back Court TV did a short-lived show called "The Interrogation" and it showed how some well known killers were broken by cops...it was taken off the air because Police Departments objected to that being shown.
Generally, it's best if "the people" are left "blithely unaware" about how some information is gleaned.
We all want "results"/convictions of serious offenders, but most of folks don't have the stomach for seeing how that exactly "gets done."
Posted by: JMK | October 2, 2006 05:13 PM
Well JMK, the "results" according to DNA testing, is that many a "confession" was beaten out of innocent men.
In your Nazi world, that's OK, but this is still America ... sort of.
Posted by: Bailey Hankins | October 3, 2006 11:18 AM
Actually, and you'd have known this, if you had read any of the law literature, the vast majority of those freed on DNA evidence (upwards of 80%) had been convicted on faulty "eyewitness testimony."
Don't you hate it when the facts don't support great sounding conspiracy theories?
I know I do.
Coervice interrogations are not torture, any more than being in favor of border fences and limitations on Third World immigration is "racist."
Turn the TV off man, that PC crap they're brewing is really bad for you!
Posted by: JMK | October 3, 2006 03:31 PM
Again JMK lies.
http://deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=17&did=293
"Their convictions follow certain patterns. Nearly two-thirds were convicted with mistaken testimony from victims and eyewitnesses. About 14 percent were imprisoned after mistakes or alleged misconduct by forensics experts. Nine were mentally retarded or borderline retarded and confessed, they said, after being tricked or coerced by authorities."
Nearly two-thirds is less than 66%, not "upwards of 80%", so once again you are a liar. You are actually double lying, because you are "correcting" an assertion that I never made, that 100% of DNA testing released innocent men who were coerced into confessions. I never said anything of the kind, so you corrected NOTHING. I said "many" and yes, it was many.
http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2006Sep20/0,4670,ConvictionQuestioned,00.html
"Deskovic was convicted in the Nov. 15, 1989, rape and murder of Angela Correa, a 15-year-old high school student in Peekskill, 35 miles north of Manhattan. The jury knew that DNA evidence did not point to Deskovic, but police said he had confessed that he hit Correa with a bottle and put his hand over her mouth and 'may have left it there too long.'"
http://www.talkleft.com/new_archives/000301.html
"Eddie Joe Lloyd will be the 110th person freed from jail after DNA evidence has proven their factual innocence. About 20% of these wrongful conviction cases involve false confessions."
That's MANY isn't it JMK? You are a liar.
Posted by: Bailey Hankins | October 4, 2006 01:39 PM
Your own quote proves how dumb you are...not how "ignorant" (a mere lack of knowledge), but dumb/stupid.
Here's the facts, as your own source attests "Nearly two-thirds were convicted with mistaken testimony from victims and eyewitnesses. About 14 percent were imprisoned after mistakes or alleged misconduct by forensics experts. Nine (of 110, that's less than 8%...actually LESS than what I'd asserted) were mentally retarded or borderline retarded and confessed, they said, after being tricked or coerced by authorities."
"Nine (of 110) were mentally retarded or borderline retarded and confessed, they said, after being tricked or coerced by authorities."...that's less than 8%!
And of that 8% the vast majority were claimed to have lacked the mental capacity to avoid manipulation by interrogators - YES, POLICE CAN and are encouraged to lie, manipulate and "trick" confessions" out of criminals.
Keep on posting sources that bolster precisely what I say! I love it.
There's absolutely no way you could have been a computer programmer!
With the flawed "logic" you elicit, you probably shouldn't even be allowed to drive a car on your own, nor be trusted to bring home the proper change from a store.
Posted by: JMK | October 7, 2006 10:00 PM
Nice try Rove, but you said upwards of 80% were eyewitness mistakes. That was clearly a lie. I said many falsely confessed. That is still true.
You lose.
Posted by: Bailey Hankins | October 10, 2006 09:57 PM