The right’s deranged support for waterboarding

December 12, 2007

Over the last couple of months, conservatives’ rhetoric when it comes to torture-by-waterboarding has taken a turn for the worse. Not too long ago, the right argued that waterboarding is a necessary evil — torture is wrong, they’d say, but in extreme, Jack-Bauer-like circumstances, maybe the nation should tolerate waterboarding for the worst of the worst.

That was the talking point in, say, the spring. More recently, the right has tried out a new tack: waterboarding isn’t a necessary evil, it’s hardly a big deal at all.

Yesterday on PBS’s Newshour, host Gwen Ifill asked Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) whether waterboarding constitutes torture. Bond replied that the technique is actually more like “swimming”:

GWEN IFILL: Do you think that waterboarding, as I described it, constitutes torture?

SEN. KIT BOND: There are different ways of doing it. It’s like swimming, freestyle, backstroke. The waterboarding could be used almost to define some of the techniques that our trainees are put through, but that’s beside the point. It’s not being used.

Republican “strategist” Rachel Marsden recently said on CNN, “One man’s torture is another man’s CIA-sponsored swim lesson.”

But Marsden is just some right-wing flack — Kit Bond is the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Worse, Bond isn’t alone.

Duncan Hunter offered a similar take last night.

Appearing on Fox News Tuesday night, long-shot GOP presidential candidate Duncan Hunter declared that opposition to waterboarding is “part of the Democrat blame America first” agenda and goes “right along with their desire to close Guantánamo, where the terrorists are gaining weight on American menus that include honey-glazed chicken and rice pilaf.”

Hunter’s comments came immediately after Bill O’Reilly told him that Republicans John McCain and Mike Huckabee oppose waterboarding — and just before the New York Times posted an interview with Huckabee in which he said he thought Hunter is “extraordinarily well qualified to be secretary of defense.”

Remember, Hunter isn’t just some nutty talking head on TV, he’s currently the Ranking Member on the House Armed Services Committee and a presidential candidate.

All of this is eerily reminiscent of Deroy Murdock, a contributing editor to the National Review, who told readers last month, “Waterboarding is something of which every American should be proud.”

What is wrong with these people? How, exactly, did we get to a point in which conservatives brag about their support for medieval torture techniques? What happened to conservatives sheepishly arguing that torture was wrong, but occasionally necessary in extreme circumstances?

The mind reels.

un-fucking-believable! i’d like to take each one of these sumbitches for a swimming lesson!

  • As noted elsewhere, if Iranians did this to a captured American, they’d be livid. But apparently they’re fine with it here.

    I suppose once Hillary is president, if someone is caught trying to bomb an abortion clinic, it’s OK to waterboard them to find out about their other plans? Somehow I bet they won’t go for that . . .

  • Gee wouldn’t it be nice to have video tape of the CIA actually using waterboarding on a prisoner so we could see just how much like “swimming” it is? Oh wait, someone destroyed that tape.

    Perhaps by “swimming” they mean “drowning”.

  • Listening to Bush, Kit Bond, Gonzales, Mukasey, Tenet, Cheney, and their ilk reminds me so much of listening to ranting of some child molester when arrested. We all know what the crime is, but listen to the criminal’s explanation and, of course, it’s really all totally innocent. It was necessary. They were asking for it. And it really wasn’t so bad after all. And naturally the desired effect was achieved. Although it never really happened. And nobody has the video tapes, so no harm done. Hey, this is torture we’re talking about here.

    This is what passes for honor today. This is the pussy footing statement by the president of the United States: “My first recollection of whether the tapes existed or whether they were destroyed was when [CIA Director] Michael Hayden briefed me.” And this clumsily rehearsed statement is interpreted by all new networks to mean Bush knew nothing about the tapes. Is that what he said?

    What has happened here? How can America bear the hypocrisy of a man who says, “we do not torture,” then secretly issues an edict redefining what torture is? Is America really so cowardly that we have to cheat our own rules to beat a ragtag bunch of religious nuts?

  • “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough. ”
    FDR

    This coming from a man that helped defeat REAL ENEMIES with REAL ARMIES

  • It’s as if these people think of themselves in some action movie fantasy where they are the heroes whose actions are always justified and successful. The rest of us would like to see them waterboarded except it would probably kill them and it isn’t the same if you “know” it’s just an exercise and they will stop.
    Bond brings shame to Missouri and the nation by his dismissive comments. He gets elected by name recognition but few in MO know what his record is (or how high his liquor bill is). He’s a prime example of an authoritarian personality operating totally without scruples. The more he appears in public the less Missourians think of him because they get to see him for what he is. So far he’s kept himself fairly hidden from the public’s view until elections roll around. Talk about a representative of the “good ole boy gang” take a good look at Kit Bond and his cronies in the senate. Always towing the party line and doing whatever they tell him to do. No matter what you do in MO, mention Jesus and you get the MO vote. This is where Jesus Camp the movie comes from. Brainwashed, and unable to think for themselves on the issues, keeps republicans in power here. But we are getting better. Young people here know when they are being lied to.

  • The Right has convinced themselves that the terrorists actually have the capacity to destroy our civilization. That’s nucking futs of course, but when you look at the world through that prism all their stupidity makes sense. Somehow we need to get them to put down the koolaid and take a look at the real dangers in the world, as opposed to the dangers in the virtual reality they think is the real world. But as long as Republicans, Fox Noise, megachurches and major corporations can profit from keeping them in the dark, that’s probably where most of them will stay.

  • if all of these clowns think that waterboarding isn’t torture, i would suggest that they be subjected to it pronto, and see what they think then…..

  • Nobody has ever been able to endure waterboarding, in the sense that every individual subjected to it has begged to confess whatever the interrogators wanted to hear. This includes people who have undergone the process under extremely tight controls, voluntarily and only to be able to discuss it with authority. There’s no doubt it will make people talk, just as breaking all their ribs and the large bones of the arms and legs with an iron rod will make people talk. The problem is, there’s no way to know if they’re telling the truth or just trying to make you stop, because making you stop is the sole motivation in both cases.

    The casual dismissal of the process by right-wingers is symptomatic of their natures, the same way they casually dismiss things like poverty and starvation. A strong sense of entitlement allows them to characterize their own essential heartlessness as toughness, determination, moral fiber.

    If you want that to be the voice of America, by all means elect another neoconservative nutjob or malleable dimwit. It’s difficult to see America coming out of the end of the Bush presidency, though, so I’d venture to say it couldn’t stand a followup.

  • if Iranians did this to a captured American, they’d be livid. But apparently they’re fine with it here.

    Has anyone asked this question of the torture apologists? And if not, why the hell not?

  • dajafi–I know that a higher up at State was asked this exact question (although I do not think it referred to Iranians) and that person refused to state that such conduct would be illegal. And just last week a currently active general echoed this sentiment.

  • These are the same people who revere life so much that in 2008, citizens of four states will be voting to accord fertilized eggs “personhood” status, with the same rights that normally do not attach until an individual is born. A fertilized egg will have more rights than someone the government snatches off the street, never to be seen again. How perfect.

    These are the same people who would like to cut Social Security benefits, deny care to veterans, refuse to give the working poor the ability to obtain health insurance. The same people who don’t care that your child’s toys are contaminated with lead, that your food is contaminated with bacteria, that your drugs might kill you before they cure you. The same people who have no problem with your breathing dirty air, drinking contaminated water.

    Fertilized eggs, fetuses and their bank accounts may be all that really matter to these people; that and wrapping up their rationale for bigotry, oppression and the common folk in Bible quotes, and finishing it off with a bright red Christian bow.

  • bubba/dajafi – it was the brigadier general in charge of legal affairs at Gitmo who was asked that question, and who answered that he was not “equipped” to answer it.

    Maybe that’s code for “left his brain at home.”

  • Agreed. Even after everything America has suffered since the stolen election of 2000, the casual acceptance of torture in major media has to be the gravest single degradation of our poor “public realm.”

    Since the tape-destruction story broke, I have had this sick image stuck in my mind: Wait! the tapes were not totally destroyed! Bush and Cheney had secret copies made so they could play them at home for entertainment.

    But who knows? That could be the next “revelation” that comes down the pike. Anything is possible with these people.

  • Let me start by apologizing on behalf of the Show-Me state. Bond has been showing the world his stupidity for a while now, and hopefully voters will show his ignorant ass the door come next election.

    Let’s face it, folks: These people aren’t confused about how to fight terrorists or scared that another attack will happen again.

    These people are fundamentally evil. It really is as simple as that.

    People like Bond see no issues with anyone being beaten to death or tortured with incredibly painful procedures, just so long as it’s us doing the beating and carrying out the procedures on brown people from another country.

    It just stuns me that they’re okay with our country turning into the very thing we’re trying to destroy.

  • …and to be certain in all future judicial proceedings that only the truth be spoken, oaths will no longer be administered.
    Instead, for felony trials, all testimony shall henceforth be taken during waterboarding;
    In misdemeanor trials, electric shock to genitals, nipples, earlobes and lips will be employed in the pursuit of perfect justice;
    For infractions and minor traffic violations, whipping, punching, routine tasing and many other lightweight methods of obtaining justice may be used.
    To guarantee truth during civil proceedings, sleep deprivation and exposure to loud rap is permitted.

  • Pingback: The Heretik : The Harsh Truth
  • Pingback: The Heretik : The Harsh Truth

  • We have learned that the trickle down hypothesis is baloney when it comes to finances….but when it comes to spreading our basest human qualities it seems to work just fine.

    And I don’t agree that they are deranged, well, not in the usual sense, but they sure are showing that they would be very capable of marching us to the gas chambers. It has been shown in studies (were they at Stanford ?) that it doesn’t take much to change “normal” humans into torturers. Our so moral, kind and true decider is inuring us all to depravity.

    Something is seriously askew when we imprison a torturer of pit bulls, but allow a human torturer to be our president. Sick sick sick America

  • Pingback: All Spin Zone » Opening The Files: 12/12/07
  • Pingback: Either Relevant or True » Good Luck Out There, Boys

  • I have an idea. Take every public official who publicly states that waterboarding is not really all that bad and make him or her watch, from behind one-way glass, one of his or her children be waterboarded by our our crack CIA operatives. He or she must watch the whole process done to one of their children.
    THEN let’s see what they have to say about it.

  • Wary,

    I’ll see you and raise you one.

    Let’s have every public official and corporate pundit who speaks in favor of waterboarding (or makes light of it) experience it first hand and THEN watch their child (or whoever they love) undergo it.

    Because the pattern of tyranny is to inure the public to the torture of THEM, and then to start narrowing the definition of THEM until THEY are US.

  • Pingback: An old, sad story of torture « Skulls in the Stars

    • Comments are closed.