I guess I'd like to hear one of these torture-fans explain how waterboarding helps an interrogation that does not lapse into them defining it in a way that is just as legal as torture. "Well, he starts to talk because he thinks hes going to die", or, "once he knows that the only way to make it stop is to talk, he talks. What do you mean why does he want it to stop?"

Instead of torture fans, I'm going to start calling them torture whores. That would apply to every Senator and Congressman who voted against the bill to ban waterboarding, and of course Bush/Cheney/Addington/Yoo/Bradbury/Mukasey/McConnell/Hayden and every segment of the intelligence community that allows its agents to violate the Geneva conventions.

I want to change that recommendation, Let's send him to Syria and let them try it out on him. No guarantee that he is "ok" and see what he thinks afterwards, if there is an afterwards.

Steve King--trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo!

It's unclear to me why it isn't possible for any policeman to arrest anyone who advocates or practices such interrogations. Every other country except the usual suspects treats waterboarding as torture. Torture is a violation of the law. It's really quite simple. Why is it so difficult to understand? If any of our soldiers were waterboarded, does anyone think that we would not conclude that such interrogations were torture in a court of law, and prosecute the torturers to the full extent of the law, both criminal and civil?

And another thing, I find it absolutely mind-boggling that Jose Padilla got a 20 year sentence for being denied his constitutional rights and that no one seems to give a shit. What has happened to this country?

How did this man get a law licence? Or has anybody inquired if he indeed has one?
Spin may be a legal tool, but double,triple spin are just cover for the illegal decisions that he made over the years justifing the scheme of total judicial control.
This man should be peeking out from behind bars not spinning for points.

We should all call or email and thank him. He needs to know that we support Democrats who don't cower in fear before terrorists, foreign or domestic. His email page is apparently only intended for his district's constituents, but here's his chief of staff's.

perry.finney2@mail.house.gov

Calling Malcolm Nance! Since Re. King believes, "I don't think there's a consensus on this committee as to what waterboarding is," there's a really straightforward way for them to find out–go through it themselves.

Malcolm Nance is an expert in it. He's taught people interrogation techniques, and he's waterboarded everyone under his tutelage. He's been waterboarded as well–he knew it was necessary to be able to teach this form of torture. (And yes, he says it's torture.)

So it's time to have a nice up-close-and-personal demonstration, with all the members of Congress who are unclear about what waterboarding is, and everyone can gather 'round for the best view.

Volunteers, gentlemen and gentlewomen?

Does McCain's behavior today reflect "prolonged mental harm"? And if it doesn't, are we to conclude that what he experienced in Vietnam was not torture?

My daughter was recently charged with assault after throwing a COLD cup of coffee (and they stated COLD in the report!) at her "boyfriend" after he jumped out of her car, on the freeway, with her laptop, cellphone, etc, and started running in circles around her car.

He suffered NO damage, emotional or physical (besides what he obviously came in with).

There have been people, in this country, who have been found guilty of assault for purely VERBAL altercations.

If Bradbury and his cronies don't want to call it torture, well then fine. Let's start with charging them all with assault, inflicting emotional distress, and all of the other crimes that clearly being broken during their "enhanced" interrogations. Then we can let a jury decide how much time they should do for their crimes.

One thing is certain - a CRIME is being committed. Let's hear them try to argue that waterboarding, etc. does not rise to at least the level of assault.

P.S. - The whole "CIA only tortured 3 people" line is a red herring. We contracted torture out to CACI in Iraq, the reprehensible regimes that formed the true "coalition of the willing", and more than 100 detainees at GITMO are supposed to have been "enhanced" by someone, we just don't know which private company we contracted it out to. YET.

And then there's these sorts of stories, dribbling in from around the country - http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/03/nyregion/03detain.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

In November 2004, federal officials who oversee the detention of immigrants facing deportation said they would no longer send detainees to jails that used dogs to patrol inside. That decision by the Department of Homeland Security came a day after National Public Radio broadcast an investigative report saying that the dogs had been used over a three-year period to intimidate, attack and, in at least two cases, bite immigrant detainees in the Passaic County Jail.

NICE! (I don't know about you, but I think it would cause ME to have lasting psychological damage!)

The Reich Wing should not be allowed to so narrowly "define" the torture debate in this way. They are trying to shove an elephant through a needle on this one, and the only way they'll be successful is if the Dems decide to slap on a ton of lube to ease its passage.

As for the 3 CIA torture cases - if there were only 3, then why the need for this -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/11/AR2008021100572.html?sub=AR

FBI and military interrogators who began work with the suspects in late 2006 called themselves the "Clean Team" and set as their goal the collection of virtually the same information the CIA had obtained from five of the six through duress at secret prisons.

Whoops!

That means a MINIMUM of 5 detainees who were tortured BY THE CIA!!

A list should be compiled of all of the different "admissions" and "revelations" by the torturers, as well as reports by third parties detailing the different persons that are KNOWN to have suffered at their hands.

Much like the aftermath of WWII, there will come a day when the world will ask, "Where were all of the GOOD Americans?"

I hope that when that time comes, that the question will be irrelevant, as it will be known that Americans finally did the right thing and held a domestic version of the Nuremberg trials, a modern version of the Truman Comittee, and a handful of RICO charges for good measure.

The Bush Administration is nothing more than a criminal enterprise being run out of the White House.

It is time for all good Americans to DEMAND an end to the blight that is rotting our country from the inside, out.

So... I am wondering... if the CIA decided to threaten a suspect with a frontal lobotomy, then went ahead and did one under anesthesia, would that constitute torture, realizing that after the lobotomy, the person would no longer be mentally agitated, angry, fearful, etc.?

Everybody who has been through waterboarding and commented on it publicly has said that, if subjected to it again they would abandon any principle or loyalty they held dear to stop the torture. Some have said that the credible threat of waterboarding would be enough. Sounds like permanent mental harm to me.

The torture whores have sold their souls to the devil to get arguments that don't even hold up under their own twisted terms.

Updated link to the Seton Hall Univ. Law School's report:

http://law.shu.edu/news/guantanamo_reports.htm

It was moved from their home page inside to the web page which serves up all of their reports on Gitmo, of which there are several. This latest report is actually titled as follows:

"Captured on Tape: Interrogation and Videotaping of Detainees in Guantánamo (02/07/08)."

It's a 900 KB PDF download but only 40 pp. long, a valuable addition to the history of these torture whores. Don't ruin a sunny weekend afternoon reading it, though.

The NYTimes has a related AP story today, Feb. 16, in which an active duty interrogator denounced waterboarding and other torture as useless and explained in great detail how entirely non-coercive techniques had been directly responsible for obtaining battlefield intelligence that had been immediately useful in wiping out a Taliban reinforcement in Afghanistan.

These torture whores are preventing us from using the effective, non-coercive, techniques to produce the combat intelligence that our military needs.

...that ACLU autopsy page, that leads to many, many other pages. What a dreadfully oppressive presence on my screen.
And the mazes it leads into, and the stench. Metastasizing.
Thank heaven for all the lifting and tugging at corners of curtains. With so much admirably penetrating intelligence and moral will at work for illumination and justice, It’s still possible to hope democracy may find its footing.
Then again, there’s the awful irony, looking at that defense spending, that the US may be executing the same move it was so pleased to have tricked the USSR into; spending more than it can afford on militarization, leading to its collapse.

The pdf is here: http://law.shu.edu/news/guantanamo_report_final_2_08_06.pdf