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Lindsey Graham Browbeats Torture Witness
Here's some fun/horrifying video form the torture hearings this morning of Lindsey Graham browbeating a witness, David Luban of Georgetown Law, who disagrees with him. Graham repeatedly asks questions, then prevents Luban from finishing his answer when the witness starts to say something that Graham objects to.
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Josh
Zachary
THE CORE OF THEIR TORTURE ARGUMENT: That if we perform these acts on our soldiers during training, therefore, these acts are not torture. Is the same as saying that if you perform acts(sexual acts) with your wife, then it is okay if you perform those acts on a 13 year old. Since they are both sexual acts, therefore they are both okay. One is a loving act, the other is sexual molestation. Just because an act is okay under condition A, doesnt mean that same act is okay under condition B. This goes to the SERE vs Torture framing that cheney is using as defense.
So, if it is okay for you to perform an act(a killing act) on enemy soldiers, you cannot claim that this makes it okay for you to do the same to 12 of your neighbours. One is serving your country, the other is murder. You cannot claim that since they are both the same act of killing, therefore killing 12 of your neighbours is somehow justified. The same way these torture apologist are using SERE training to justify torture. Like i said, Just because an act is okay under condition A, doesnt mean that same act is okay under condition B.
If you are to follow the cheney logic of: this is done to our soldiers, therefore it is okay. One can use that strain of reasoning to justify practically anything. Think of it. I can always find a condition where something is bound to be legal or even moral, then turn around and say, since it is moral/legal in this situation( A), therefore it is moral/legal under new situation( B) that suits me. I can use that reasoning to justify anything i want to do. Including cheating, stealing, physical assault, killing, harassment, infanticide, genocide, even holocaust.
It is not a ALL YES or ALL NO situation, Otherwise, since boxing or martial arts is okay, therefore is it moral/legal for me to start kicking you around?!?! That is the SERE argument that cheney is advancing. It is ridiculous, offensive, dangerous, and even abominable. Since you can use it to justify any acts on this planet.
May 13, 2009 1:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Very good examples of the way torture and horrific acts are sometimes justified... in the minds of the perpetrators..
May 13, 2009 2:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
I like the boxing/martial arts argument. In the training environment, I have actually consented to agree in activities that have resulted in friends/acquaintances punching/kicking me in the head and groin, or choking me into submission. Good times. But clearly anything outside of an agreed consent scenario constitutes assault. Where I or anyone else to use these same techniques on someone else to find out information, it would be best defined as torture. And given a choice, I would definitely choose to participate in a poorly run unsafe martial arts class rather than be waterboarded.
May 13, 2009 6:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Democracy at it's finest. Graham is in deep, willful denial and determined to stay there.
May 13, 2009 1:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
You gotta give these neo-cons credit. They don't stand for anything of value, but they'll go out of their way to do whatever reprehensible acts are required to protect themselves and the billionaires they represent.
May 13, 2009 2:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
its not about any of this stuff.
its about the republicans being able to do anything they want at any time they what and not to be held accountable for it.
its not about law ,its not about terror ,its not life and death...etcetcetc..
its only about never being held responsible.
not only do these people not believe in the law they dont believe in the constitution.
thats why you can not argue with them.
this is black and white obvious.
they wanted to torture.
they found some clowns to right a fake legal opinion.
they tortured.
they refuse to admit to torture even though they clearly believe in it.
so their whole act is: forget law ,forget opinion, forget facts.
"we did so it has to be ok."
and that mind set is what makes this clearly jump out as a case that must be prosecuted.
May 13, 2009 2:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great, let's add Graham to the list of Yoo, Addington, Bybee, Hanes and Feith, and have him make this argument to Judge Garzón.
May 13, 2009 2:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was waiting for Graham to say something along the lines of, "You smart professor types come here and tell us what's ethical. We know right from wrong. Everything would be just fine if it weren't for your Yankee meddling."
May 13, 2009 3:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fucking loathsome dipshit, mental midget, etc. Just waiting for him to get caught with a live boy. Although he seems narrow here, I've got a feeling Graham has a "wide stance." Hypocrite.
May 13, 2009 3:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Although he seems narrow here, I've got a feeling Graham has a "wide stance."
To quote the Simpsons, "You could see it from space, Marge".
May 13, 2009 4:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't understand Huckleberry.
2 years ago he (as a retired JAG lawyer), he had McCain's back as an anti-torture GOP senator. Why the change of heart?
May 13, 2009 4:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Graham, like his Republican brethren always are in these cases, is a complete disgrace to this nation. He would defend Hitler if he had an R after his name. What a reprehensible human being.
May 13, 2009 4:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Spiders weren't just placed in cells with the prisoners, they were sealed, with the prisoners, in coffin-like boxes. I agree with the witness (from what Graham allowed him to say) that even spiders within a cell could constitute torture if the prisoner believed his life was threatened. But surely the horror of discovering a moving insect within a dark enclosed coffin is torture. Graham should be ashamed!
May 13, 2009 4:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, or if the prisoner were bound hand and foot and could not move away from the spider or swat it, that, too, could possibly constitute torture. If you inflict mortal terror on someone, that's torture.
Lindsey Graham knows that perfectly well, he's just an a**hole.
May 13, 2009 6:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I can't stand this tool, this sorry excuse of a man. I'm compelled to comment every time his name is mentioned because, while he is the lesser evil of my two Senators (as hard to imagine as that may be), I just cringe and want to crawl under a heavy blanket. I want to pretend he's not my closeted, embarrassing, whiny, petulant, talk-out-of-both-sides-of-his-face Senator.
South Carolina has much to answer for.
May 13, 2009 4:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sorry for you, Serge. It was excruciating to watch/listen to him, but too horrible not to take it all in. To quote Joseph Welch from the Army/McCarthy hearings. "At long last, Sir, have you no sense of SHAME?"
May 14, 2009 12:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Cheney logic:
There were no 9/11 attacks on US soil since we began torturing people, therefore if we stop torturing people, we will bring on an attack.
Obama stopped torture and still no 9/11 attacks. That's the basis of Cheney's frustration, he needs an attack to prove his point.
May 13, 2009 4:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
And I suspect Cheney and the other 20-percenters are fervently hoping for just that: another attack on the U.S. so that they can claim to be right.
May 13, 2009 6:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
THE CORE OF THEIR TORTURE ARGUMENT: That if we perform these acts on our soldiers during training, therefore, these acts are not torture.
And because we teach sex education, forced sex isn't rape.
The logic of the right-wingnutosphere boggles the mind.
May 13, 2009 4:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Anyone else waiting for Hannity's trial run at easy, breezy waterboarding? Maybe Lindsay should join him.
If KO would set up a general fund for charity contributions to military families, I think alot of dough would fly.
And it would expose this nonsense for the abomination we all know it to be.
Win, win, all around.
May 13, 2009 6:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
What a dick. Badgering a voluntary witness who happens to be an expert on ethics and the law. Showing your true colors, Mr. prosecutor. Graham wouldn't let him get a word in edge wise.
May 13, 2009 7:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
The fundamental difference between SERES training and torture is the intent and the victim's understanding of what is happening.
In SERES the goal is to show that the victim can live and resist. The victim's understand that they will not really be harmed and that if a technique becomes too harmful they ill be stopped.
When these tecniques are used to extort information the opposite idea is given. That the person will be harmend of killed if they do not comply.
As pointed out, under either US law or teh Convention causing fear of death to obatin information is torture.
May 13, 2009 7:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Plus, in SERE training the trainees are given specific instruction on how to best withstand and resist waterboarding.
Al Qaeda detainees were given no such instruction.
May 13, 2009 11:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
KityKate-
Welch to McCarthy: "Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" The guy he was character assassinating was a young attorney, a member of the Lawyer's Guild. I would love to see Graham taken down in a similar manner.
May 14, 2009 1:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sen. Graham seems also to have forgotten the trial rule that an attorney must not ask a witness to comment on the truthfulness of another witness. This is so the fact-finder has the facts and reason without having to sit through a character assault. If their stories aren't the same, a judge or jury determines who is more credible based on what they have heard and seen.
Similarly, a prosecutor can try someone for murder, but cannot refer to the defendant as a "liar" during closing argument. Name-calling distracts from the evidence.
May 14, 2009 12:35 PM | Reply | Permalink