The fact is that the left loves to slant these articles, while ignoring that this is

a) legal
b) not really torture

You could do it so much that it becomes torture, but then again, what we do with them and what torture is is the difference between one drink of beer and drinking five bottles.

int thefactis(void)

Sounds like a swell time, Gary. You sign up first.

Well, he got the no-brain part right.

Hey, Gry Rpprt, if waterboarding is not really torture, maybe you could enlighten as to what actually is.

Wow. Serious Orwellian flash of insight:
After the elections are called off in ’08 (due to security concerns, thus putting in the Emergency Executive Prioritization Act, which Congress signs without reading and accidently disbands both Legislative and Judicial branch, and establishes a Wartime Counsal instead, consisting of ten Republicans and Lieberman) and all news is shut down except for Fox (this is, of course, after the Internets are given to the sole domain of the NSA. Security Reasons, Citizen!) Rove launches a prime time special called, “It’s not so bad!”
The program is hosted by your cheery, 30 year old handsome man, who takes you, the VIEWER!, on a in-depth tour of a Detainment Center in eastern Europe. The facility is staffed by beautful, twenty-something [S]models[/S] Warriors, and all the women wear the miniskirts and what have you (yes, please!); and we, the VIEWER!, follow them as their cheerfully go about their day.
Anyways, long stroy short, we start off with an administartion-friendly expose on how it’s really not that bad being tortured. As the series progresses, we are exposed to more and more intense scenes; people claiming to know nothing beg to be released in the backround, while our handsome man explains, “yeah, they all say that. But don’t worry, we get ’em in the end.”
Each episode ends with cut away shot of the dogs being released from the end of the hall.
By next season, the viewers have grown bored. They demand something NEW, something entertaining. But what’s this on my TV Guide cover?! A season premier twist, they say? And lo, It does not dissapoint, for this seaosn, there’s a domestic terrorist! We JUST found him! Be there, as we extract all the sordid information from this scum!
It’s a ratings success. People can’t get enough. Waterboarding turns into beatings, turns into abu-grahb style humiliations, turns into cripplings, bloodshed, and for the finally, a particularly stubborn detainee is takin into the courtyard and shot in the head.
Between season two and three, we declare a new war somewhere, (fuck, who cares where. Someplace Africa would score huge in the 18-25 southern demographic) We can hold Survivor-style immunity challenges between the two grouops of enemy combatants, except instad of getting an extra bowl of rice, you don’t get lemon juice poured into your razor cuts that evening.
Suddenly, a shocking twist so unexpected, no one could have seen in coming… a white american detainee. Our beautiful hostess (the handsome man got fired after season two, try to keep up here) explains sadly, “they look like us, now. And we need YOUR help to capture them all…” and gives out hotline information for Concerned Citizens to call for Suspected Homeland Insurgency Reporting.
And it’s 1984 by season four. Only 32 years late.

Sorry for the length. I had actually branched out into several highly amusing, but completely off-point, satires about the “lighter side” of being detained, and had a hard time keeping focused. I won’t go into details, but I will say, “Mentos!”

Don’t you watch my TV Show? Torturing is never pretty, but sometimes that’s what you need to do to stop the bomb from going off, which always seems to be planned for the top of the hour.

Can I just say this: in the time of the Eurpoean witch hunts, all of the people executed *READ BURNED ALIVE/HUNG/STRANGLED AT THE STAKE/DRAWN & QUARTERED/ETC.* had confessed to their crimes.

Guess what? None of them were REAL witches. BECAUSE THERE IS NO SUCH THING. People will say anything to make it stop when they’re being tortured. ANYTHING – which means whatever they tell you is a lie.

Perfect. This whole situation was started with lies perpetrated by liars and now we’ll be using lies to perpetrate an endless “war” on an ideology.

Nice. I gotcher waterboard right here Mr. Vice President. Hop on, let’s take her for a spin…

We’re gonna need some audience participation in this torture show, and we’re gonna need it sooner, not later.

Maybe folks can vote on which of several detainees to torture (just 99 cents a call); or perhaps on which confession is most believable/interesting.

You know, a thumbs up/thumbs down kinda thing.

Or maybe it should be a live studio audience, like from back in the days of “Let’s Make a Deal.”

Is Monty Hall available? Is he still alive? Can a new Monty Hall be cloned from the epithelials on an old hairbrush/toupee?

Brad, you ignore the obvious more pressing issue:

“Over thar! Fags gittin’ hitched! Fags gittin’ hitched! Fags gittin’ hitched!”

[…] Via Sadly, No!, amidst a description of waterboarding we get the best response to the idea that torture is necessary because the stakes are so high: […]

Remember that Star Trek episode where the Enterprise crew is being held hostage by a bunch of retarded children with absolute power?

Sigh. If only life were so simple.

Hey Gary, would you want to be water boarded? Would you like to be declared an enemy combatant and go through it? Would you be able to say that it wasn’t torture after the matter.

I’ll believe the vice president and you that it ain’t torture when you personally demonstrate how fun waterboarding for the terrorists really is. I’m sure you’ll tell me it’s just like a trip to the swimming hole. Until then, I don’t think you (or the torturer in chief) have any moral authority on the matter.

You could do it so much that it becomes torture, but then again, what we do with them and what torture is is the difference between one drink of beer and drinking five bottles.

Shorter Gary: Our abuse of people who have no legal rights only constitutes 1/5th of torture IMHO, which is perfectly OK.

I love the term “robust interrogation program”. It seems so innocuous.

“It’s not torture, people, it’s just robust interrogation.”

In fact, if I wasn’t so old and untalented, I’d form a band “Face Shootin’ Dick & The Robust Interrogators”

Hate to blogwhore, but, well, woohoo!

The man suspected of being the 20th 9/11 hijacker (he would have been on Flight 93; 19 really is an awkward number, isn’t it?) is in US custody, but will likely never face trial and will probably end up being transferred back to Saudi Arabia. Why? Because his interrogators used coercive and torturous techniques, meaning that none of his statements would be admissable in court.

How’s that work for you, Gary? Are you so completely entranced with the idea of torture that you’re willing to see terrorists go free?

Kaj Larsen of Current TV had himself waterboarded and had it videotaped.

The US has always considered waterboarding(a technique developed by the Inquisitors) torture and a crime-in 1901 a US soldier was sentenced to 10 years hard labor for waterboarding someone in the Philippines, another was court-martialed for doing it in Vietnam in 1968. We tried Japanese soldiers who water-boarded prisoners as war criminals. It’s illegal under international law and was illegal under US law, until the “no-brainer” administration. And the Garybot, still in alpha-testing, is proud to defend its use. I hope your programmer gets carpal tunnel.

I like that “if” Cheney inserted in his assertion. Yea, I’ll admit that part of me would love to draw and quarter a motherf#cker IF it would save American lives. Trouble is, that’s a big “if” and there’s a lot of evidence out there (“24” notwithstanding) against it.

Even if you’re not sure specifically about waterboarding, the fact remains that our government now condones torture (the bill wasn’t specificly limiting as far as I can tell). Congratulations to all who worked so hard to cede the moral high ground.

Name one real-life example of the “ticking time bomb ” scenario.

It’s ridiculous. Would never happen. Purely an action-movie concept.

Yet we have serious politicans writing legislation based on it.

I so want to paper his house this hallowe’en.

…and who taught us (the US) how to waterboard so effectively?

Israel

Now a f**king nutcase is deputy minister for “strategic threats” in Israel. Avigdor Lieberman and his followers vehemently oppose the peace process, support the militant settlement movement, and are proud partisans of ethnic cleansing.

…great going guys!

Name one real-life example of the “ticking time bomb � scenario.

Even if they could find a scenario in which they knew they had a guy who had intimate details about a terrorist plot and torturing them would magically get them the correct information, (rather than the guy in question just telling his (or her) tormentors what the interrogators wanted to hear or telling enough plausible lies to keep the clock ticking down) the administration has yet to truly justify why they have to make Torture (oh sorry, Gary 1/5th of torture) De Jure and not just De facto US policy.

Even if such a nightmarish scenario did happen and torture provide the necessary intelligence at the crucial time, and the government actually was able to swing into action swiftly so that the plot could be foiled before timer went to zero, it is completely unnecessary to give a broad legalization of torture. The argument is that torture has to be legalized so that officers of the US government aren’t thrown in jail for protecting the country. Only one problem: The US has a mechanism in place that gets used rather frequently to address this issue: The Presidential pardon. Which makes me wonder about the ticking time bomb justification, and wonder how wide spread torture would have to be to make the Presidential Pardon route massively inconvenient.

absolutely fantastic. this is evidence of “a grave breach of the geneva conventions”, is it not?

you’ll be able to count the number of countries both cheney and the president will be able to visit abroad following their terms in office on one hand.

I’m still admittedly dazed and confused by this. As a child, I learned of the atrocities of Vietnam (on both sides),. of the horror of the Holocaust, and of the existence of gulags and the fact that the USSR and communist China tortured people. And I was consistently told we’re above that, we don’t do that and that puts us in a place different from them. And I believed every word of it.
Fast forward, and my children are now in school, probably NOT learning we do the same shit every crackpot dictator does. It’s fucking surreal.
This entire argument is surreal. When did half the country become piss-their-pants morons? I know they’ve always been easily manipulated, but not to this extent.
I seriously want what the SNL skit parodied six years ago: Al Gore on TV every night checking our homework.
God we’re stupid. Yes Garybot, I’m looking at you.

I seriously want what the SNL skit parodied six years ago: Al Gore on TV every night checking our homework.

Peace and prosperity just isn’t manly. In a world like that, how could our limp-dicked sheep feel good about themselves?

we do the same shit every crackpot dictator does. It’s fucking surreal.

The big difference is even the crackpot dictators DENIED it. Stalin denied it. Idi Amin denied it. Deng denied it. Selassie denied it. Hell, even Sukarno denied it. Bush and Cheney? Proudly standing before the world and admitting it. How little it takes to destroy everything America stands for, 230 years of being the good guy, now to the rest of the world we’re no different than China or Russia – except they don’t launch invasions and occupy countries, so most people like them better.

As to the “ticking time bomb” scenario, it actually happens fairly regularly, and has never been a big issue. It happens in combat, not in an urban/home front “24” kind of situation. Your platoon is in the field. The point element grabs a guy with an AK and a map. You fucking well NEED to know if you’re about to walk into a brigade-strength unit and get cut to pieces. You find out. It’s quick and ugly and yeah, you take the intel you get with a pound of salt, but maybe you change your route of march or maybe you get arty to drop a few rounds on ’em or maybe the airdales, but in certain kinds of combat it’s not totally uncommon…

mikey

The fact is that the left loves to slant these articles, while ignoring that this is

a) legal

Well, if something’s LEGAL, it must be alright, huh? Back of the bus, Ms. Parks!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15443701/

Let the backpedalling begin.

Let me fix a few typos for Gary:
The fact is that the left Right loves to slant these articles, while ignoring that this abortion is
a) legal
b) not really torture

There. See how the Right applies the “legal” = “perfectly OK” argument across the board, consistently in all scenari–

Oh, wait.

Hemlock: What pieces of work, eh?

Shorter Tony Snow: Are you gonna trust me, or your lying ears?

What a disingenuous lying little fuck that creep is. The only “slip-up” was Cheney telling the truth for once in his miserable existence.

Allow me to further clarify Mr. Snow’s clarification:

See, what Cheney thought he was being asked about when the radio host asked him about “a dunk in the water” was being baptised. Because the Vice President is a very religious man, and the first thing he thinks of when he hears “a dunk in the water” is the baptismal pool. So really, he was saying he was all in favor of dunking people in water to be baptised if it would save lives. Sorry for the confusion, but if you were as godly as the Vice President you would have thought of that too.

Anyway, waterboarding may usually be considered torture, but it isn’t torture when we do it, because we don’t torture. The President has said so.

Here’s an alternative, shorter clarification:

HEY RUBES!!!!!!!

Asked to define a dunk in water, Snow said, “It’s a dunk in the water.”

Yeah. We’ve been interrogating people with carnival dunk tanks? “Answer the question, pal, or I’ll throw my mean underhand fastball” ?

Next thing you know, they’ll claim to be robustly utilizing The Comfy Chair.

MCH: I thought the best line of the article was this:

“You think Dick Cheney’s going to slip up on something like this? No, come on.”

Basically, “You think Dick Chaney is dumb enough to admit what he supports? Come on.”

Hmmm, speaking of “no brainers”…

Our Veep: No Heart, No Brain.

The animating spark must be Cthulhu.

The animating spark must be Cthulhu.

In His case, it would be more of an animating Call, emitted soundlessly from R’lyeh—the once-submerged city that transcends three-dimensional geometry—where he lies dead but dreaming…

Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn! Shub Niggurath, the Goat with a Thousand Young!

//dork

I know a guy that will pay any of his legislators $100 to be waterboarded for 2 minutes either in public or on videotape. They will have trained safety experts on hand to help if there’s a problem, and the legislator has the option of quitting at any time (without getting paid, of course).

Strangely enough, he hasn’t had any takers.

“Next thing you know, they’ll claim to be robustly utilizing The Comfy Chair.”

Noboby expects the Comfy chair!

Maybe Cheney is it autoerotic waterboarding? Furiously masturbating while two husky guys hold him down & poor water in his mouth. Gary runs the video camera…

A couple of points: 1) Al queda are not signatories to the Geneva convention. 2) they don’t follow it. (Duh!) 3) You’re not going to find out what you want to know from a captured perp by talking him to death, 4) we really do need to extract whatever information we can, to protect innocent parties.

That being said, I’d probably advocate as a practical matter that when a perp is captured, the authorities holding him just drug him to the gills to make him talkative. In Vino Veritas, and all that sort of thing.

“Furiously masturbating while two husky guys hold him down & poor water in his mouth. Gary runs the video camera…”

It’s hard to know if you’re supposed to laugh or gag…or both.

Cheney and Bush were never big on traveling out of the country anyway. Frickin incurious nationalistic twits.

Now, if we can get some extradition going….

1) Al queda are not signatories to the Geneva convention. 2) they don’t follow it. (Duh!) 3) You’re not going to find out what you want to know from a captured perp by talking him to death, 4) we really do need to extract whatever information we can, to protect innocent parties.

1) Who cares if they are signatories. This is not about THEM. This is about us – who we are, what kind of society we are, what values we hold. 2) This does not give us the right to honor the GC. It gives us an excuse if we want to avoid our obligations, but we’re SUPPOSED to be the good guys. And if our moral guidelines are “what would al Qaida do” then we have already lost. 3) Actually, law enforcement and intelligence professionals have developed interrogation methods that are substantially more effective than torture. One of the many reasons they don’t WANT to torture suspects. 4) And we can do so without torture. Torture is wrong, counterproductive and ineffective. Duh…

mikey

Shorter Gary: “Torture works for me! Now, if mom would just stop complaining about the cum stains on my underoos… “

Shorter Gary. Torture works for me. Now, if mom would just stop punishing me for teasing the cat with a lamp cord and a screwdriver…

mikey

But Gary wouldn’t hurt a fly . . .

Gary Prime argues for shades of gray…

Oops, sorry. Rod Serling is straightening the doiley on the couch, guess it’s time for ‘the talk.’

g