Shorter MichelleMalkin.com

Best comment on the Hitchens waterboarding stunt

  • Here in the People’s Republic of Malkinstan, we define “torture” as “bad stuff that shifty darkies do to white people.” White people doing the exact same stuff to shifty darkies is merely “aggressive interrogation” — and more to the point, torture is only torture when it causes permanent organ failure, so nyah, nyah, nyah.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™


 

Comments: 161

 
 
 

Fuck, that woman is evil. It isn’t a word that I throw around lightly but there is just no other way to describe her.

 
 

Key quote:

I can see agreeing to waterboarding for an article like the one Hitchens was writing.

– Michelle Malkin.

EXCELLENT. I’ll get the popcorn.

 
 

Wow, I have a bit more respect for Hitchens now. Yeah, Michelle Malign and co. are pretty disgusting. It would be more newsworthy if they didn’t do or say something vile.

“Ken Peggs said,

Key quote:

I can see agreeing to waterboarding for an article like the one Hitchens was writing.

– Michelle Malkin.

EXCELLENT. I’ll get the popcorn.”

Yeah, the Malkin thing thinks waterboarding isn’t so bad let her put her money where her mouth is. After all Hitch did it. Are her convictions so much weaker than his?

 
 

Brain is an organ.
Reading Malkin ruins brain.
Malkin does torture.

 
Nim, ham hock of liberty
 

Yeah, the Malkin thing thinks waterboarding isn’t so bad let her put her money where her mouth is. After all Hitch did it. Are her convictions so much weaker than his?

Even if she did go through with it, and realized it was torture, she’d lie about it afterwards. Service to the agenda requires nothing less….

 
Just Alison, without Qetesh
 

This torture issue is one that should not even need discussing, at least in a civilised society. A true civilisation would accept that torture is ethically unjustifiable, without even having to mention that it’s counter-effective in so many ways. We’re not civilised, we’re just chimpanzees with cell phones.

Must say I respect Hitch for this, though: there’s damn few war supporters that would be willing to even give it a try, and there’s bugger-all that would be willing to admit that it changed their minds.

 
Dragon-King Wangchuck
 

Well, first it’s MichelleMalkin.com and although the post is from one of her approved of mouthpieces, see-dubya, it’s not actually Michelle herself that’s saying this.

Second, I believe that the Best comment on the Hitchens waterboarding stunt belongs to FlownOver over at former Wankette’s.

Hitchens has at last done something useful – he’s given us the basis for national consensus on torture, to wit: it’s OK if it’s done to Christopher Hitchens

 
Terrorist Fist Jab
 

I say torture and kill all of them, thats what they do to us. You liberals wussies made us weak since forcing us to lose Vietnam by being all sensitive. America is not sensitive. We are #1. We were attacked and we are fighting back. Liberals disgust me with their propoganda, lies and bias and made up history and weakness. I hate you.

 
 

One of my best friends here in Brazil is dating a girl that looks -exactly- like Malkin. since she in entirely unknown here, he wonders why I sometimes look at her with moderate outrage.

It is, obviously, because I happened upon her site before going out to meet them.

Also, the comments.

I worry I might be playing the alarmist or not giving US society proper due for its resilience, but reading people spout those views in such numbers, allied to the fame of pundits like rush Limbaugh, Michal Savage and Sean Hannity makes me all but sure that if Obama wins the militia movement of the 90s will seem like the Get-Along Gang compared to the new wave.

 
 

gbear said,

July 3, 2008 at 12:48

Brain is an organ.
Reading Malkin ruins brain.
Malkin does torture.

Brain is an organ.
Malkin brain = EPIC FAIL.
Malkin been tortured.

 
Dragon-King Wangchuck
 

Hitch isn’t the first to waterboard himself. There was this from December.

 
 

I can see agreeing to waterboarding for an article like the one Hitchens was writing.

FAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAP
FAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAP
FAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAP

 
 

Given the new revelations that our torture techniques come from 1950s Communist China, that image is looking scarily prescient.

 
Dragon-King Wangchuck
 

One more person who self-waterboarded.

So that’s three people who have tried it, one who didn’t believe it was torture beforehand (Hitch), two who weren’t sure. Afterwards, they all agree – waterboarding is torture.

 
 

Well, some government dude, put out to pasture by bushco, also got in on this self-waterboarding craze and was tortured and then fired. He was clear that is was torture as defined by Geneva Conventions. We should make a faux-winger website where people can sign up to be waterboarded to prove that it’s not torture, for the fatherland. Then we can….torture them. hee hee hee!

 
 

Here is some reading material for you, liberals, on what is really happening in the world of interrogating terrorists.

After 9/11, Bush took the gloves off and went after terrorists with every weapon at his disposal: the military, law enforcement, intelligence agencies, financial and economic means, diplomatic means, etc. The result, which every American should be reminded of, is no terrorist attacks on American soil in the last seven years. Obama wants “change” – what exactly does he want to change about this?

 
 

And here’s the kicker – the technique that was done to Hitch and the others who voluntarily submitted WASN’T torture.

Torture, by necessity, is INVOLUNTARY. If you have a safe word, it isn’t torture – it’s just kinky experimentation.

That’s what dipshits like MM don’t understand. It’s the difference between sex and rape. And somehow underplaying the horrors of torture because someone like Hitchens voluntarily submitted to it is akin to treating rape victims with a “Pish-tosh! People undergo that same procedure every day with no ill effect!”

 
Dragon-King Wangchuck
 

I wish I were a little more like BenDo so I could steal this instead of telling you that it’s from Ralpho at the straight dope forum where Scylla waterboarded himself:

A couple weeks ago this guy down the street gave me a really strange kind of dangerous-type look, so last night Waldo and I tied him up and took him down to the basement. After we waterboarded him for a while, he was shaking with guilt. Finally he started screaming out that he was planning to firebomb my house. I poured a little more water down his throat, and he totally flipped and blurted out that he was also working with this other guy to poison my food. So we’re picking up that sick bastard tonight, and I’m pretty sure I can make him talk too. This is working out even better than I expected. We have already prevented two attacks.

 
 

It’s the difference between sex and rape.

Roy Edroso often says that wingers don’t seem to understand the concept of consent.

 
 

As soon as I saw that video, I knew the right wing line of attack was going to be “Hitchens is a pussy.”

 
 

The title of the first trackback link is “If Osama Bin Laden was a journalist, he would write this.”

How do you parody people so bent on parodying themselves?

 
Flappy McScrotum
 

Even if she did go through with it, and realized it was torture, she’d lie about it afterwards. Service to the agenda requires nothing less….

You video tape her doing it and make the safe word “I love Bin Laden”. If she lies about it afterwards then you can produce the tape that shows her declaring her love Osama.

 
 

Just read the comments section of that Malkin post. What a collection of frightened, hateful folks. Its not surprising that the Bush/Cheney/Rove demagoguery has been so effective.

 
 

“if Obama wins the militia movement of the 90s will seem like the Get-Along Gang compared to the new wave.”

Good. Bring it the fuck on. As Clemenza said in The Godfather “That’s all right. These things gotta happen every five years or so, ten years. Helps to get rid of the bad blood.”

 
 

He agreed to it because he didn’t believe that it was torture. I knew she was that evil, but is she really that dumb?
By the same logic she could say that nobody died on 9/11. See, if there had actually been a devastating terrorist attack nobody would have been willing to go to the office.

 
Dragon-King Wangchuck
 

Am I a bad person because I can’t resist the need to tell Truthy how full of shit he is?

The result, which every American should be reminded of, is no terrorist attacks on American soil in the last seven years. Obama wants “change” – what exactly does he want to change about this?

First, the nitpick. Seven years ago was July 2001 – so I’m sure you meant six and a half or six and two thirds. I will say that I’m glad you didn’t use 9-11! 9-11!! 9-11!!! so that we didn’t have to mail you anthrax again. And now…

How the fuck is this a standard? When is Truth going to come out praising Jimmy Carter for no attacks on American soil during his presidency? Hey you know what? The sun going nova would be horribly bad too, but it hasn’t during Bush’s watch, so he must be doing awesome shit to keep us all from being consumed by the sun. Fucking retard.

Oh wait, I understand now. The whole – no terrorist attack on US soil thing is a standard because the fucking idiots running things couldn’t be bothered to worry about it before. 9-11 (and anthrax letters) fucking happened on W’s watch. Nevermind the “bin Ladin determined to attack US” memo or the waving off people by telling them they’ve covered their asses – it was Boy King George who was at the switch when those towers came down. So yeah, let’s remind everybody about terrorist attacks, because this is the real message – fucking Republicans don’t fucking care about people fucking trying to attack America.

 
 

Malkin should be waterboarded until she agrees to sign a paper saying it’s torture. Then at least she’d have to admit that it makes people lie.

 
 

I don’t know what will become of me once I leave this mortal coil. I don’t know if what I’m doing is enough to ensure a positve outcome on the other side.

Noting that, though, I’ve found it a solid idea to not flaunt my disregard for the human condition while on this planet. I’ve certainly done my share of bad things; thankfully for my soul’s case, advocating torture ain’t one of them.

May you live in interesting times, Ms. Malkin.

 
 

Dragon-King:

The Sun not going nova thing is good. I’m gonna use that if U don’t mind

 
 

People’s Republic of Malkinstan
Formerly known as Outer Dumbfuckistan.

 
 

yeah, the comments section is the worse part of that post. And it is exactly as roy observed, and as the commenter upthread pointed out, they literally don’t get the difference between consent and rape, so they can’t see that being tortured involuntarily would be worse than being tortured to prove a point, something that hitchens himself acknowledges as a drawback to his experience. But its not an absolute bar to the experience having some significance–as michelle herself implicitly acknowledges by saying that there are some things a hypothetical human like herself would not, in fact, volunteer to have done to themselves and those things, being torture, would be disallowed. So she says she isn’t willing to have electric shock applied to her-though of course it would be applied in the event she finally has a psychotic break and stops blogging and goes out in to the street and says what she says in public.

oh, what’s the point? these people are truly disgusting. They don’t grasp the difference between arguing that certain things have to be done to get information, certain things have been done, and certain things are done to punish someone. Her point about relishing the pain inflicted on others is just disgusting. Her inability to grasp that the rest of the country doesn’t choose to revel in sadism for its own sake is even worse.

aimai

 
 

Am I a bad person because I can’t resist the need to tell Truthy how full of shit he is?

D-KW: No.

 
 

According to the logic of these folks, even though John McCain has a permanent limp and can’t raise his arms over his head, well, you know, arms and legs aren’t organs, so…

 
 

-fucking Republicans don’t fucking care about people fucking trying to attack America.

Au contraire, Republicans like to use those moments to pillage the treasury.

 
 

Can we apply fReichtard standards, then, to McInsane’s wartime torture experience? Either he’s a traitor/pussy for breaking and spilling, or the torture made him lie, or perhaps what was done to him wasn’t really torture either? Or are these outcomes applicable only in certain wars and for individuals of certain skin hues? The latest revisions to the Wingnut Handbook lack relevant footnotes.

 
Dragon-King Wangchuck
 

atheist – have fun, but only until AP sends me a contract, then you’ll have to deal with their lawyers.

The Malkin update is a compare and contrast with super manly Steve Harrigan of super-manly Fox News, so now we have four people who have been waterboarded by consent. Here’s the last thing Steve Harrigan says about it

So, as far as torture goes, at least in this controlled experiment, to me, this seemed like a pretty efficient mechanism to get someone to talk and then still have them alive and healthy within minutes.

So yeah – still torture.

 
 

Shorter shorter Malkin: (10 minutes of vomiting with pure rage)

 
Snarki, child of Loki
 

reading people spout those views in such numbers, allied to the fame of pundits like rush Limbaugh, Michal Savage and Sean Hannity makes me all but sure that if Obama wins the militia movement of the 90s will seem like the Get-Along Gang compared to the new wave.

Well, then, I guess some waterboarding is necessary to prevent another Oklahoma City attack. I hope Rush is okay with being first in line with the “frat hazing hi-jinks”.

It does make me wonder, if BushCo tries to justify waterboarding “known terrorists” to get information, why hasn’t Terry Nichols been waterboarded?

Oh, right. Some terrorists, you don’t want talking. They might just point fingers in the wrong direction. Better to just execute ’em quick. “Dead men tell no tales” and all that.

 
 

Permanent organ failure, huh?

Geez, I never knew Jesus Christ was such a pussy. I mean, cat o’ nine tails, crown of thorns, bearing the cross–nothing there to cause organ failure, so I guess he wasn’t tortured. He didn’t have anything to complain about until they stuck him with the spear, I guess. And even then he would have been fine if it was just a flesh wound.

 
 

“After 9/11, Bush took the gloves off and went after terrorists with every weapon at his disposal: the military, law enforcement, intelligence agencies, financial and economic means, diplomatic means, etc. The result, which every American should be reminded of, is no terrorist attacks on American soil in the last seven years. Obama wants “change” – what exactly does he want to change about this?”

No terror strikes in Brazil or portugal for much longer than that, and we’re all but inviting the mooslamiacs in. Keep in mind, we have Carnival with topless women on tv at 9 am, gay pride parades and fest on pork twice a week, so they should hate our freedoms even more!

Honestly. I think I’ll try to intitute Sodomite Mohammed Cartoon Weekend to try and lure them out.

 
 

W’OW there are some freaks in her comments.
How does one get soooooooo stupid?

From the comments
—————————————-
On July 2nd, 2008 at 7:17 pm, MNUSMCDavid said:
Abu Grahib was not torture and water boarding is nothing. Until you show me a Marine sawing the head off a screaming then gurgling for air islamofascist, then I will not care what we do to them. It’s war, damn it. Why don’t people understand that? The Shermans, Sheridans, Pattons, Von Clausewitzs and Sun Tsus are rolling their collective eyes in warfare heaven.
—————————————-
Most are like that…

 
 

Somehow when I look at the comments on Malkin’s site, I am never prepared for how awful the people really are. I can think of only two people that I can imagine saying things like this, and I don’t consider either of them friends any longer.

How do these people function in normal American society? After reading comments over their I always end up looking around at people as I walk in public, wondering if any of these normal people I see are really scary Malkin-Limbaugh types.

I still remember seeing this very normal looking older women, standing in line at Borders with her adorable little girl granddaughter. The kind of kid that randomly goes up to a stranger, me in this case, and starts a conversation about the book in my hand. I was answering her question hen I looked up and saw that the grandmother was holding the latest Ann Coulter hate screed. She didn’t say anything to me, give me a nasty look or anything, but I decided to kind of wander back into the store for a bit.

I have dark skin (Indian) and just seeing this women holding the book as I spoke to her granddaughter, I kind of assumed she didn’t like me, and didn’t want me around her or her granddaughter. So I just wandered away, partly because I didn’t want to possibly bug her, and partly because I just didn’t want to be near someone who would buy a Coulter book. I don’t know what to think about that, but I do remember the incident every few months.

I know they are out there, but I never really meet them in conversation or any kind of intimate setting. I just started Bill Bishop’s “The Great Sort”, simply because I really want some kind of answer as to how we can have sizable – Limbaugh’s audience is huge, and somehow half of voters thought Bush deserved a 2nd term – group of people that think nothing like the rest of us. To be fair, I know there are some real wack jobs on “the left” as well, and I am confused as fuck by them, but seriously, a whole collection of people who can’t figure out that torture is a bad idea?

 
 

So, as far as torture goes, at least in this controlled experiment, to me, this seemed like a pretty efficient mechanism to get someone to talk and then still have them alive and healthy within minutes.

Does it matter to anyone whether these people are saying anything true or useful when they “talk?” It didn’t to the monsters who developed these types of techniques, because their goal was eliciting false confessions to legitimize their regimes. Maybe we should have different role models in America? Just thinking out loud here.

 
 

but seriously, a whole collection of people who can’t figure out that torture is a bad idea?

I still dream of someone inventing an infectious strain of empathy and releasing it at the Republican National Convention…

 
 

I came
I saw
I wet

 
 

EnderWiggin: I see, know, and work with people like this. Hell, I’m related to people like this. Here in the Southland, almost every one of them is known as a “fine Christian.” I wish I were snarking.

 
Malfunctioning Fist Jab FAPBot
 

America is not sensitive. We are #1. FAPFAPFAP America is not sensitive. We are #1. FAPFAPFAP America is not sensitive. We are #1. FAPFAPFAP America is not sensitive. We are #1. FAPFAPFAP America is not sensitive. We are #1. FAPFAPFAP America is not sensitive. We are #1. FAPFAPFAP America is not sensitive. We are #1. FAPFAPFAP America is not sensitive. We are #1. FAPFAPFAP

 
 

No no no!!! You’re all wrong. Malkin’s right about waterboarding. It’s NOT torture–not if you have gills, like her.

 
 

You know what would be a better, truer to life experiment? When the torture-sampler says “stop,” don’t. Not even after they start begging, panic-stricken, that it stop, bargaining, offering anything. Only when someone thinks they’re no longer in control of the situation would the full horror hit. I wish I could believe they’d have a hard time finding anyone willing to fill the torturer role, but Malkin and commenters prove otherwise.

 
 

Gus said,

July 3, 2008 at 15:00

“if Obama wins the militia movement of the 90s will seem like the Get-Along Gang compared to the new wave.”

Good. Bring it the fuck on. As Clemenza said in The Godfather “That’s all right. These things gotta happen every five years or so, ten years. Helps to get rid of the bad blood.”

Well that explains why Obama wants the expanded FISA powers…

 
 

Hitchens wouldn’t have considered it torture if they used vodka instead of water.

 
 

The Truth said,
July 3, 2008 at 14:35
Here is some reading material for you, liberals, on what is really happening in the world of interrogating terrorists.

Well, no. That was what was happening in the world of interrogating terrorists, in October 2003. You might notice that that is 4 1/2 years ago, and that many things have happened in the world since then. If you don’t have anything new or relevant to add, you may have to stop going back to the same ol’ well after a while.

And let’s look at that “reading material.” I remember when Bowden’s article came out in the Atlantic – it was pre-law school, so I had time to read the whole thing.
What does Bowden say about efficacy of torture? He talks to lots of people, including Israelis who have faced the threat of “ticking time bombs” a lot more frequently than the U.S.
“Assuming you get useful information from torture, then why not always use torture?” asks Jessica Montell, the executive director of B’Tselem, a human-rights advocacy group in Jerusalem. “Why stop at the bomb that’s already been planted and at people who know where the explosives are? Why not people who are building the explosives, or people who are donating money, or transferring the funds for the explosives? Why stop at the victim himself? Why not torture the victims’ families, their relatives, their neighbors? If the end justifies the means, then where would you draw the line?(Emphasis mine)

So according to you, as long as “no terrorist attacks on American soil in the last seven years” is the end, well shit, who cares about the means? I would answer that lots and lots and lots of people around the world care about “the means,” not just liberals, not just terrorists.
So take your flip attitude and go back to fucking your mother just so.

Dragon-King Wangchuck said,http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/9814.html#comments
Sadly, No! » Shorter MichelleMalkin.com
July 3, 2008 at 15:05

The result, which every American should be reminded of, is no terrorist attacks on American soil in the last seven years.

How the fuck is this a standard? When is Truth going to come out praising Jimmy Carter for no attacks on American soil during his presidency? Hey you know what? The sun going nova would be horribly bad too, but it hasn’t during Bush’s watch, so he must be doing awesome shit

Sign Outside the White House

Days Without a Terrorist Attack For Which We Ignored Warnings:
_ _ _ _ 2 4 8 7

Days Without a Super Nova:
_ _ _ 8 4 7 3 7

Days Without a Pretzel Choke:
_ _ _ _ 2 3 6 3

 
 

I just didn’t want to be near someone who would buy a Coulter book.

Enderwiggin, we had a friend who is very active with AIDS prevention work, through his church. He was house-sitting for a couple he knew from that church, and they had allowed him to entertain in their home while he did so, so he invited us to dinner there.

It was a fantastic multimillion dollar mansion north of Sunset Blvd. in West LA, amazing artwork and antique furniture, opulent furnishings – the bathroom fixtures along probably cost as much as my house.

While we were sitting around the kitchen with its custombuilt cabinets and European appliances and artisan-designed paint, I noticed a bookshelf that was crammed with the entire works of Ann Coulter, and the entire booklist of Regnery Publishing.

The I noticed, down in the guest room, in a magazine basket, a whole newsletter devoted to destroying the US Department of Education.

I don’t know what these folks did to gain all their wealth. but the sheer extravagance, sensualism, and self-indulgent nature of the house combined with the right-wing screeds was very weird. Nothing in the house gave a sense that they were living by any of Jesus’s teachings – there was a full bar, a library of dvds (no, I didn’t check titles for pr0n) a personal exercise room – but all the written material in the house was devoted to right wing activism. It was like viewing the canker within the rose, or smelling the rot underneath a scent of perfume.

Even more depressing, because my friend is so devoted to his AIDS work, and he’s gay – I really wondered what kind of relationship he had with these horrible people.

 
 

The people who were waterboarding Hitchens should have made their own agreement to continue waterboarding him for another 10-15 seconds after he gave the ‘safe’ signal. Just long enough to make him freak out that they weren’t going to stop doing it. It would have felt like an eternity (a lifetime) to Hitchens and would have given him a 1000% better lesson in the real meaning of torture.

 
 

Brain is an organ.
Malkin brain = EPIC FAIL.
Malkin been tortured.

There’s a brain on the table
There’s a heart in the chair
And they all live in Jesus
It’s a family affair

 
 

whoops, tigrismus beat me to it. Too much time without a refresh.

 
 

In Hitch’s article, he makes it clear that he didn’t make a controlled decision to have them stop. He says he remembers saying the safe word, but that his memory was deceiving himself – he acknowledges that he didn’t and the tape confirms that. He makes it very clear that they stopped because he let go the objects he was holding in his hands – as promised – but that his action was completely involuntary – “dead man’s handle”.

this is one of the notable things about the experiment – he didn’t stop the torture by “will” or conscious decision. It only stopped because his body shut down – and because the people who were carrying it out agreed to abide by the “rules”.

 
Dragon-King Wangchuck
 

The people who were waterboarding Hitchens should have made their own agreement to continue waterboarding him for another 10-15 seconds after he gave the ’safe’ signal. Just long enough to make him freak out that they weren’t going to stop doing it. It would have felt like an eternity (a lifetime) to Hitchens and would have given him a 1000% better lesson in the real meaning of torture.

He’s a callow self-absorbed bastard who gives atheists a bad name, but I don’t think this is justified. Also, I don’t think it would have any effect either. He was fucked up enough by the experience that he already has false memories about it. Example, he’s certain he used the safe word, but recognizes that, on review of the tape, he didn’t. No, when he gave up, he wasn’t aware of the fact that he was allowed to give up.

I think a better approach would be to lock him up with no contact with the outside world or any way of challenging his detention, for four or five years.

 
Dragon-King Wangchuck
 

Damn you g and your prompt topicality.

 
 

I don’t much like Hitch either, but I have to admire his honesty in admitting how this experience affected him.

 
 

So waterboarding random people in Gitmo — who could very well include Nadeem Khan whom we picked up because Naveen Khan had a feud with a neighbor who gave a soldier a tip (which was misheard) out of vengeance — is ok because if all Al Qaeda #2 Boogy-man of the Day ends up loosing is a few hours of sleep, that’s not nearly the punishment he deserves? WTF?

Anyway, if Al Qaeda #2 Boogy-man of the Day really deserves such punishment (which no doubt he does), why not have a trial full due process to determine this fact? Why not then imprison him or execute him according to the Law? I thought we were fighting lawlessness, not aiding and abetting it. Hey (pardon the Godwin’s law issues) — if trials were good enough for the Nazis at Nurnberg, why not have trials for Al Qaeda-ites?

It’s like our nation has been taken over by an army of Roper (from A Man for All Seasons) clones. Except at least Roper was acting on/thinking in good faith …

 
 

We could come up with a whole list of daring or terrifying acts which Malkin & her followers declare that they’re unimpressed that someone else did or went through, and how they could do the exact same thing, just, you know, they haven’t had time and all.

 
 

Fuck, that woman is evil. It isn’t a word that I throw around lightly but there is just no other way to describe her.

Michelle Malkin is not evil, she’s pathetic. She talks tough and gloats over the misery of others but then whines like a little girl when anything bad happens to her.

 
 

Me said,

July 3, 2008 at 16:13

Brain is an organ.
Malkin brain = EPIC FAIL.
Malkin been tortured.

There’s a brain on the table
There’s a heart in the chair
And they all live in Jesus
It’s a family affair

Put a straw under baby
Keep the splinters away. 😉

 
 

She talks tough and gloats over the misery of others but then whines like a little girl when anything bad happens to her.

= Chuckles Johnson as well.

 
Smiling Mortician
 

I still dream of someone inventing an infectious strain of empathy and releasing it at the Republican National Convention…

Know what’s really sad? If such a beautiful thing were possible, Malkin et al would regard it as infinitely worse than waterboarding.

 
 

Off-topic, but everyone should go over to the Post’s increasingly awful “On Faith” cesspool and gaze upon the mountain of festering stupid that great moral leader Chuck Colson hath wrought.

 
 

r4d20 said,

July 3, 2008 at 16:31

Michelle Malkin is not evil, she’s pathetic. She talks tough and gloats over the misery of others but then whines like a little girl when anything bad happens to her.

Yeah, the only redeeming quality Coulter has is she’s not a chickenshit like most other neocon pundits. She spews the most vile crap, then when someone catches her on it, she shrugs her shoulders and says, “So?”

I guess in that case, it makes Coulter evil and not pathetic.

 
 

I wish I could believe they’d have a hard time finding anyone willing to fill the torturer role, but Malkin and commenters prove otherwise. – tigrismus

Actually, that you can find pretty much anyone and they’d place themselves in the torturer role was shown a while back by Milgram.

 
 

Jake H: I wish I didn’t know that the Washington Post features a “faith” “column” by Charles Colson. Katy Graham, grave, the rolling.

USA post-Bush2=1984+tehOnion

 
 

Waterboarding, shwaterboarding.

Make ’em eat gefilte fish.

Now that’s torture.

 
 

The majority of people will go along with evil. We’re doing it right now. We don’t storm the streets or refuse to pay taxes or strike or picket until we achieve our goal. Of course I include myself; all I do is call people names on my blog. It’s not much.

We have always benefitted materially by our country’s actions. I feel pretty helpless about it all, which is why I don’t do much, but that’s an excuse. As Jefferson said, we have the obligation to stop our government–but we don’t. And most people have little or no empathy and are utterly submissive, so the US will go along with whatever its leaders want until they finally, finally push us too far. And then we’ll be so powerless that we’ll be forced to become insurgents. At that time the government will stop pretending and turn its full military apparatus openly on us.

Or everthing will be just fine and the military-industrial complex will give up a lot of power and money and Cheney will go away and oil will gush from Alaska and all will be well, tra la la.

 
Dragon-King Wangchuck
 

Waterboarding, shwaterboarding.

Actually, I’m beginning to see their point. Just last week, I was hammering out Bach’s Fugue in D Minor, when halfway through the piece, the organ just quit working on me and wouldn’t start again no matter what I did. Horrible it was – horrible I tell you.

 
 

I’m sure someone else has said it, but…

no terrorist attacks on American soil in the last seven years

Anthrax. Now shut the fuck up.

 
Waterboarded Glenn Reynolds Robot
 

Heh. Indeed. We’re winaaaaablahaghghghhhhhhhhhhhhh

 
 

Laurence Olivier with a dental drill = not toruture.

 
Shadowy Right Wing Forces with BushCO Ties
 

Anthrax. Now shut the fuck up.

That wasn’t a terrorist attack — we did it and we are not terrori … er, never mind, pretend you didn’t hear that. We admit it. There was one terrorist attack on US soil … one … that ain’t bad, is it?

 
 

Anthrax. Now shut the fuck up.

Not to mention various right-wing sponsored bombings.

Maybe we need to start waterboarding anti-choicers until they give up their bomber buddies. I’d love to see Cheney’s and Malkin’s reactions to that…

 
 

Laurence Olivier with a dental drill = not toruture. – stryx

Every time some frickin’ idiot mentions 24 we should respond with Marathon Man. We’re probably torturing Navid Khan instead of known terrorist Nadim Khan because of a mix-up. Meanwhile we’re all asking Navid “is it safe?” yet he has no frickin’ clue as to how to answer to make it stop. Gevalt! What idiots!

 
 

‘snarkle–

That’s why G-d invented horseradish.

 
 

I still dream of someone inventing an infectious strain of empathy and releasing it at the Republican National Convention…

God, that’s brilliant!

What I try to remember is that we do live in the worlds we create for ourselves.

They live in a world where random scary people are trying to get them killed, where everything is dog eat dog, where you have to cling to your family, no matter how you are treated, because no one else can be trusted to give a damn about you.

Where love is rare, trust rarer still, and thinking is discouraged. So they concentrate on not being aware of things because if they looked directly at their life they would run screaming into the night.

 
 

I still dream of someone inventing an infectious strain of empathy and releasing it at the Republican National Convention…

Until genetic engineers design an empathy virus/bacteria, there’s always cuddle parties. Seeing one of those break out on the RNC floor would be hilarious.

 
 

Until genetic engineers design an empathy virus/bacteria, there’s always cuddle parties. Seeing one of those break out on the RNC floor would be hilarious. – Blue Buddha

All it takes is cuddling to set them right? I bravely volunteer to cuddle with Marie Jon.

 
 

Mike Madsen with a straight razor = not torture.

 
Dragon-King Wangchuck
 

Off-topic, but everyone should go over to the Post’s increasingly awful “On Faith” cesspool and gaze upon the mountain of festering stupid that great moral leader Chuck Colson hath wrought.

Wow, that guy’s an ignoramus.

I have, in fact, never met an atheist. When a person professes to be one, I ask him to offer me the proof that God does not exist. I’ve never had anyone successfully respond to that question.

Sure Chuckles, I have, in fact never met a non-Pastafarian. When a person professes to be a Christian, I ask him to offer me proof that the Flying Spaghetti Monster does not exist. I’ve never had anyone successfully respond to that question.

I explain they cannot be agnostics unless they are sure that God can’t be known.

Umm, Chuckles – I don’t think agnostic means what you think it means.

There are simply people whose pride overwhelms their innate knowledge.

Whoo-hoo Chortlin’ Chuckles. You sure got that one right.

 
 

I then ask them if they have examined every religion exhaustively. Their answer is usually no.

Wonder if Chuckles has examined every religion exhaustively before deciding to pick Christianity. If he hasn’t, well, I guess he isn’t really a believer.

 
 

We could always put LSD in the water. I still think it could work.

 
 

I have, in fact, never met a “true” Christian. When a person professes to be one, I ask him to offer me the proof that God does exist. I’ve never had anyone successfully respond to that question.

 
 

Magic mushrooms. It’s psychadelic, and organic!

Or they could go into therapy, give up their fears, and join the human race.

No, the mushrooms have a much better chance.

 
 

DAS said,

July 3, 2008 at 17:19

All it takes is cuddling to set them right? I bravely volunteer to cuddle with Marie Jon.

Yes… but who would be brave enough to cuddle with K-Lo? :-X

 
 

Why should our side do the heavy lifting? Jonah’s a big guy.

 
Dragon-King Wangchuck
 

Hey Chuckleson, can you provide proof that atheists don’t exist? I mean, sure you claim never to have met one, but can you prove that there aren’t any?

 
 

Those crazy kids might just make it work. He likes people who disdain logic and reason. She likes guys with multiple wives.

 
 

Yeah, I’m starting to warm up to the LSD/psilocybin/peyote idea… less of a hassle.

 
 

Every time some frickin’ idiot mentions 24 we should respond with Marathon Man. We’re probably torturing Navid Khan instead of known terrorist Nadim Khan because of a mix-up. Meanwhile we’re all asking Navid “is it safe?” yet he has no frickin’ clue as to how to answer to make it stop.

Not to mention the fact that the torture turns a relatively normal, peaceable chap into a cold-eyed automaton bent on bloody revenge against the person who tortured him.

Of course, the ‘nuts would probably reply with, “Ah, Marathon Man‘s just a movie. 24 is a TV show! They’re completely different!”, or something similarly rational and well-reasoned.

 
 

EnderWiggin said

Somehow when I look at the comments on Malkin’s site, I am never prepared for how awful the people really are.

It is remarkable how many citizens reveal themselves to be monsters in blogs. I presume the anonymity allows the hatred to flow with ease.

I can recall a time when it was an obvious, uncontested notion that the U.S. would never condone torture because of its immorality, not to mention its futility as a policy. One of the best articles on torture I have read is this piece by Vladimir Bucovski.

 
 

kiki said,

July 3, 2008 at 17:37

Of course, the ‘nuts would probably reply with, “Ah, Marathon Man’s just a movie. 24 is a TV show! They’re completely different!”, or something similarly rational and well-reasoned.

Other excuses they’ll come up with:

— Marathon Man was made in the terrible 70’s by a bunch of DFHs.

— 24 is serious. We know this because we’re serious critics… unlike those silly liberals.

— They didn’t have to deal with Islamofascistfeminazihomosexualbabykilling terrorists in the 70’s.

 
 

eidos_rho said,

July 3, 2008 at 17:41

Sorry here’s the link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/17/AR2005121700018.html

One nasty morning Comrade Stalin discovered that his favorite pipe was missing. Naturally, he called in his henchman, Lavrenti Beria, and instructed him to find the pipe. A few hours later, Stalin found it in his desk and called off the search. “But, Comrade Stalin,” stammered Beria, “five suspects have already confessed to stealing it.”

This joke, whispered among those who trusted each other when I was a kid in Moscow in the 1950s, is perhaps the best contribution I can make…

And that’s all that’s really needed to be said from that article.

 
 

Why limit ourselves to 24 as a resource for foreign and security policy? We need the Cone of Silence! We need Bionics! We need the friggin’ Batcomputer!

 
 

I presume the anonymity allows the hatred to flow with ease.

John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory holds that “Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad”, and we’re certainly not talking about normal people here.

 
 

I admire the wingnuts’ ability to state without shame their pride in the record that there have been no terrorist attacks in the U.S. since the last time Bush Jr. allowed the most spectacular terrorist attack in all of history.

 
 

Michelle Malkin is not evil, she’s pathetic.
the two often go together….

 
 

where you have to cling to your family, no matter how you are treated, because no one else can be trusted to give a damn about you.

Note to parents: your kids think you suck.

 
 

John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory

We are aware of all internet traditions…..

 
Michelle Hussein Malkin's Publicity Stunt Gone Horribly Wrong
 

Love thinking about MM trying something like this, having a Big Revelation Not Unlike Hitchens’, and watching her commenters turn on her.

 
 

When a person professes to be one, I ask him to offer me the proof that God does not exist. I’ve never had anyone successfully respond to that question.

Why would the burden of proof be on the person trying to prove a negative?

Also: yeah, I remember Milgram; while what it says about us as a species is bad enough, finding people who so obviously relish the thought of harming others still leaves me gapingly flummoxed. You think I’d have learned by now.

 
 

The only thing funny about this site nowadays is how quickly teh funny goes away when I hit my rhetorical targets.

Yes, we got hit with 9/11 and the anthrax attacks. Bush unleashed the fury of American power on Islamic terrorists, and to date the Islamic terrorists haven’t been able to hit us again. If you read the article I linked to above, you will see that interrogation of captured terrorists is credited with stopping at least one major attack.

But that’s the real world. In teh “funny” world of S,N!, you can do a causation!=correlation joke with astronomical events and that proves some sort of wit. OK, children. Good luck with summer school.

 
 

Yes, we got hit with 9/11 and the anthrax attacks. Bush unleashed the fury of American power on Islamic terrorists, and to date the Islamic terrorists haven’t been able to hit us again.

So Americans serving in Iraq and Afghanistant aren’t “us?” Those thousands of dead Americans don’t count? Why do you hate our troops, Truth?

 
 

The law of economics state that we can motivate people to tell the truth by making them avoid pain. Besides, Hitchens is a pussy. And besides, they are trying to kill us, we are at war folks. Like Cheney said, they aren’t exactly sensitive. And neither are we, except the liberals who are weak. They will be purged as the natural order of things makes it hard for them to survive.

 
 

You mean our fury was unleashed and we still haven’t won yet? We have the biggest, most expensive military in the world and Bin Laden is still free, chuckling into his porridge about Bush’s incompetance?

Why is Bush so incompetant?

 
 

Purge—where have we heard that before?

Stalin? Pol Pot? Hitler?

Nice company you have there.

 
 

The Truth: You are not out there, nor do you exist objectively.

 
 

I have, in fact, never met an atheist. When a person professes to be one, I ask him to offer me the proof that God does not exist. I’ve never had anyone successfully respond to that question.

I recognize that it’s not “proof”, and that you can’t prove a negative, but I’m completely satisfied with the available data:

1. There have been literally millions of religions in the history of humankind, and virtually ALL of them have been discredited. It is therefore a statistical certainty that those accepted now will also be discredited or forgotton.

2. The currently popularly accepted religions all believe they are the absolute expression of the literal word of god, and that all others are false and blasphemous.

3. The certainty that even James Dobson, had he instead been born into another religious traditions, would adhere to that tradition with just as much fundamental certainty.

4. The fact that ALL religions have to have woven into them excuses for the complete lack of any physical manifestations of their supernatural characters and events.

These add up to a clear certainty that religions are myths created out of whole cloth by humans for a variety of historical reasons, and have no basis in empirical reality.

mikey

 
Dragon-King Wangchuck
 

Back for some more?

The only thing funny about this site nowadays is how quickly teh funny goes away when I hit my rhetorical targets.

It’s not our fault you have no sense of morality humor.

Yes, we got hit with 9/11 and the anthrax attacks. Bush unleashed the fury of American power on Islamic terrorists, and to date the Islamic terrorists haven’t been able to hit us again.

The families of some four thousand US servicemen might see things a little differently. But the important point is that it was Bush that was in charge on 9/11 and in the days afterwards whenpeople were opening up anthrax letters.

If you read the article I linked to above, you will see that interrogation of captured terrorists is credited with stopping at least one major attack.

What? Are you fucking crazy? There’s no way I’m reading a fucking entire novel in order to get what your saying. Fucking bullshit. I don’t think you even read that stupid link. It’s sixteen thousand words. If you want to present an argument, do it, but linking the entire encyclopedia Brittanica and saying so there is not a fucking argument.

By the way, the start of that piece is about KSM, our favorite waterboardee. If that’s the case, then the number of terrorist attacks avoided isn’t one, it’s at least nine thousand!!eleventy11!

But that’s the real world. In teh “funny” world of S,N!, you can do a causation!=correlation joke with astronomical events and that proves some sort of wit. OK, children. Good luck with summer school.

Ahh, so that’s how you do it. I thought that with all the spanking you’re getting here, it’d take an ignoramus of impossibly thick skin to keep coming back, but what you’re doing is just pretending that we’re saying what you want us to say.

 
Dragon-King Wangchuck
 

Okay, I might read a bit of that ultra long link. Apparently, there’s a section titled Acid Tests and Monkey Orgasms.

 
Conscientious parents, just trying to do their best for fuck's sake
 

Note to parents: your kids think you suck.

No they don’t.

Do they?

Ah shit, they really do, don’t they?

 
 

@The Truth-

Jesus, I hope you’re a troll. Rhetorical targets?

Yes, we got hit with 9/11 and the anthrax attacks. Bush unleashed the fury of American power on Islamic terrorists, and to date the Islamic terrorists haven’t been able to hit us again. If you read the article I linked to above, you will see that interrogation of captured terrorists is credited with stopping at least one major attack.

Um, sadly, no. Islamic terrorists have struck US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. As have normal people who are pissed off at being colonized. Major attacks against the United States, which is a fucking continental fortress with the world’s most powerful navy, do not happen when our military forces remain within our own territory, dickwad. They can’t attack the U.S. No one can without nukes, and if anyone pulls that, it’s the end of the whole world forever and they know it. So quit your bullshit. It’s wrong to torture anyone, ever, period.

 
 

Bush unleashed the fury of American power on Islamic terrorists

…and only succeeded in creating thousands more terrorist wanna-bes, strengthening the Taliban, failing to catch Osama, and sending thousands of American conservatives to bed each night peeing on themselves in fear. Oh, and over 4000 American soldiers have died defending lies and liars. Good job. I’d be proud too if I were deluded in the same ways as you.

 
 

Conscientious Parent, I was just saying that about Conservative Parents.

In other cases, individual parental suckyness may vary. Consult with your children before beginning any new regiment.

 
Dragon-King Wangchuck
 

Okay, I’m just starting in on the Monkey Orgasms, but I can verify already that Truth didn’t even read the link he provided.
Truth:

If you read the article I linked to above, you will see that interrogation of captured terrorists is credited with stopping at least one major attack

Article linked above:

To some, all this jailhouse cooperation smells concocted. “I doubt we’re getting very much out of them, despite what you read in the press,” says a former CIA agent with experience in South America. “Everybody in the world knows that if you are arrested by the United States, nothing bad will happen to you.”

Bill Cowan, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel who conducted interrogations in Vietnam, says, “I don’t see the proof in the pudding. If you had a top leader like Mohammed talking, someone who could presumably lay out the whole organization for you, I think we’d be seeing sweeping arrests in several different countries at the same time. Instead what we see is an arrest here, then a few months later an arrest there.”

 
 

And honestly, do you really think that our actions in iraq and afghanistan have absolutely prevented any dick with an agenda from coming to the us, building a bomb and parking his car in a crowd?

That’s stupid. The whole “we’re fighting them over there…” bullshit. Fighting them “over there” is obviously not preventing them from coming here. Ultimately it will happen, but right now the problem al Quaeda has created for itself is that they need to be even MORE spectacularly successful than they were in 2001 or they’ll look weak.

And that ain’t gonna be easy for anyone…

mikey

 
 

Every time some frickin’ idiot mentions 24 we should respond with Marathon Man.

Or Lethal Weapon. Or The Long Kiss Goodnight. or, you know, pick any action movie.

I use the standard “If the bad guy in a movie does it to the hero, and the hero swears (and gets) revenge, then it’s torture.”

 
 

The only thing funny about this site nowadays is how quickly teh funny goes away when I hit my rhetorical targets

“The site is not at all funny anymore, except when it’s funny that my profound unfunniness saps all the funniness so that nothing is funny anymore. Nothing other than that, I mean.”

 
Dragon-King Wangchuck
 

Wow. There wasn’t much about Monkey Orgasms, and the stuff about LSD was kinda boring, but holy fucking shit Mark Bowden is a panty waisted chickenshit moral-less sociopathic monster. I admit that I switched to skimming after the monkeys, but he just drones on and on.

So Bowden basically says torture is fucking awful, and I have at best, some hints and allegations into the possibilty that it might work. I also have all sorts of people telling me that it doesn’t. I have no proof at all of any useful information ever coming from torture.

Okay, I’m on board here – torture is morally reprehensible and not useful any ways.

Here’s how he ends his piece, the fucking dickwad:

The Bush Administration has adopted exactly the right posture on the matter. Candor and consistency are not always public virtues. Torture is a crime against humanity, but coercion is an issue that is rightly handled with a wink, or even a touch of hypocrisy; it should be banned but also quietly practiced. Those who protest coercive methods will exaggerate their horrors, which is good: it generates a useful climate of fear. It is wise of the President to reiterate U.S. support for international agreements banning torture, and it is wise for American interrogators to employ whatever coercive methods work. It is also smart not to discuss the matter with anyone.

If interrogators step over the line from coercion to outright torture, they should be held personally responsible. But no interrogator is ever going to be prosecuted for keeping Khalid Sheikh Mohammed awake, cold, alone, and uncomfortable. Nor should he be.

The article’s from 2003, I wonder what his position is now, knowing about the waterboarding and stuff.

Bonus: Truth’s prevented major attack is William Francis Buckley’s Keith “Captain Crunch” Hall – Elias Nimr – Lebanon bombing thing from 1985.

 
 

Christ, I got a headache now. I made the mistake of venturing into Malkin’s comments section, which is full of really twisted, angry wanna-be tough guys all beating their chests and trying to outdo each other on how tough they are, and how the only solution to terr’rism is to really get medieval on their asses.

Bit of self-revelation here: after 9/11, my day gig (since left it) involved working with/around/for the guys at Homeland Security. Everyone was shitting bricks day and night; every crazy-ass plan had to be given credence because the 9/11 hijackers outwardly Rube Goldberg-esque plan had actually worked. I mean think about it – guys with boxcutters had carried off this insanely effective attack.

Everyone’s imaginations ran wild. We spent a lot of time chasing our tails. The anthrax attacks made things even worse.

Now, cast your minds back to the fall of ’03 and summer of ’04. Remember all the crazy “Orange Alert! Terrorist Attack Imminent!” warnings that kept coming up in that election year?

They were coming out of these “enhanced interrogations.” We were torturing the shit out of guys who were confessing to every damn thing under the sun – oil tankers packed full of explosives sailing into Long Beach harbor, hit squads infiltrating the water-treatment plants and tainting the water supply, etc. etc. The head of HomeSec for Southern CA refused to visit our offices down by LAX, because they were convinced – absolutely dead-on certain that Al-Qaeda had managed to smuggle nuclear weapons into the continental U.S. and were days or hours away from detonating them at first-strike targets such as the airports, harbors and outside the White House.

I can’t tell you how many man-hours, or how much money we wasted chasing down these “valuable intel leads.” No really. I can’t. Those numbers have been hidden deeper in balance sheets and funny accounting than Cheney in his bunker.

But I keep coming back to the idea of “opportunity cost.” If we hadn’t been so focused on the idea that the terrorists were going to nuke a U.S. city/release the doomsday plague on us, we might have actually paid attention to what was going on in Iraq at the time. Which was that the opportunity we had to actually get control of things there … slipped through our fingers. We were looking at more attacks on the U.S., and that took precedence. We’d get around to dealing with what was seen as only “a bunch of dead-enders” and not that big a deal after we made sure American citizens were safe.

At the time, this made perfect sense. Priority #1 was to keep Al-Qaeda from carrying out another successful attack. So we devoted all our resources to chasing down all these “threats” and guarding against them.

And they were all coming from men who were saying anything to stop the pain.

It was all made up. None of the threats ever turned out to be even slightly credible. But the “5-star Red Alert” notices just kept coming, and coming. Each more outlandish than the next. But we had to treat them seriously, because shit – the impossible had happened, and who was to say that if we didn’t track down these leads, then we’d wind up getting hit, and then there would be all manner of “I told you so” fingerpointing after the fact again…

And our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan were pretty much left to fend for themselves. The war went down the shitter during that period – summer of ’03 to fall of ’04. That negative momentum has proved extremely difficult and costly to try to reverse … which is why, four years later, we’re still spending hundreds of billions to try to get back to where we were before we started torturing people and basing our actions on the crazy shit they said.

 
 

holy fucking shit Mark Bowden is a panty waisted chickenshit moral-less sociopathic monster

And you were being kind!

What we have here is the kind of half-assed, or even quarter-assed, thinking that says the steeper the penalty, the more it will deter people.

Which makes kind of sense; except when tested in real world situations, where people often rob and kill because they can’t think more than three minutes ahead anyway, and the consequences are the furthest thing from their mind.

Or something like Great Britain at the time they were hanging ten year olds for stealing bread.

Which, not to give wingnuts ideas, doesn’t work.

 
 

I mean think about it – guys with boxcutters had carried off this insanely effective attack. – wordyeti

Did they really just have only bocutters?

 
Duros Hussein 62
 

We should make a faux-winger website where people can sign up to be waterboarded to prove that it’s not torture, for the fatherland. Then we can….torture them. hee hee hee!

Dude, that’s just evil.

Where can I donate?

 
 

you will see that interrogation of captured terrorists is credited with stopping at least one major attack.

Oh, was that the one where some wackos decided the take down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blow torch? Or the one where the nutcases in Miami were going to blow up the Sears Tower only they didn’t even know where it was located?

 
 

Bush unleashed the fury of American power on Islamic terrorists

And managed to miss 99% of them.

 
 

The Truth said,

July 3, 2008 at 18:29

Yes, we got hit with 9/11 and the anthrax attacks. Bush unleashed the fury of American power on Islamic terrorists, and to date the Islamic terrorists haven’t been able to hit us again. If you read the article I linked to above, you will see that interrogation of captured terrorists is credited with stopping at least one major attack.

But, by that measure, shouldn’t the “fury of American power” prevented the apparently collectively motivate “Islamic terrorists” from doing anything? I mean, if the police introduce a bold new method of patrolling, in order to prevent drug use – and 10 months later, all the drug users now make their buys in the county not the city – well, that’s not preventing drug use, it’s just increasing the price of gas.
Your cause-and-effect is broken.

 
a concerned citizen
 

re: Malkin agreeing to waterboarding. This gives me an image of the chattering classes becoming so universally reviled and recognized as useless that a bilateral group of the very worst are forced to start a freak show to pay the bills.

Malkin gets waterboarded in a cheerleader outfit! See Bill Kristol, the incredible dissembling man! And see Christopher Hitchens, forced like Stanton Carlisle by a lifetime of alcoholism and cheap chicanery into biting the heads off of live chickens for money. (Terry McAuliffe can be his understudy.)

 
 

No g, you’re confusing those with ‘infiltrated with agent provacatuers funded by the federal government and goaded into doing/saying all manner of stupid shit that they don’t really mean.’

 
Duros Hussein 62
 

I still dream of someone inventing an infectious strain of empathy and releasing it at the Republican National Convention…

Someone should go through there with a Blamethrower.

 
 

The result, which every American should be reminded of, is no terrorist attacks on American soil in the last seven years.

I can’t figure out why al-Qaeda would organize another massive attack on American soil when Bush foreign policy is already exactly what they wanted.

I also can’t figure out why the same people who couldn’t keep the U.S. safe on Sept. 11 AND misread (or lied about) the WMD intelligence regarding Iraq should now suddenly be considered to be the wise men of foreign policy who will transform the Middle East into a magical democratic paradise.

Oh, dear. I’m probably not being politically correct enough for the conservatives. Since I disagree with them, the only possible explanation is that I hate America.

 
 

I keep reading “fury of American power” as “furry of American power”.

Also, Hoosier X,
I can’t figure out why al-Qaeda would organize another massive attack on American soil when Bush foreign policy is already exactly what they wanted. is a brilliant bit of analysis. I’d bet that pulling most US troops and military infrastructure out of Saudi Arabia like Osama demanded made a big difference. But I can see why the wingers don’t want to admit that Dear Leader has been caving like a … um … cave.

Need coffee.

 
 

It’s time to pitch “Let’s Kidnap And Waterboard Right-Wing Filth” to the networks.

 
 

I can’t figure out why al-Qaeda would organize another massive attack on American soil when Bush foreign policy is already exactly what they wanted.

Maybe they’re just that into wrecking stuff.

It’s a well-kept secret, but Osama actually got his start as a Captain Planet villain. Every once and a while he still dumps barrels of oil into al Qaeda drinking water, just for old times’ sake.

Okay, here’s what I don’t get about “enhanced interrogation”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the idea is this: We cause somebody such incredible physical or mental pain that they’ll do anything to just make it stop, up to and including betraying their most deeply held convictions.

That’s how it works, right? We’ve been told that it’s not torture, but… I mean… isn’t that the definition of torture?

If waterboarding isn’t really that bad, how would it get people to turn against a cause they’re willing to kill for? And if it is really horrible enough to get people to betray their deepest convictions, then wouldn’t it HAVE to be traumatic, regardless of whether it left physical scars?

It’s like the government wants us to believe that waterboarding is the most awful thing a man can experience, but only while it’s happening. Five minutes later the trauma that destroyed your deepest beliefs and made you betray what you hold most dear is just a joke, like an embarassing moment from high school.

And a lot of us hear that, and nod our heads and say, “Yeah, that makes sense”.

What the hell is wrong with people?

 
The Truth Unleashes... The Powah!
 

You leftists just don’t get it; But I do! And watch as I use America’s Mighty Power! to eliminate terrorists;

http://www.newsgaming.com/games/index12.htm

Pyow! Booosh! Booosh! NyeeeOOOoooWTHWOP!

America wins! Yay!

 
 

So, as far as torture goes, at least in this controlled experiment, to me, this seemed like a pretty efficient mechanism to get someone to talk and then still have them alive and healthy within minutes.

Which explains the agreement Hitchens had to sign, including an understanding that he might wind up crippled or dead. FAIL.

Yes, we got hit with 9/11 and the anthrax attacks. Bush unleashed the fury of American power on Islamic terrorists, and to date the Islamic terrorists haven’t been able to hit us again. If you read the article I linked to above, you will see that interrogation of captured terrorists is credited with stopping at least one major attack.

A wingnut actually admitting that there were anthrax letters?!? That comment needs to be bronzed for posterity! Buggers that catchy “no attacks since 9/11” slogan right up though, huh? The “fury of American power” let OBL go free in Tora Bora, thanks to Rummy fucking with the Special Forces op to get him, explicitly forbidding them to pull the trigger when he was surrounded on 3 sides with nowhere to go – I wonder why? Oh, & don’t kid yourself – not being attacked Stateside isn’t because they CAN’T, it’s because, as has been pointed out, Bush has done exactly what his old business-partner bin Laden asked: pulled US troops out of the holy lands … & because 9/11 is one hell of an act to have to follow, & I’ve heard THAT took at least 10 years to set up.

Every “major attack” I’ve been hearing about has been very non-major indeed – the one to hijack HUNDREDS of jets at once just stunk of pure Len Deighton malarkey, & others’ve been mostly “Radical Muslims” who were too stoned to even find out how to make a bomb let alone where to set one off.

Try asking someone who does REAL intelligence work how good intel obtained via torture is sometime – in their job, they can’t afford to kid themselves about what total pigshit it is, so they generally avoid it like the plague. Thanks for “schooling” us poor ignurint lefties, Professor. Your Ph.D. in Ass-Hat is in the mail.
But, yes, you DO kill the funny – unless you’re unintentionally creating it. I recommend a regular daily regime of enemas for the next 5 or 6 months – at least, regular enough to keep your tentacles away from your keyboard.

Ass, belt. Belt, ass. I believe you’ve already met.
Coffee?

 
 

Hey, “we” stopped the Sears Tower plotters pretty good.

Terrorist Mastermind: Number two, have you completed the bombs?

Number Two: Wha, “bombs”? I thought you said “bongs”. But yes, I have them here.

All: *flick* BLOOBLOOBLOOBLOOOBLOOB

 
 

Ah, Jim, thank you for tha. It is fascinating to get an insight into your world.

As just one example of your ignorance, I’ll point out that the plot you apparently reference – of “hundreds of jets” – was actually a plot to blow up a dozen jets, was planned to be executed by operatives dressed as clergymen (yes, really), and was dry run with an explosive actually killing a Japanese man on a trans-Pacific flight. Excellent intelligence and police work, as well as some lucky breaks, lead to the arrest of the terrorists so the plot obviously never came off. In your bizarro world, this means there was no threat – okey dokay.

I guess that is teh snark?

 
 

“The Truth” is referring to an incident in 1994 instigated by Ramzi Yousef, many details of which can be found here:

http://www.investigativeproject.org/profile/105

An exerpt:

“Materials found in the apartment confirmed that an assassination attempt on the pope was also in the making. Further details laid out on Yousef’s laptops and computer disks described diabolical plans, code-named “Bojinka” (slang for explosion), to detonate time-delayed bombs on eleven US long-haul flights over the Pacific. The presence of Casio watches and references to timers caused investigators to press further. They learned that Yousef had been responsible for an earlier explosion on a December 11, 1994, flight from the Philippines to Tokyo in which a Japanese man was killed when an explosive device planted by Yousef detonated under his seat.”

Other interesting info:

In February of 1995, close to two years after the bombing of the World Trade Center. Ramzi Yousef was captured in Pakistan. Yousef received a life sentence for the Bojinka plot and 240 years for the 1993 WTC bombing.”

So the evil mastermind that “The Truth” mentions was captured and sentenced to prison UNDER BILL CLINTON’S ADMINISTRATION.

But thanks for playing, “The Truth”. We have the home version of Sadly, No! as your consolation prize.

 
 

“The Truth”: Didn’t I already tell you that you don’t exist? And even if you did, you wouldn’t get to use the “teh” thing cuz you’d be a douchenozzle.

 
 

eidos_rho, thanks for the link. Great article.

 
 

Intelligence and police work? Sounds like a reasonable way to deal with criminals. Maybe doing something about money laundering, too. Really nothing about the whole story points to the moral “so hey we should invade and occupy some countries now; TOTAL WAR, WOO!”.

 
 

Oh, was that the one where some wackos decided the take down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blow torch? Or the one where the nutcases in Miami were going to blow up the Sears Tower only they didn’t even know where it was located?

I loved the one about the guys trying to blow up the fuel depot near some airport in the US by blowing up the firewater mains.

 
 

The whole “we’re fighting them over there…” bullshit. Fighting them “over there” is obviously not preventing them from coming here.

True. Though there’s also some truth to the notion that they are bombing us over there because, well, it’s cheaper and we provide them with plenty of warm American and British bodies for targets. Why make life hard for yourself?

 
 

It has to be said that torture is effective in its own peculiar way. As an instrument of state terror and coercion it is second to none. Many tyrants, such as Saddam or the Chilean junta, have successfully maintained power with the aid of torture. It is, for them, both a tool for eliciting confessions for show trials or a means of subjugating a population through terror.

IF THAT IS YOUR AIM then, by all means, go ahead and torture. It has a solid track record of results. And we can file you alongside the despots of history.

Sir Francis Walsingham protected Queen Elizabeth from papists this way. Her government regarded Catholics much as the right wing regards Islamists now, while Jesuits were the Jihadis of their day. The plots and threats against the regime were very real. The Throgmorton Plot was uncovered by intelligencers inside the French Embassy, but it took a second spell with one of Walsingham’s skilled racksmen–in this case the papist-hunter Thomas Norton–to elicit a confession about a proposed invasion by the Duke of Guise in aid of Mary Queen of Scots. Throgmorton’s execution at Tyburn was public, for the world to see what Elizabeth’s government were prepared to do to snuff out subversion.

This was one of many operations, such as foiling the Babington Plot and the trial of Mary, that used evidence from tortured confessions to achieve state ends. Indeed, some of Walsingham’s torturers, such as the sadist Richard Topcliffe–a man prone to writing sexual fantasies into confessions–were so notorious that mention of their name was sufficient to elicit confessions.

This was, we should remember, Britain’s ‘golden age’, a state secured by harsh repression of the once-popular Catholic religion, by show trial, torture by secret police and public execution. No wonder then that soon after Elizabeth’s reign a band of enraged Papist bravos tried to blow up Parliament and almost succeeded in creating their own 9/11. If this is the kind of country you wish to live in–prosperous for all but the disaffected–then you might accept torture.

Let’s not forget that for Elizabethans, Saddam-era Iraqis and Chileans of the middling sort–i.e. those privileged classes by nature sympathetic to the government–life WAS good under these regimes, or at least secure and tolerable. They have their counterparts in America today all too willing to parrot the government line about ‘six years of safety’. They accept torture because they feel sure it will not be used on them, and they care little for those it will be used on–the lower orders, the other-skinned, the heretic Islamist. In opposing torture you go against an ingrained instinct that only punishment, degradation and humiliation will deter the state’s enemies. They are the same people who approve of capital punishment.

Of course, all that guff about ‘intelligence gathering’ is putting lipstick on a pig. Torture’s record on obtaining sound intelligence is poor, but its effectiveness at coercing confessions is undoubted. The only shame is that many Americans of the middling sort cannot distinguish between the two…

 
 

It must be admitted that the instinct to use torture as a weapon of degradation is strong, even amongst the right-minded. Just look at some of the ‘what if the wingers were given a taste of their own medicine?’ threads up above. I know many of them were unserious, but don’t try to tell me there wasn’t a little edge in the authors’ voices.

Even *I* was tempted to wonder how long it would take a waterboarding torturer to elicit a confession from The Truth that he was a child abuser.

But on reflection I wouldn’t wish that on him. That would be immoral.

 
Dragon-King Wangchuck
 

IF THAT IS YOUR AIM then, by all means, go ahead and torture. It has a solid track record of results. And we can file you alongside the despots of history.

Thank you. I was looking for the right way to express it, and that hits the nail on the head. Here again is the end of that Bowden piece that Truth was all het up about:

Torture is a crime against humanity, but coercion is an issue that is rightly handled with a wink, or even a touch of hypocrisy; it should be banned but also quietly practiced. Those who protest coercive methods will exaggerate their horrors, which is good: it generates a useful climate of fear. It is wise of the President to reiterate U.S. support for international agreements banning torture, and it is wise for American interrogators to employ whatever coercive methods work. It is also smart not to discuss the matter with anyone.

Note, in the sixteen thousand word piece, he provides no examples of where torture provided useful information. So clearly he’s talking about it “working” in the sense of making the US look mean and tough. Did I mention that he’s a shitbag? Oh, there’s one more paragraph:

If interrogators step over the line from coercion to outright torture, they should be held personally responsible. But no interrogator is ever going to be prosecuted for keeping Khalid Sheikh Mohammed awake, cold, alone, and uncomfortable. Nor should he be.

Read those last two sentences. This piece is from 2003, so he probably didn’t know about the waterboarding. But this is what he did know about what happened to KSM (also from the same piece)

Isolated, confused, weary, hungry, frightened, and tormented, Sheikh Mohammed would gradually be reduced to a seething collection of simple needs, all of them controlled by his interrogators.

Got that? So long as you don’t call it torture, but just coercion, then battering a human being with whatever methods are required to reduce him to essentially a mindless animal is okay by Bowden.

 
 

Just made the mistake of clicking on the link.

Ouch.

Didja notice the “R-in-a-circle” thingie after Malkin’s name at the top of her site? That means that she went to the trouble of registering “Michelle Malkin” as a trademark with the US Patent & Trademark Office. You could look it up. She even used a member of the patent bar to do it. You could look that up, too.

IOW, Ms. Malkin spent anywhere from the high hundreds to low thousands to brand herself — but why? To discourage us from representing ourselves as Michelle Malkin? To force us to license the name Michelle Malkin from her whenever we refer to her?

What a strange person.

 
 

Dammit.

And here I was gonna get wealthy with my huge line of bootleg Malkin merchandise. I mean, next to mickey mouse, is there a more desirable brand?

mikey

 
 

IOW, Ms. Malkin spent anywhere from the high hundreds to low thousands to brand herself — but why?

Indeed it is much sexier when others wield the branding iron.

 
 

Jacob, it is true that the incident I refer to took place in the 90s. I was answering teh funny from Jim, who believes Islamic terrorism against US civilians is confined to the singularity of 9/11. I highly recommend you liberals read more about that plot to see the kind of people you’re defending; al Qaeda operatives dressed as clergymen planned to distribute large dolls loaded with explosives to children about to board US-bound planes.

Nah, save your hatred for Bush and Republicans, they’re the ones who deserve it. Percyprune needn’t be mealy mouthed; the example of the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Cuba show us exactly leftists treat their political opponents. Coercion and “re-education” are the philosophical underpinnings of the left; I doubt you’ll fool many people but the authoritarian and brutalizing instincts of the left are well known and well-documented.

By the way, Happy Independence Day, liberals! Or do you celebrate the existence of such a racist, sexist, genocidal country as the US? Oh, the mind of the liberal……

 
 

Nah, save your hatred for Bush and Republicans, they’re the ones who deserve it.

Okay then.

 
Dragon-King Wangchuck
 

It’s really amazing how The Truth does it. That after coming here to defend the use of torture, he then says that torture apologists are leftists.

It’s like his entire world view is based on a variation of IOKIYAR. None of his views are wrong, except when held by other people.

 
 

Stupid and evil, she may be. But I’d still fist it like an angry dog…

Or something like that.

(I’d do Coulter, Ingraham, and even Althouse, too. Once. Each.)

Oh why am I sexually attracted to wingnut wimmins? It’s something about the eyes… it’s like there’s a starved nymphomaniac pent up behind every pair.

 
 

People like Malkin turn me into a racist conservative who wants to close the borders and end free speech.

But, sadly, no!

Thus, the caged bird sings on michellemalkin.com

 
 

Lefties sure do swear a lot and don’t spell very well and don’t smell very well.

 
 

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