Part of Keith Olbermann's special comment via Crooks and Liars:
Daniel Levin should have a statue in his honor in Washington right now.
Instead, he was forced out as Acting Assistant Attorney General, nearly three years ago, because he had the guts to do what George Bush couldn’t do in a million years: actually put himself at risk for the sake of his country, for the sake of what is right.
And they water-boarded him and he wrote that even though he knew those doing it meant him no harm, and he knew they would rescue him at the instant of the slightest distress, and he knew he would not die — still, with all that reassurance, he could not stop the terror screaming from inside of him, could not quell the horror, could not convince that which is at the core of each of us — the entity who exists behind all the embellishments we strap to ourselves, like purpose and name and family and love — he could not convince his being… that he wasn’t drowning.
Water-boarding, he said, is torture.
Legally, it is torture!
Practically, it is torture!
Ethically, it is torture!
And he wrote it down.
Wrote it down somewhere, where it could be contrasted with the words of this country’s 43rd President: “The United States of America does not torture.”
Made you into a liar, Mr. Bush.
Made you into, if anybody had the guts to pursue it, a criminal, Mr. Bush.
Water-boarding had already been used on Khalid Sheik Mohammed and a couple of other men none of us really care about — except, Sir, for the one detail you’d forgotten — that there are rules, and even if we just make up these rules, this country observes them anyway, because we’re Americans, sir, and we’re better than that.
We’re better than you.
And the man your Justice Department selected to decide whether or not water-boarding was torture, had decided, and not in some phony academic fashion, nor while wearing the Walter Mitty poseur attire of flight-suit and helmet.
He had put his money, Mr. Bush, where your mouth was.
If it's not torture, Georgie, then show us. Put one of your daughters through it. Go through it yourself.
You like torture, don't you Georgie? Unka Dick and Rummy, Rove and Abu all said it was fine, made us look like bad asses to the world. Everyone would tremble at our name.
It actually showed to the world you are cowards. Torture is a coward's way of trying to assert domination over another. And it doesn't work. Kind of like blowing up frogs or branding frat brothers or executing death row inmates, it just shows how weak you are.
So you'd better destroy all those dvds of the Best Hits of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo hidden in your sock drawer.
We are Americans. We don't torture. We are better than that.
Watch it on YouTube:
Update: a link to the frog story:
"We were terrible to animals," recalled Mr. Throckmorton, laughing. A dip behind the Bush home turned into a small lake after a good rain, and thousands of frogs would come out.
"Everybody would get BB guns and shoot them," Mr. Throckmorton said. "Or we'd put firecrackers in the frogs and throw them and blow them up."
When he was not blowing up frogs, young George -- always restless and something of a natural leader -- would lead neighborhood children on daredevil expeditions around town, seeing how close they could come to breaking their necks. George also quickly acquired a colorful vocabulary.
"Georgie has grown to be a near-man, talks dirty once in a while and occasionally swears, aged 4 and a half," his father despaired in a letter to a friend in 1951. In another letter four years later, he lamented: "Georgie aggravates the hell out of me at times."
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