Friday, April 17, 2009

It's just a slap in the face...

It can't be torture....

dday at Hullabaloo:
Now that I've had some time to marinate in these depraved memos justifying and finding legal rationalizations for torture, I am convinced that the members of the Bush Administration who directed and authorized all this just willed themselves to believe they were doing the righteous and just thing. Sure, they knew enough to find some thin strand of legal reasoning to cover their naked bodies, but that was seen by them as a brave and forthright act. I don't see another way to live with approving Room 101 techniques like putting someone in a box with a bug unless you've convinced yourself of your own worthiness. The memos also produce a fact pattern of deliberate lies by the CIA to put their proposed torture of Abu Zubaydah in the best possible light (claiming he was of sound mental health when contemporaneous reports term him a basket case, for example). Combine that with typical Republican victimhood status, and you have the squealing pigs in the media today despairing about the release of these documents.
Fox News rises in defense of the indefensible.

Looks like they waterboarded everybody.

Limbaugh thinks that slapping himself
is what the torturers did to the detainees. Remember how Rumsfeld complained that making people stand for only eight hours wasn't enough because he stood all day? So wasn't getting the Jenny Craig dieting company involved in telling the Bush administration how low they could go in calories the same thing? Standing or dieting people are doing it to themselves VOLUNTARILY, YOU MORONS. They are in charge of themselves and can change their minds when they want to. The dieters are usually FAT and they willingly WANT to lose weight. Doing it to a helpless detainee, stressed and frightened out of his wits IS NOT THE SAME FUCKING THING. They are NOT in control of their own bodies. Jesus Christ, just how stupid are these torture supporting people?

Buried on the seventh page of a 43-page document, the note on dietary restrictions underscores the painstaking detail to which the Bush administration went in order to validate the use of harsh interrogation techniques. It also reflects a tendency by the memo's authors to put some of their more interesting reflections not in the text of the memo itself, but in the footnotes.

Also listed at the bottom of some of the memorandum pages are admissions of interrogations that crossed medical and ethical lines, tips on how to prolong techniques while staying within the confines of the legal limits, and detailed efforts to objectively define what constitutes torture and pain.
They knew. The bastards knew.

And by the way, where is Hassan Ghul?

A suggestion as to why President Obama is acting the way he is:

Crazy people at the [Bush] White House got sane people in the agencies to do all kinds of things by isolating them from competent advice, depriving them of necessary and pertinent information, and just plain lying to them. Perhaps that is what happened to the line officers at CIA?

President Obama's position regarding those line officers, while I disagree with it, may be a reflection that he believes that they were manipulated and lied to by those they had a right to trust. Further, nothing in his statement yesterday suggests that the brass at CIA, DOJ or WH are exempt from prosecution.

It is my belief that we should start the investigation and prosecution at the top, where the illegal orders, and the lie that they were legal, first came from. As we work our way down the food chain, we can sort out relative culpability.

I think anyone who supports torture should be snatched suddenly off the streets and thrown into a van. Taken somewhere unknown in the dark. Placed in a freezing cell with a bag covering the head. Stripped of clothes.

Then slapped and strung up in a standing position, made to stay awake, fed hardly anything....

I think they'd call it torture after five minutes.

So are the supporters of torture that unable to imagine what it would be like to be denied control of your own body? Are they that stupid that they can't conceive of the fear for one's life these detainees would have?

Or are they so much into domination and making the 'other' submit that they can't see through their own fantasies to see what the whole world sees?

This is torture.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Because sex is okay between consenting adults, therefore rape is permissible and not a horrific crime?

That's what these monsters are trying to argue.

Wil Robinson said...

The whole "CIA operatives were lied to and just doing what the administration told them to do" smacks of the same defense the Nazis used. I thought "I had orders" wasn't a defense anymore?

ellroon said...

Exactly, Mahakal. They've built a fabric of self-justifying lies and explanations to explain why torture is so necessary. But when they try to present their argument in the cold light of day though, it falls apart.

To their surprise the world reacts with disgust and revulsion, not approval.

Distributorcap said...

those memos arent smoking guns - they are a bible.

this is clearly criminal acts -- and while obama left the door open to prosecute the "orderers" (and deciders) - lets see where it goes.

this whole Nuremberg/Eichmann thing of just following orders is very very distressing.

and worse is the automatic defense of it from the right -- lets put them through this test and see how they feel

torture NEVER works

what assholes

ellroon said...

Wil, the Nuremberg Defense won't work here for the people who actually tortured. I was arguing this out last night with my son. The careful, meticulous legal ass-covering that went on prevents that.

CIA: Bush administration, you say that this action is legal?

Bush Ad: Yes, our lawyers say so. Do it NOW. We need all the intel you can get NOW.

CIA: Exactly what are specific methods we can use?

Bush Ad: Waterboarding:20 minutes, Freezing temperatures: so many degrees, Sleep deprivation: 11 days....(where did they get these figures?) Do it NOW. We want all the intel you can get NOW.

CIA: Okay, but it's your funeral....

So the torturers get off, but the Bush neocon cabal should be hiring lawyers and wondering what country will take them in.... (scratch Spain)...

ellroon said...

Dcap, I think the memos will be carved indelibly on Bush's legacy.

As I've said, the neocons better plan to have stainless steel headstones because there'll be a line to piss on their graves.

Rhode Island Rules said...

I don't think the apologists of torture are the doms, I think most of these Republicans are submissive albeit with pros or people they trust (a la David "diapers" Vitter - that would be SENATOR. They and Rush think if they get slapped or spanked a little and can stop anytime they want by uttering their code word that anyone else should be able to survive "torture".

Their fantasy life has well intruded into reality. They think they are tough and if they were left alone in a room with a terrorist, whoo boy, would they take care of them and save the world with 10 seconds to go. In truth, they would probably pee their pants.

This comic book mindset is what has been driving our foreign policy for the past 8 years.

ellroon said...

I agree with you totally, Rhode Island, that their fantasy life is ruling their reality. Just how bizarre is it that Rush can equate slapping himself with being slapped by another?

I think Peeing in Pants is definitely the Bush ferrin policy: Hit them before they even THINK about hitting us, because if they hit us, we'll collapse and we must be tough so torture ALL the prisoners because we've gotta look mean so they don't hit us again!