Sort of amazed by this, but by now I shouldn’t be.
O’Reilly and his ilk continue to maintain that waterboarding isn’t torture, despite the fact that after WWII the U.S. prosecuted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding U.S. servicemen. It was a war crime then. So what’s changed?
Well, obviously the fact that the “good guys” are using […]

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In a fascinating piece, Christpher Hitchens lets himself be waterboarded and comes to the conclusion:
if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.
But as part of his piece, he provides a very good summation of the argument for waterboarding; or at least the view of those who would dismiss the […]

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Sweet:
WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”
What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had […]

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Nice:
The U.S. military hid the locations of suspected terrorist detainees and concealed harsh treatment to avoid the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to documents that a Senate committee released Tuesday.
It’s unclear from the documents whether the Pentagon moved the detainees from one place to another or merely told the ICRC […]

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“Cheney, others OK’d harsh interrogations”
“Harsh interrogations.”
Did you know, following World War II we actually sentenced several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding Americans? Then, we called it torture and a war crime.
Now, Teh Terrorists are out to get us. And when we do it - well, it simply can’t be a war crime.
But I like how the […]

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Via Atrios, Scott Horton writes about the Yoo torture memo and the ultimate effects:
The memo was authored by John Yoo. This memorandum was designed to authorize the introduction of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading interrogation techniques to be used upon prisoners held at Guantánamo, and ultimately also used in Afghanistan and Iraq. The […]

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Pertinent to this discussion, Sullivan asks today:
To put it more bluntly: It seems to me that those who are making a fine distinction between “torture” and even waterboarding - and allowing waterboarding - have no logical basis for objecting to what we saw in many of the photographs at Abu Ghraib. Or rather their only […]

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Sullivan on how the AP’s use of the term “harsh interrogation treatment” to describe what was on those CIA tapes:
No serious source denies that these two individuals were - at the very least - waterboarded. And no serious, reasonable student of history, warfare or basic ethics can deny that waterboarding is now and always has […]

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And as a measure of how far we’ve come, I saw this headline and my first thought was: Is it one of ours?

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The destruction of the torture tapes may yet turn out to be the biggest story/scandal to bedevil the White House. Now a House panel - controlled by spineless Democrats, remember - has prepared subpoenas to force CIA officials to testify about the destruction of the videotapes.
The House Intelligence Committee’s threat marked the second challenge to a White […]

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Bush administration to judge: We didn’t really have to preserve those CIA tapes. And don’t you be asking about it.

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Would it be torture then? Gitmo legal advisor refuses to answer.

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Kevin Drum wonders what’s on those tapes the CIA destroyed. Actually, he notes, we don’t have to wonder - it’s been alluded to before:
Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be….Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, […]

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Torture tapes? Uh, looks like the Dog Ate My Homework:
The CIA destroyed videotapes it made in 2002 of two top terror suspects because it was afraid that keeping them “posed a security risk,” Director Michael Hayden has told agency employees.
A risk to the CIA is more like it.
Look. If the United States doesn’t torture, as […]

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Seriously.
In response to a question during a speech at the University of Colorado last night, Ashcroft said he’d be willing to do it:
The first question came from a woman who asked if Ashcroft would be willing to be subjected to waterboarding.
“The things that I can survive, if it were necessary to do them to me, […]

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Sullivan lays it out:
Many seem to think that because these techniques are only used on terrorists, they are no threat to American liberty. What this complacent view doesn’t grapple with is that these torture techniques can be used against any terror suspect; that such suspects are not subject to due process under president Bush’s understanding […]

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Via Matt Yglesias, we see that the Decider thinks waterboarding isn’t torture so long as it’s done by “highly trained professionals are within the law.”
Here’s a way I think we could end this whole controversy.
The Decider doesn’t want to come out and say we’re waterboarding, though as Yglesias notes, everyone knows we are waterboarding. The […]

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Torture? Not if we say it isn’t…
The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.
Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the […]

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See, now, I wasn’t going to post anything ’til tomorrow, I’m still technically on vacation and for more than a week resisted the inevitable urge to opine on the daily happenings.
But this is just too rich to resist.
In it, you’ll see our own Rep. Joseph Pitts lambasting China for its human rights abuses and its […]

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Sullivan on the Washington Post’s excellent investigation showing how Torture Yoo and the Veep “pushed the envelope” on presidential power, including the right to torture:
The only defense by Bush and Cheney against charges of war crimes is that a president definitionally cannot commit war crimes, if he’s acting as he sees fit in the […]

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