AP tell us that 52 percent of Americans “say torture is at least sometimes justified to thwart terrorist attacks.” I’m surprised the percentage isn’t higher. The problem, of course, is that it’s impossible to use torture only in ticking time-bomb scenarios, or rather, that you never know if there is a ticking time-bomb scenario. Which […]

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Et tu, Petraeus?:
In an interview this past weekend with Radio Free Europe, Gen. David Petraeus said that he supports President Obama’s decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and opposes the use of enhanced interrogation techniques:
PETRAEUS: In fact, I have long been on record as having testified and also in helping write doctrine for […]

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Here’s the video of that right-wing radio host getting waterboarded - being convinced, as it were, that it is indeed torture:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUkj9pjx3H0

Quoth Josh Marshall:
Muller really seemed to think it was like getting dunked by your friend in a pool or something. Just factually, everyone who knows anything about this says that it’s horrific and you pretty […]

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Right-wing Chicago radio host undergoes waterboarding to prove to everyone it’s not torture.
The average person, says the Marine sergeant on hand, can take it for 14 seconds.
Right-wing radio hosts lasts a grand total of six seconds, before rendering this verdict:
 ”It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that’s no joke,” Mancow told listeners. […]

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Jesse Ventura is my new favorite superhero:
Americans have changed “in that we have a paranoia that there’s a crazy Arab around every tree,” Ventura told Marcus Baram. “We’re walking on eggshells now, when in reality you have as much chance of running into a terrorist as winning the Powerball.”
He ripped into conservative talkers, such as […]

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Nice. Via Patrick Appel over at Sullivan’s place - here’s how one 15-year-old kid who apparently laid land mines for the Taliban spent a portion of his confinement in Guantanamo Bay:
In the interrogation room, Omar’s interviewer grew displeased with his level of cooperation. He summoned several MPs, who chained Khadr tightly to an eye-bolt in […]

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Vid of the week is up.

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In which Jesse Ventura pwns Elizabeth Hasselbeck, asking: If waterboarding “works” - why don’t we give local police the authority to waterboard suspects?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSra-McRZEc

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Josh Marshall’s been following the continuing torture saga pretty closely:
I’ve been talking to a few people today who have some professional insight into the whole torture saga, just what happened, what this or that secret memo might say. And I’m getting the sense that waterboarding to force people to tell us the ‘truth’ about Saddam’s […]

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When it’s done by somebody else.
Update: Glenn Greenwald, as well:

Harold E. Fischer Jr., an American Flier Tortured in a Chinese Prison, Dies at 83. . . .
From April 1953 through May 1955, Colonel Fischer — then an Air Force captain — was held at a prison outside Mukden, Manchuria. For most of that time, he […]

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Sullivan points to the same thing some of my right-wing correspondents are pointing out this morning - Pelosi knew:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was briefed on the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on terrorist suspect Abu Zubaydah in September 2002, according to a report prepared by the Director of National Intelligence’s office and obtained by ABC […]

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Look, there’s no reason this, if true, should surprise anyone in the least:
United States interrogators killed nearly four dozen detainees during or after their interrogations, according a report published by a human rights researcher based on a Human Rights First report and followup investigations.
In all, 98 detainees have died while in US hands. Thirty-four homicides […]

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Sullivan, commenting on the poll showing white evangelicals more likely than any other group to approve of torture (and no euphemish was used in the polling; the exact term “torture” was used):
So Christian devotion correlates with approval for absolute evil in America. And people wonder why atheism is gaining in this country.
As to the second […]

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Nice:
The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new analysis.
More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 […]

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Missed the presser, bigger fish to fry - kids’ baseball (2 for 2, with 2 strikeouts in the only inning pitched!).
But found this curious. Did you know that during World War II, Britain detained more than 500 spies at one notorious prison - and never saw the need to resort to waterboarding?
Ah, but I suppose […]

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A letter on torture:
If your family would be saved by aggressive questioning, torture, or if they would be harmed due to our country not using all means necessary to protect them so we, citizens of the U.S., can feel ethically pure, where would you lean if personally involved?
This is another iteration of the ticking time-bomb scenario. What […]

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Funny pt. 2, also from Josh Marshall:
We need to get back to bedrock American values like torture and secession.

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Hannity offers to be waterboarded for charity!
I’m telling you - not only do I pay whatever the pay-per-view costs, I’m recording it and using stills for my screensaver.
But, if he really wants to get a flavor of how we’ve gone about this - Hannity should actually be waterboarded 83 times.

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Funny.
Last week, conservatives were complaining Obama was establishing a socialistic fascist dictatorship.
This week, conservatives are complaining Obama does not want to torture his opponents.

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You’ve gotta love it:
The Bush administration put relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.
Such information would’ve provided a foundation for one […]

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