George Bush on Global Warming - Very Funny!

We Have Become "That Nation"

A most excellent article by Malcolm Nance on torture in general and water boarding in particular is found here. It is written by someone with actual knowledge of how it is administered and how it is used. This is much different than the quality of discussion put forth by Joe Scarborough here ("90% of Americans would support this") or by batshit crazy Rachel Mardsen ("...CIA sponsored swim lesson").

Mr. Nance has a number of astoundingly astute quotes in his article. For example:

"We, as a nation, are having a crisis of honor."

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"We live at a time where Americans, completely uninformed by an incurious media and enthralled by vengeance-based fantasy television shows like “24”, are actually cheering and encouraging such torture as justifiable revenge for the September 11 attacks. Having been a rescuer in one of those incidents and personally affected by both attacks, I am bewildered at how casually we have thrown off the mantle of world-leader in justice and honor."

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"Who will complain about the new world-wide embrace of torture? America has justified it legally at the highest levels of government. Even worse, the administration has selectively leaked supposed successes of the water board such as the alleged Khalid Sheik Mohammed confessions. However, in the same breath the CIA sources for the Washington Post noted that in Mohammed’s case they got information but "not all of it reliable." Of course, when you waterboard you get all the magic answers you want -because remember, the subject will talk. They all talk! Anyone strapped down will say anything, absolutely anything to get the torture to stop. Torture. Does. Not. Work.
According to the President, this is not a torture, so future torturers in other countries now have an American legal basis to perform the acts. Every hostile intelligence agency and terrorist in the world will consider it a viable tool, which can be used with impunity. It has been turned into perfectly acceptable behavior for information finding."

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"I have stated publicly and repeatedly that I would personally cut Bin Laden’s heart out with a plastic MRE spoon if we per chance meet on the battlefield. Yet, once captive I believe that the better angels of our nature and our nation’s core values would eventually convince any terrorist that they indeed have erred in their murderous ways. Once convicted in a fair, public tribunal, they would have the rest of their lives, however short the law makes it, to come to terms with their God and their acts.
This is not enough for our President. He apparently secretly ordered the core American values of fairness and justice to be thrown away in the name of security from terrorists. He somehow determined that the honor the military, the CIA and the nation itself was an acceptable trade for the superficial knowledge of the machinations of approximately 2,000 terrorists, most of whom are being decimated in Iraq or martyring themselves in Afghanistan. It is a short sighted and politically motivated trade that is simply disgraceful. There is no honor here."

Advocates of the use of this and other "enhanced interrogations techniques" (what a wordfuck euphemism!) trot out the old saw about what you would do in the event of a ticking time bomb in a major city. Let's assume, arguendo, that you could do it effectively, timely and that the information obtained was even moderately reliable. In that case, I might do it myself (just as Mr. Nance says he would gladly cut out Bin Laden's heart with a plastic spoon) but I would expect to be held accountable for this. If we refuse to define torture and allow one man to determine what it is or isn't and make it part of our routine arsenal, we make it the norm rather than the unholy exception it should be. Then we get Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, the foreign black sites and the other atrocities we don't even know about.

In my earlier years, I was taught by the people that endured WWII that we were just better as a nation. We had higher morals, higher goals and should lead the world in finding better ways to do things. We would not lower ourselves to the level of nations like Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Vietnam and others that routinely used torture. We have failed to hold to our honor. This is not my United States. My United States does not redefine torture to be something else. My United States does not even have to have the discussion about whether water boarding is torture. We have become "That Nation".

Shame, shame on us all!