The New Democracy!
I think the people of this country owe the Japanese Government one hell of an apology.
Let me explain why. If you’ve been watching the news, you know that more memos have come out indicating that we approved the use of torture at the highest levels.
But, the official line is that the US doesn’t torture people.
That’s George’s line and he’s sticking to it.
Do you know what waterboarding is?
First you strap a person to an inclined board with his feet up and his head down. You strap them good and tight so that they can’t move at all and then you cover their face…you can use different things, cloth, soiled underwear, plastic wrap—it doesn’t matter, so long as you cover the nose and mouth. Then, while one person shouts questions, or insults, or perhaps patriotic poetry, the other uses a large watering can to repeatedly pour liquid onto the person’s face.
Now, whether water actually does or does not get into the person’s airways doesn’t matter. The point is not to actually drown the person, but to simulate drowning in such a way that the person’s body thinks they are drowning—and the gag reflex kicks in, so they start to choke. Sloppy interrogations can cause extreme pain, lung damage, brain damage, broken bones, long term psychological damage and possibly even death.
Do you know what Dick Cheney called it? “A dunk in the water.” He said it was pretty silly to keep our CIA officers from “dunking terrorists in the water” in order to save American lives. Did you know that the average CIA officer who subjected themselves to the same “dunking” lasts an average of 14 seconds before screaming to be let loose?
Is the average CIA officer a bigger sissy than a 4th grader in the wading pool or could waterboarding actually be torture?
Do you know what the Bush administrations’ definition of torture is? If your organs don’t fail and you don’t die, you aren’t being tortured.
Pretty straight forward. Waterboarding isn’t torture. That’s kind of weird, because at the end of WWII, Japanese soldiers who waterboarded American troops were convicted of war crimes and some of them were even executed.
Here’s the thing…I know that there is something called Godwin’s Law.
It says that no matter how accurate the comparison, the first person to use a Nazi analogy loses the argument. OK, I don’t want to lose any arguments here…so let’s stop using Nazi Analogies. Let’s start using Imperial Japanese analogies---
George, either you, Dick Cheney, and Alberto Gonzales are all war criminals who deserve to be executed or those Japanese soldiers didn’t do a damn thing wrong. I think I know where you stand on that, so I think you need to pardon those poor, misunderstood Japanese soldiers for dunking our troops during WW2 and all patriotic Americans should apologize to the Japanese Government for the injustice we perpetrated on their honorable soldiers.
Totalitarianism—it’s the new Democracy!
Let me explain why. If you’ve been watching the news, you know that more memos have come out indicating that we approved the use of torture at the highest levels.
But, the official line is that the US doesn’t torture people.
That’s George’s line and he’s sticking to it.
Do you know what waterboarding is?
First you strap a person to an inclined board with his feet up and his head down. You strap them good and tight so that they can’t move at all and then you cover their face…you can use different things, cloth, soiled underwear, plastic wrap—it doesn’t matter, so long as you cover the nose and mouth. Then, while one person shouts questions, or insults, or perhaps patriotic poetry, the other uses a large watering can to repeatedly pour liquid onto the person’s face.
Now, whether water actually does or does not get into the person’s airways doesn’t matter. The point is not to actually drown the person, but to simulate drowning in such a way that the person’s body thinks they are drowning—and the gag reflex kicks in, so they start to choke. Sloppy interrogations can cause extreme pain, lung damage, brain damage, broken bones, long term psychological damage and possibly even death.
Do you know what Dick Cheney called it? “A dunk in the water.” He said it was pretty silly to keep our CIA officers from “dunking terrorists in the water” in order to save American lives. Did you know that the average CIA officer who subjected themselves to the same “dunking” lasts an average of 14 seconds before screaming to be let loose?
Is the average CIA officer a bigger sissy than a 4th grader in the wading pool or could waterboarding actually be torture?
Do you know what the Bush administrations’ definition of torture is? If your organs don’t fail and you don’t die, you aren’t being tortured.
Pretty straight forward. Waterboarding isn’t torture. That’s kind of weird, because at the end of WWII, Japanese soldiers who waterboarded American troops were convicted of war crimes and some of them were even executed.
Here’s the thing…I know that there is something called Godwin’s Law.
It says that no matter how accurate the comparison, the first person to use a Nazi analogy loses the argument. OK, I don’t want to lose any arguments here…so let’s stop using Nazi Analogies. Let’s start using Imperial Japanese analogies---
George, either you, Dick Cheney, and Alberto Gonzales are all war criminals who deserve to be executed or those Japanese soldiers didn’t do a damn thing wrong. I think I know where you stand on that, so I think you need to pardon those poor, misunderstood Japanese soldiers for dunking our troops during WW2 and all patriotic Americans should apologize to the Japanese Government for the injustice we perpetrated on their honorable soldiers.
Totalitarianism—it’s the new Democracy!
posted by Archie Levine at 11:34 AM
3 comments
