I had heard about this but just saw the video and thought I’d share it. I don’t know anything about Mancow, other than I think he’s a shock jock. So, I don’t really know if I should take him seriously or not. Wasn’t there some discussion of a Keith Olberman Sean Hannity Waterboarding, but I don’t know if anything came of it.
86 Thoughts to “Mancow Waterboarding Video”
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mancow is a conservative radio talk show host. So he says it is torture, what does that mean for our American legal policy by the Bush Administration? Does American torture?
The depth of a person is shown under stress, the depth of a nation is demonstrated under stress. It isn’t when times are easy that we are tested, individually and as a collective nation, it is when we are under stress that we bare our souls. I would say we failed this test. The means do NOT justify the end. There is no difference in torturing Al-Queda, Germans, Japanese, Vietnamese. When you are in war, there is ALWAYS valuable imperative information the enemey has, it is BECAUSE of this paridigm that the Geneva Convention was signed by all civil nations.
I saw this video and still did not fully understand the full psychological and physical impact of this torture technique. It was only after hearing Mancow’s interview that I understood. He said that water is being poured down your nasal passage way, filling it up completely, and the body reacts as if your are drowning. This sounds terrifying, especially if you are tied down and helpless to defend yourself as this man was NOT.
From now on, I think we should argue about whether torture should be legal or not. Instead of whether drowning someone is torture or not. There is an argument that each administration should be allowed to bend and break international treaties such as the Geneva Conventions, according to whether the President believes that torture should be a weapon of war and/or counter-terrorism.
It is intellectually dishonest to discuss the matter on any other terms. Are we a torturing nation? Not now apparently. But what Obama has proposed essentially is that each President can decide for him or herself, and that the high ideals of human rights we thought we represented to the world are optional from this point on.
“It is intellectually dishonest to discuss the matter on any other terms. Are we a torturing nation? Not now apparently. But what Obama has proposed essentially is that each President can decide for him or herself, and that the high ideals of human rights we thought we represented to the world are optional from this point on.”
Ahh Shelly, therein lies my problem with Obama right now. He is trying to have it both ways and its incredibly dangerous. I am so disappointed in him, I really am.
Elena, I am not disappointed in him about this. Do you watch 24?
As repugnant and horrible as that description was, I don’t think I want to ever paint ourselves in a corner as a nation. I think there should always be a safety net, just in case some evil villain is holding a nuclear weapon over NYC or something.
I might go the high road had I not watched 24 all the seasons it has been on. It has made a pragmatist out of me.
I would not want this torture or any other torture used except under dire circumstances. It should never be done routinely. If I thought doing this to someone would save my child’s life, or the life of others I would do it in a New York minute.
I am with M-H. It is the lesser of two evils, to be sure, but we have two wars, an economy in crisis, an auto industry suffering from 20 years of bad business decisions, Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran, and we have heath care, climate change, and immigration reform to tackle.
There are many moderate Republicans who we will need to be focusing on the nation’s best interests over the next 8 years. We cannot afford to make them choose between the nation’s interest and the Republican party’s interest. We saw them do that during Clinton and it was a disaster for us all. Obama is extending an open hand to moderate Republicans and saying let’s move forward. I won’t blame you for Dick Cheney. No one was able to stop him, Republican or Democrat. He was a mastermind and a blot on our history. But let’s not let that stain continue into a new era of bipartisanship and working for the collective good.
LMAO – we are going to compare real life with 24!! So, do you think that we waterboard a person for the 14 seconds, break to a commercial, and they are going to talk?
WaterBoarding is torture – I did not think that was in dispute – there are other forms of torture that the US has sanctioned during the past few years. We should be above that.
Have you ever heard of a Police department that has co-erced a confession? And that is not even with torture. It is questionable whether a torture subject actually gives valid information or not – just ask John McCain (he gave the Green Bay Packers offensive line as his squadron members). How can we expect another country to not torture our captured soldiers, if we are going to torture enemy combatants?
Hannity – what a blow hard – he would not subject himself to something like that – after seeing him cry like a baby, he could not be able to take the stance he takes.
I think the whole arguement’s stupid … terror networks are going to cover their tracks when one of them falls into our hands … there is not going to be real actionable information there.
When Dick Cheney, a known liar, claims that it did tangible good, that means it may or may not be true. I don’t hear anyone credible claiming this to be the case. And if it were the case, the CIA and others would have made that case behind closed doors to Obama. Doesn’t seem as if they did.
Tempest in a teapot as far as I’m concerned.
Jesse Ventura had a good line, which he repeated on Stern last week : “Give me Dick Cheney and a waterboard and within 1 hour I’ll have him confessing to the Sharon Tate murders”.
It wouldn’t have mattered if the case had been made clear to Obama. He has his own agenda and a childish desire to undo every possible action that might have a “Bush” stamp on it.
You can bet your life that even the most die-hard liberal would want to waterboard if someone they loved was in immediate danger. Wasn’t Nancy Pelosi and company beating the war drum right after 9-11? It has been widely reported that she felt “we should do more” when she was briefed on interrogation tactics.
Easy to feel self-righteous and morally superior when you feel you are in relative safety. Just let the soldiers go out and die for you while you drink your Starbucks, and life is good, isn’t it?
Nancy Pelosi and others in Congress at the time did not take action to stop this and other criminal behavior being perpetrated by Cheney. The truth is he was too powerful. No one stood up because they feared being voted out of office. I hate to see elected officials take this path, whatever party they are in. Republicans with a conscience and an appreciation for the rule of law were also afraid to cross Cheney. But as a Democrat, it hurts more to see Democrats caving to fear/hate politics. We have seen it many times both before and since Iraq and the Cheney cowardice meltdown.
Bin Laden warned us that, “we will use your laws against you.” How prescient. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see how we are beginning to hogtie ourselves. Just wait for the parade of pro-bono lawyers to rush in for high-profile detainee trials if/when Guantanamo is closed. Just wait until the terrorists are REAL clear about where our limits are and how far we are willing (or not) to go to protect ourselves.
Wow, he really was so all-powerful that he single-handedly neutered all the Democrats? You’re making him larger than life, and making the Democrats seem even more like self-serving idiots interested only in their own self-preservation–i.e. “No one stood up because they feared being voted out of office.”
Funny how much the Bush administration was derided as being so “dumb” when in fact they had such incredible power over the entire government. I am awed.
“Easy to feel self-righteous and morally superior when you feel you are in relative safety. Just let the soldiers go out and die for you …”
No one involved in this has EVER disrespected our soldiers, with the possible exception of Cheney who was part of an Administration that used them as cannon fodder and fought a war on the cheap. Overtime at the body armor factory – nah, let’s not bother with that. God’s on our side and they’ll soon be throwing rose petals at us.
The whole arguement is bogus. Where do you draw the line Emma? Should we actually chop people’s genitals off (Idi Amin style) if that might help to make them talk and theoretically tell us something of import? And if so, should we be arguing about that next?
I don’t condon any torture and as an ex-service man I think all forms of coercion and misery as a prisoner of war should be outlawed. No intelligence is worth putting a human being through personal misery and pain. Having said that, we really need to define what painful torture and misery is. When I was in survival school, and POW training as a young aviator, I was subjcted to a form of water-boarding. It was not pleasant, but it was also not painful or life threatening. The bottom line is, we sould never use techniques on others we are fighting if in the future we do not want to subject our young, innocent, 19 year old sons and daughters to. (yes my daughter will carry a rifle if my sons have to). If you want to punish someone, punish the leaders who start or who authorize war (by attacking the person who started it directly as soon as they start a war). There would not be many wars in the world if we did this, but instead we put the burdon of death, and lives cut short, not on the old cronies who run our nations, but on the poor young soldiers on either side of the fight, who are just as likely to not want to be there, not want to kill others, and are innocent victims of the laws placed on servicemen to die for unjust causes, without any right to say “no, this is immoral” without enourmous family and social embarrasment. If we are directly protecting our country from invaders, that is the only time I will ever volunteer to have my sons or myself go back to war, and I will only fight it on our own soil. I learned a lot about what is wrong with war, from my own war experiences. The first people to die in a war, and who should be shipped to remain on the front lines the duration of the war, should be the politicians that authorize it, and the president who commands it, that should be a front line command, just like the Romans did, because then it is personal, real, necessary to understand the risk and justice of it, and deadly to all equally.
Elena, once again I agree with you. You have to be in a war to understand this, and you also have to understand people are willing to die for their country, right up to the point where they are going to get shot, and realize thier chances of living are 1 in 10. Some units in war suffer 9 out of ten person casualties, or don’t make it through 50 missions. IN every one of these cases, these people accept the likelyhood of death, and just do theior best to keep themselves and their buddies alive, on the battlefield or prisoner or prisoner of war came. True Patriotism, comes from those lucky individuals who have faced the reality of death in a war, morn their friends who died, advocate that war should never be fought unless it is done to preseve the life of their own family, and have a right to be proud that they risked their lives and were lucky enough to get home to enjoy the rest of it. From my own experiences Iwill never let my sons or daughter fight in an unjust war, not fought on our own soil and not fought to protect my immediate family from imminant death.
Where would you draw the line, Rick? What if your wife was being held at knifepoint, and a Daniel Pearl-style beheading was imminent? How far would you go? I think it’s all too easy to say that you want to be better than the terrorists until the terror hits close to home. I also don’t want all our options closed off and all terrorists fully informed as to how far we will or won’t go.
I understand that logic Emma but I think that by the nature of the way that terror cells operate – decentralized and with all plans subject to change – this is just a red herring. I think we’re talking about this just because Dick “Draft dodger” Cheney made a probably-false arguement that any good came out of it. I think that we can let it go. I don’t care so much about the pain and suffering of any terrorists so much as I care about our soldiers in this and future conflicts. I agree with so many who have fought – and michael, thanks for your service – that for the sake of our own people, we should refrain from engaging in terrorism.
Dick Cheney was a tyrant, Emma. He outsmarted and outmaneuvered President Bush, and yes, he outmaneuvered Democrats in Congress by utilizing the attacks of 9/11 for political gain. He used the fear in his own heart as a weapon against the American people. He terrorized us into supporting a war of choice that he had planned years before he bamboozled George Bush into letting him usurp his power. I honestly don’t think Bush knew any better, knew that torture was a war crime, that domestic spying was a federal offense, or that Saddam Hussein and Iraq had as much connection to 9/11 as the Charlie Daniels Band.
Does all of this give you pleasure because Democrats were powerless during that era? But our country suffered so greatly. Cheney corrupted our democracy and made a mockery of the ideals held sacred by our forefathers. Hardly reason to gloat. But if it pleases you, I’m happy you at least have that.
Do you suppose Obama knows that domestic spying is a “federal offense”? He has not discontinued or repudiated that practice since it has been upheld in an appeals court. Does that mean Obama is still under the influence of the evil Cheney war machine?
No one is gloating, no one wants solders to die needlessly. It’s just funny to see people make excuses for the wartime decisions of the Democrats, as if they have absolutely no accountabiity whatsoever for their support of the war early on and were not at all motivated by politics in any way when it became expedient to oppose the war.
Rick, that was one of Jesse Ventura’s better lines.
Pat, I knew whatever I said would be misinterpreted. No, I don’t think life is like 24. However, watching the show has made me realize how important it is to not lock yourself into legal situations where US security might depend on acting in a contrary way. I certainly feel it should be a policy not to torture. I just don’t think it should be a law that we never should do it under any circumstances. I am fairly opposed to absolute situations and positions in general though. Safety nets R our friend.
Periodically, Emma and I both hold our noses and agree with each other. I agree with her about not hogtying ourselves. I had forgotten about that delightful expression. It would not be difficult to have a general policy about not torturing without making it an absolute.
But MH, 24 is a hollywood show, not reality. If torture, under the right circumstances is alright, then we must withdraw our signature from the Geneva Convention.
Good idea, since we’ve been keeping company with thieves anyway. Other shining examples of humanitarianism include Geneva signatories such as Nicaragua, Iraq, Iran, Mozambique, Rwanda, North Korea and China.
Elena, after 9/11, I kept pinching myself. Everytime I watched the events of that day I kept thinking to myself, this is Hollywood.
If something happens so bad that we need to torture, then the Geneva Convention is the least of our worries. Policy should be against torture. It should not be against the law under any and all circumstances. Again, we do not want to paint ourselves into a corner. What stymies us is not that which has been done before, but that which might arise: the things we never thought possible.
Does art imitate life or does life imitate art?
Needless deaths of soldiers is a great example, Emma, but there are so many other tragedies that have befallen our country because of Dick Cheney’s usurping of President Bush’s constitutional powers, as well as many powers that are not granted to the Chief Executive. If the degradation of our nation and its former belief in the rule of law is permanent as you seem to think, then I am all the more in dismay. I don’t see this as a “Democrat” vs. “Republican” issue. The loss of our nation’s moral standing is everyone’s loss. The fact that we can no longer claim to be a nation of laws is everyone’s loss. We are now a nation of laws*
*sometimes
Are you saying you believe in the Rule of Law? If so, how do you define it?
M-H,
I believe the horrible acts committed at Abu Gharib, of which, apparently, there are even MORE heinous pictures, is a result of a culture that was being created by our own government. It is no coincidence, at least in my mind, that the defense of these low level army soldiers, who are now sitting in jail for their crimes, was that they were given direction to “soften” up the inmates who were going to be questioned. Once you go down this road, there is NO real means to control it.
We simply cannot, with any crediblity, continue to demand humane treatment by cruel dictators if we too are willing to torture in order to “save” our country from “evildoers”. I imagine, these other countries that we accuse of human rights violations, believe, THEY also, are “saving” their way of life.
Emma, if you are speaking of the Orwellian renaming of the Immigration Resolution, I suggest we not go there.
Elena, I certainly do not think that what went on at Abu Gharib needed to happen. It is an ugly side of what can happen when the rules are not clearly defined. I totally believe that those sitting in prison were told to ‘soften them up.’
The flaw was allowing very low ranking individuals who had little leadership training or ability. What I am suggesting is the exceptions that come from the top down, rather than the bottom up.
However, that is not what I am talking about. I am talking about making laws that box us in an emergency. For example, would we want to make a law saying that our military shooting down a civilian plane is always illegal? I would say no, because on 9/11 had it not been for the bravery of those on flight 93, our military might have had to shoot that plane down.
Our policy says we do not do that. However, somewhere, somehow, there would have been a way to take care of that unpleasant business had it been necessary. Those are the things I am referring to. While 24 is a tv show, certainly things that happen on that show are things that could be done by terrorists.
Being a civilized society won’t do us a damn bit of good if we are so painted int a corner that we all end up dead.
Plus no oversight.
A reputable source, I think, claims that the pictures now being suppressed include pictures of rape.
But M-H, then we should not sign onto the Geneva Convention or sign the treaty against torture, we are simply liars. During WWII, if we had captured high level Nazi officers or Japanese, under your standard, it would be o.k. to torture them. So what protects our soldiers if we have no standard. That very concern, protecting our soldiers, was one of some top offical military leaders if our policy recognized torture as a means to an end, under any circumstances. Saddam Hussein was an evil man, but even OUR soldiers, caught during fighting in HIS country, were not tortured. The soldier Jessica, supposedly raped and mistreated, was actually treated with kindess by her captors. Remember her story, how she finally came out and talked about the kindess of the nurses and doctors, the people who came to her aid. I am not suggesting we treat our captors we suspect of plotting terrorist acts with kid gloves, but if we go down the road of supposedly only torturing those we “think” may have high level, then there really is no way to control it, as demonstrated by so many terrible acts committed by Americans against Iraqi’s. Did that help our efforst to win this war, no, in fact, I am sure it created more Amercian hatred than Osama Bin Laden could ever hope for.
The funny thing about Jack Bauer (http://www.jackbauerfacts.com/) , is that he yells and screams, hits someone, possibly shoot them in the leg, and they talk. Seems easy.
The truth is that we had to waterboard Mohammed 183 times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/world/20detain.html), and we do not know if we were given credible information. This is of course, after we used other torturous techniques to try and get information out of him. Waterboarding was used as a final torture.
Talk to someone who has been tortured – if you think torture is productive, you just might change your mind.
We aren’t liars until we do it. Of course you sign on to the Geneva Convention. Why wouldn’t you? We are signed on to it now. Torture should never be part of our policy. We control it through policy. Only very high ranking officials should be able to authorize anything that we define as torture. Sort of like only the President gets to authorize the use of certain weapons.
What you don’t want to do, in my opinion, it make it illegal (as in against the law illegal) so some high ranking official, such as the President of the United States, cannot authorize extreme measures for extreme times. On that we will have to agree to disagree. I am not willing to risk my kids or anyone else’s life over absolute idealism.
As for Jessica Lynch. Her story is very controversial. Medical personnel was supposedly kind to her(as they should be to all injured captives). The story of the lawyer Mohammad who walked all those miles to save her is remarkable. Her friend Lori Piestewa sure didn’t fare so well. I suppose we will never know the true story there. What makes Jessica live and Daniel Pearl die a horrible death? I don’t know. Probably the politics involved. I don’t think her story regardless of what it is has anything to do with how I feel about the use of torture.
Pat, I do not want us to torture people. Please do not state or imply that I do.
I am not talking about Jack Bauer torturing people and getting an answer as much as I am talking about extreme things that can happen. The world is not all rosy. The only thing I want is a safety net so that if an event ever comes up so we need to reverse policy, there is a way to do it. That’s all.
From all the lectures I have been getting, one would think I wanted to make torture a part of every day military operations instead of simply having a caveat inserted into our policy statement where the president could authorize something we might consider torture on a limited basis for a given event.
Dear M-H,
I am not suggesting you want to torture people, I know you don’t. The problem is that we no longer can espouse this high moral authority if we, under any circumstances, believe torture is appropriate. John McCain, tortured for five years, is the most credible voice on torture, I think I will stick with him on this one. If we leave it up to the Presiden to decide when it is O.K. to break international law, we are in serious trouble, just my humble opinion.
Elena, Think Pat thinks I want to torture. You didn’t.
If the President can make decisions about the use of say, nuclear weapons, why wouldn’t that allow him to use unconventional, non routine methods to obtain information?
I am not saying that I think torturing for information is even effective. What I am saying is, things happen in the world that we cannot predict. I don’t want to be blinded and hamstrung by idealism that might not be in the best interests of our nation. I always like to leave room for the unexpected. Wiggle room as it were. It is the pragmatist in me…or perhaps the cynic.
Actually, before things go too far, it might behoove us to define ‘torture.’ We can’t even agree on what it is, much less how to handle it. Look at what we did to Manual Noriega with the extremely loud rock music when he was holed up in the Holy See building in Panama. Is that torture? My father would swear up and down that was torture. Someone like Chris might look forward to it.
Abu Ghraib obviously did us a great deal of damage. Perhaps the degradation involved did more to harm our reputation than the things that might have been defined as torture.
There’s no one credible saying that we have gained or would gain credible information through waterboarding and other torture. If this were the case presumably the intelligence professionals of the world woulkd have advocates out there making the case. The only people making the case are Bush and Cheney. Bush and Cheney :
1. Politicized and used the CIA to their own demented purposes, unlike any other Presidency, to the point of involvement with “outing” spies whose husbands got in their way
2. Are trying to defend their actions and legacy, trying to create confusion as to the extent of how reactionary they were and how fruitless it was3. Are a couple of draft-dodging phonies who for too long have tried to make their names on the backs of our dead soldiers. **** them both. May they shut the **** up and meet their maker and answer for what they have done. (Not the torture so much, but the lying to their people and the profiteering while entangling and weakening our military on the thinnest budget possible).
I only meanyt meet their maker in their time … I’m not quite hateful enough that I wish immediate death upon them. But they really do have and should have zero credibility with Americans.
Kinder, gentler Rick?
Yeah.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/29/levin.cheney/index.html
Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, says former Vice President Dick Cheney is lying when he claims that classified CIA memos show that enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding worked.
“I hope that the documents are declassified, so that people can judge for themselves what is fact, and what is fiction,” he added.
A former State Department official has told CNN that the main purpose of the Bush-era interrogations was finding a link between Iraq and al Qaeda.
Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff for then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, said that the interrogation program began in April and May of 2002, and Cheney’s office kept close tabs on the questioning.
“Its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at preempting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al Qaeda,” Wilkerson wrote in The Washington Note, an online political journal.
So this stunt was orchestrated by Jerry Springer’s publicist, and the Marine who did the waterboarding has since admitted he had no idea what he was doing. Hmmmmmm.
Snippet from an email from Jerry Springer’s publicity person (also Mancow’s) to the Veterans Organization who supplied the “waterboarder”:
You are a ROCK STAR!!!
It is going to have to look “real” but of course would be simulated with Mancow acting like he is drowning. It will be a hoax but have to look real. Would be great if they could dress in fatigues and bring whatever is needed. We will supply the water.
Slowpoke, so you think waterboarding should have been done? Do you think Rick is wrong about torture being done to discover a link between iraq and al quida?
That must have been embarrassing for Bush. A link has never been discovered.
But possibly believed because of “information” gleaned from torture.
I think that Cheney knows that a full accounting of these matters will show abjectly inane behavior on his, Bush’s, all of our parts.
@Moon-howler
Watch the Daniel Pearl beheading video a couple of times, and the History Channel Special on 9/11 called “102 minutes that changed America”, then we’ll talk about waterboarding.
Again I have to side with Elena on this. There is not a soldier out there that wants to fight for a country that treats its prisoner’s inhumanely or in tortuous ways. It is bad enough that a POW has to endure the length of a war in a small cell, often without light, adequate food, and latrine capabilities. POW camps are usually far more miserable than most US jails. Torture almost never obtains credible information, because almost everything a soldier knows, is extremely limited in time, only limited to probably a day or two of operational info about just his immediate unit, and unless you capture a general officer, total void of knowledge of anything strategically or operationally useful. Most soldiers know if they survive the first week, no-one cares about what they know because it is likely not accurate any-more.
If the world outlaws torture altogether, it will not change the outcome of most engagements, becuase it is usually the comm and data channels that provide the most intelligence information today of ANY value. Far better to listen to AL Queda cellphone and telephone converstaions than to torture captured prisoners.
I have seen both, Slow.
Or to infiltrate with active spies. Who, if captured, we hope will not be tortured.
Armchair idealism seems counter-evolutionary to me. If my child were being threatened with dull-blade beheading like Daniel Pearl, I would stop at nothing to save him or her. I wouldn’t sit idly upon my lofty ideals while he or she was having a neck sawed slowly off.
I would like to make a couple of quick observations about this topic:
1) The Geneva Conventions are mute on the treatment of illegal combatants, which is just what the terrorists are. The U.S. would never treat lawful POWs this way. All references in this discussion to the Geneva Conventions are therefore irrelevant.
2) Many of us in the military have undergone training that some of you would consider to be torture. But the statute refers to “extreme” treatment. By definition, if we do it to our own soldiers, the treatment cannot be considered extreme.
For these reasons, I do not think that anything that was done was illegal.
I agree with Rick. Inane. Inept. Illegal. Whatever word we use to define Dick Cheney’s reign, history will judge much more harshly than we are able, crippled as we are by the tactics of fear politics that ultimately made all of us culpable to some degree. Some of us, clearly, remain as terrorized as Cheney would have us back in 2002.