Rudy Giuliani said in Iowa Wednesday that he didn’t know if water-boarding was torture. “It depends on the circumstances,” he said. “It depends on who does it.”
That brought a sharp rebuke from John McCain, the lone voice of moral clarity in the GOP on torture. “It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture,” he said.
McCain pointed to its use by the Spanish Inquisition, Cambodian leader Pol Pot, and reportedly by the Burmese government against Buddhist monks.
Giuliani and other GOP leaders would put America in this company?
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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36 Comments
Karaoke is torture! IMHO.
What is the basis (except for McCain) in the sick obsession with torture on the part of Republicans?
I know that they enjoy the suffering of others, but does this have a limit?
Did you see the Bill Moyer’s Journal Friday night? It was devoted to the subject of presidential constitutional power versus congressional statutory power – it was fascinating. But the subject of torture – strangely enough – boiled down to both commentators agreeing that torture is contrary to the Constitution, but neither commentator could agree – or would even hazard a guess – as to the definition of torture. But both commentators appeared by the end of the show to agree that water-boardings was torture, and is therefore unconstitutional and in violation of the U.S. Code.
that he didn’t know if water-boarding was torture. “It depends on the circumstances,” he said. “It depends on who does it.”
JR there is your answer to Conservative and torture, I get the feeling that the same ones who defend the practice against terror suspects. Would be screaming the loudest if our troops suffered the same fate. Everything is “political” even torture, mental torture, physical torture, tortured logic, everything!
For starters: Torture Doesn’t Work!!
Lenny Bruce did a bit 40 years ago about torturers melting hot lead and sticking a funnel in a guy’s ass. “You want secrets? I’ll make up secrets! Just don’t give me a hot lead enema!!”
McCain is unique in that he knows firsthand that torture doesn’t work.
But Republic Party voters can’t swallow his moral clarity because most so-called “conservatives” are sadists. They want to punish brown people for taking jobs in America even without proper immigration documentation. They want to kill brown people who worship a different way. They want poor children to go without health care.
Monkey,Again with these outrageous accusations of Republicans. You DO have proof, right?
“What is the basis (except for McCain) in the sick obsession with torture on the part of Republicans?
I know that they enjoy the suffering of others, but does this have a limit?”
Heheheh! Well, you could always look at their obsession with LGBT people for the answer. I has NO limit if it gets them a few votes.
And.. btw, how is that moral clarity thing WORKING for john?
Seems like he is really trailing in the polls. In the republic party, it appears that “moral clarity” equals “LOSER”.
yeah kfg. Inflicting pain or calling out bloddy chickens seems to be pre-requisite to being Republican.
Remember the tortured (not a pun) hypothetical they always bring up?
“You’ve got Achmed. Achmed knows where 17 nuclear bombs are about to go off.”
“But Achmed aint talking.”
“What do you do?”
“What DO you do????”‘ Huh?
“Little-known fact about about the first time Bush is mentioned in the NYT in 1967
http://www.godeke.org/News/PhiAlumnus_GeorgeWBush9.2.ht...
Cartoon on Bush recalls Yale frat hazing
BY KIMBERLY CHOWS AND JACK MIRKINSONSContributing Reporters
Cartoonist Garry Trudeau ‘70 said he thinks a little-known fact about President George W. Bush ’68’s past — that his first mention in The New York Times occurred in 1967 when, as former president of the Delta Kappa Epsilon chapter at Yale, Bush defended the fraternity’s practice of branding its pledges with a red-hot coat hanger — deserves more national attention.
On Sunday, Trudeau’s cartoon “Doonesbury” featured fictional character Mark Slackmeyer explaining the President’s position against current anti-torture legislation by revisiting a series of 1967 Yale Daily News articles that exposed DKE’s rush activities, which at the time included brandings and alleged beatings. Soon after these stories were published, the University’s Inter-Fraternity Council fined the fraternity for performing “physically and mentally degrading acts,” and the Times published an article in which Bush defended the brandings, comparing them to cigarette burns.
“At the time, it caused quite a stir on campus, even generating some national attention,” Trudeau said.
The News article, published Nov. 3, 1967, featured a photograph of a half-inch high “D” burned into a pledge’s naked backside. Trudeau drew his first cartoon for the News for the story — a picture of smiling pledges, naked and bent over at the waist, with a figure holding a DKE branding iron standing over them.
In a News story the next day, Bush is quoted calling the branding “insignificant.” He said he did not understand how the News “can assume Yale has to be so haughty not to allow this type of pledging to go on.”
You just know that he’s the kinda guy who LAUGHS when someone falls and hurts themselves. Instead of helping that person up or rushing to their aid.
And the comments here are PRICELESS!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389×2151203
Water boarding was invented by the Spanish as a means of torture during the Inquisition. It was used by the Nazis and some SS went on record on how brutal it was. Guiliani and Bush’s choice for attorney general think it’s a perfectly good means to use for interrogation. I wonder if they’d use it on their mothers.
I understand that there were Japanese soldiers tried for war crimes because of water-boarding, and I believe there have been U.S. prison officials (perhaps in Texas) that were also prosecuted for water-boarding.
Lindsey Graham and John McCain both this morning refused to say that the AG nominee would be rejected by them if he didn’t acknowledge in the next round of hearings that water-boarding was torture, but they at least strongly suggested that his answer to this question would be one of their prominent concerns. Let’s see what happens.
“Let’s see what happens.”
Ummmmmm…. ok. I’ll play.
I bet that…
The republicans vote as a block and threaten a fillibuster.
That threat will make the democrats pee their little panties and roll over and confirm this guy.
How? Well for starters, the democrats WONT vote as a block.
The bedwetters amongst them will roll over.
Roberts? Alito? Anyone?
Meet the new boss same as the old boss. Funny, the democrats cant stop these facists whether they are in the MAJORITY or the MINORITY.
And the repukes seem to have control no matter if THEY are in the minority or majority.
WTF?
If Americans chose to elect leaders who worked together to build a more perfect Union, government would come up with better solutions.
Democracy works. The American people are suffering the consequences of their particular style of participation in government. Nothing in the Constitution protects the People from tossing their freedoms away by electing those who are willing participants in that process.
If, or when, Americans want more voices of moral clarity in government they’ll elect them. The principles of separation of powers, checks and balances, popular sovereignty, and limited government will be valued more than raw power. The degree of devastation of their way of life Americans will have to experience to get them there is the great unknown. You’d have thought the soaring price of EVERYTHING, leaving their children’s and unborn children’s children in massive debt, living with more debt than savings, watching the wholesale destruction of basic liberties, seeing jobs off-shored, the sinking value of the dollar, corruption in government, etc. throughout the past decade would have done it.
“And the repukes seem to have control no matter if THEY are in the minority or majority.
WTF?”
We’re in a holding pattern hoping things that have gone terribly wrong under Republican leadership don’t get worse, like George W. Bush actually starting WW3. Bad decisions often take on a life of their own, like the decision to launch pre-emptive war against Iraq. It’s going to have to play itself out, and we’re just going to have to take the consequences.
“If Americans chose to elect leaders who worked together to build a more perfect Union, government would come up with better solutions.”
Didnt voters think they were electing a “uniter not a divider”?
They need better lie detecting instincts. And a willingness to elect candidates by some criteria other than how many times they say 9/11 or jesus in every speech…
The report of bush’s college “antics” sounded like the stories you hear about the youth of serial killers. Now that I think about it bushco have been THE single most successful killers in modern times. And still evading law enforcement or accountability…
During questioning the potential AG said that he was familiar with water boarding. How can a well educated person have lived under a rock for so long when there have been numerous tales of Americans torturing Iraqis and Canadians that mention water boarding. There was even talk of legislation which McCain finally caved in and supported concerning torture. Yet this AG nominee tells the Senate that he hadn’t heard about water boarding.
Somehow I think he was lying but since it wasn’t about a BJ the Republicans could care less.
I think we shouldn’t tortue anyone.
I think we should give prisoners flowers and be nice to them, even if they are terrorists.
If we just make them like us, maybe they will be nice to us.
If we are kind to them, they will be kind to us.
I must go now and look for that giant rabbit I saw in my backyard this morning.
Sorry Twinkle, but it actually does work that way. During the American Revolution the British soldiers were more apt to surrender to the Americans because they knew, under orders of General Washington, that the POWs wouldn’t be tortured. The CIA and military (pre-Bush) wouldn’t use torture and preferred to coerce the prisoners into believing that the Americans were friendlier and that giving info to the Americans would be like helping a friend out.
Those methods worked, torture hasn’t. What great information has been gleamed from torture? The Bush regime tortures prisoners and they tell them of outrageous plots that never existed merely to prevent more torture. Bush then turns around and says these fictional plots were prevented and therefore his “war on terror” is working.
Guess the ‘relativist’ republicans think it depends on who is the torturee, and who is the torturer!
It would seem that the admins. logic is ” freedom is not America’s gift to the world, it is God’s gift to mankind”, of course that wouldn’t include freedom from or to torture.
>> Didnt voters think they were electing a “uniter not a divider”? >>
From a man who said dictatorship would be great if he was the dictator?
People knew what a phony Bush was. They knew he was a draft dodger using the Guard to avoid service while other young men went in his place. They knew he was a drunken driver who hid the records. They knew that as a child he enjoyed blowing up frogs with firecrackers. They knew that as president of his fraternity he branded pledges. They knew he never began a business venture , and worse damaged others. They knew that as governor of Texas he had a horribly high rate of death row executions and that he never found pity in his heart for even one of the condemned.
We the People knew and we ignored what we knew to believe the lie that this man was a “uniter.”
Democracy works. The People don’t get a pass when they blow it.
“Now that I think about it bushco have been THE single most successful killers in modern times.”
George W. Bush was a serial killer as governor of Texas and a Mass murderer as president of the United States.
“And still evading law enforcement or accountability…”
This is only happening because the US people are allowing it to happen.
Kind of tells you everything you need to know about the soullessness of the Repubican Party, this countenancing and endorsement of torture as OK if we do it.
Like those who have never really served in the military who are so willing to fight wars and send our young to their deaths, those who condone torture have never been tortured. McCain speaks from experience, and for that I respect him.
Having republicans in office who torture is disgusting. They should be tried as war criminals.
Mccain is more decent that Guilianni.
McCain lone GOP voice of moral clarity on torture
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/28/senate.mukasey/index.html
“Sen. John McCain, a Republican presidential candidate, told reporters he disagrees with Mukasey on the waterboarding issue but may still vote to confirm him.”
“I will judge him on his record, on his appearances and what he has to say,” said McCain who was once a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. “And clearly waterboarding is torture and it’s a big issue with me.”
Disagrees with him but may still vote to confirm him, ya there’s real clarity atleast as much as any Republican can be clear without showing their true colors.
WATCH HOW FAST MY BLOG “ERASES” UNDER FEAR FROM THE CORRUPT OF SG COUNTY!
WATCH HOW FAST MY BLOG “ERASES” UNDER FEAR FROM THE CORRUPT OF SG COUNTY!
“What is the basis (except for McCain) in the sick obsession with torture on the part of Republicans”
Probably to keep you and millions of others from dying in a brutal terrorist attack. We don’t want to allow terrorist attacks to happen because of polical correctness. I don’t know about you, but I would rather have a terrorist go through a little discomfort than have millions of dead Americas.
Sorry. Meant “political correctness.”
Those are my words you re post.
Ya know? I’m not afraid of a terrorist attack. Statistically, I’m more likely to be hit by a car or lightning even.
No what I AM afraid of and will fight is those who would use fear and hate to try and drive me while they are driving me and scaring me to do more and more…..
for them.
I’ve met the enemy “proud Republican” it’s you.
“WATCH HOW FAST MY BLOG “ERASES” UNDER FEAR FROM THE CORRUPT OF SG COUNTY!”Go take your meds, dad.
Kudos JR, I couldn’t agree more. When we stoop to torture, then were no better than our enemies.We’ve lost so much already in our country..when we start condoning torture, it’s just another aspect of our spiral downward.
This is a war of Good vs Evil
Evil uses Hate & FearGood uses Truth & FaithIts not so funny how the Republicans try to use God to spread fear and hate, Some how they believe that they need lies & fear to work the faithful, but its the lies, the hate, and the fear, that shows their Evil intent.
McCain’s not the lone voice among the presidential contenders — Huckabee is opposed to torture as well.