Monsters

The truth hurts.

The answer is 'yes'

Jake Tapper asks Obama if he believes the Bush Administration authorized torture. That was three minutes ago. Obama is still talking, but has not answered the question.

The answer is, "yes."

I wish he would just say that.

Shepard Smith: 'We are America! We do not f***ing torture!'

Wow.

Shepard Smith might be on the street looking for a new job sometime soon - and not because he unleashed a stream of profanity on live television* during a discussion about torture.



No, the problem for Shep is that he seems to have forgotten where he works. Maybe you can diss torture at some liberal hothouse like MSNBCACLU, but at Fox "News"? There's probably a special room at Gitmo reserved exclusively for Fox personalities who wander that far away from the party line.

[h/t Digby]

_{* Smith's comments appear to have been made online, rather than on TV.}

For the wingnut sociopath who has everything

Stay classy, conservatives.

Bad Apples

Tom Tomorrow:

'Ambivalent on Torture'

Celebrated public intellectual and New York Times columnist Bill Kristol tells Jon Stewart he doesn't know if torture is good or bad.

[Via C&L]



As disgusting as the equivocation is, it is made even worse by the fact that Kristol smiles and laughs as he says it. Is it too much to ask that if a person cannot bring himself to condemn torture, that he seem at least conflicted about it, if not haunted?

Nice try, by the way, on advancing the fiction that John McCain is a principled opponent of torture. Too bad we already know better.

McCain's 'heartbreaking' compromise on torture

Andrew Sullivan cannot contain his disappointment in St. McCain.

I'm heartbroken. Torture is illegal and immoral whether it is conducted by the military or the CIA. That was McCain's original position. It appears it is no longer. Marty Lederman homes in on the key point:

Senator McCain rightly insists that the U.S. may not (i) torture; (ii) engage in cruel treatment prohibited by Common Article 3; or (iii) engage in conduct that shocks the conscience, under the McCain Amendment. He also insists that waterboarding violates each of these legal restrictions, that the Bush Administration's legal analysis has been dishonest and flatly wrong, and that we need "a good faith interpretation of the statutes that guide what is permissible in the CIA program."

The Feinstein Amendment would have accomplished all of these objectives, but Senator McCain voted against it, presumably because he wishes that the CIA be permitted to continue the use of other of its enhanced techniques, apart from waterboarding. Those techniques are reported to include stress positions, hypothermia, threats to the detainee and his family, severe sleep deprivation, and severe sensory deprivation. Senator McCain has not explained which of these he thinks are not torture and cruel treatment, nor which he would wish to preserve for use by the CIA. But if the President does as he has promised and follows Senator McCain's lead by vetoing this bill, the CIA will continue to assert the right to use all of these techniques -- and possibly waterboarding, as well.

[...]

I simply cannot see any explanation for this except politics - that McCain feels the need to appease the Republican far right at this point in time, and, tragically, the right to torture has now become a litmus test of "conservative" orthodoxy. It's a Karl Rove wedge issue of a classic kind: using the crudest of emotional appeals to gin up populist authoritarianism for the sake of Republican partisan advantage in wartime. There is nothing conservative about torture, of course. But the authoritarians of the far right are hardly conservatives in the traditional sense either.

So McCain reveals himself as a positioner even on the subject on which he has gained a reputation for unimpeachable integrity.

And, sadly, McCain's pandering to the right on torture is likely to go a long way toward restoring his conservative street cred. What a horrible entity the Republican Party has become.

House bans torture

The House of Representatives approved an intelligence bill today that prohibits the use of physical and psychological torture techniques such as waterboarding and mock executions.

The 222-199 vote sent the measure to the Senate, which still must act before it can go to President Bush. The White House has threatened a veto.

[...]

One provision requires reporting to the committees on whether intelligence agency employees are complying with protections for detainees from cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. Another requires a report on the use of private contractors in intelligence work.

It is the first intelligence authorization conference bill Congress has produced in three years.

The White House threatened to veto the measure this week in a lengthy statement, highlighting more than 11 areas of disagreement with the bill.

The administration particularly opposes restricting the CIA to interrogation methods approved by the military in 2006. That document prohibits forcing detainees to be naked, perform sexual acts, or pose in a sexual manner; placing hoods or sacks over detainees' heads or duct tape over their eyes; beating, shocking, or burning detainees; threatening them with military dogs; exposing them to extreme heat or cold; conducting mock executions; depriving them of food, water, or medical care; and waterboarding.

Waterboarding is a particularly harsh form of interrogation that involves strapping down a prisoner, covering his mouth with plastic or cloth and pouring water over his face. The prisoner quickly begins to inhale water, causing the sensation of drowning.

I am equally distressed by two facts:

1. That the AP is so eager to employ Bush's framing of the torture issue that the word "torture" appears nowhere in this story; and

2. That 199 members of congress believe American intelligence agencies should be allowed to treat human beings in the following manner - ... forcing detainees to be naked, perform sexual acts, or pose in a sexual manner; placing hoods or sacks over detainees' heads or duct tape over their eyes; beating, shocking, or burning detainees; threatening them with military dogs; exposing them to extreme heat or cold; conducting mock executions; depriving them of food, water, or medical care; and waterboarding.

For God's sake, President Bush and the Republicans don't even want to declare that beating, shocking, and burning people is out of bounds? And the AP isn't even willing to call that "torture?"

We have a narrow window during which this country can reclaim its soul. I pray that we do not let this opportunity slip away.

Torture

Andrew Sullivan:

So when you look at what torture has done already to the United States, we see that every bad scenario that those of us who oppose torture feared has actually come about. And we have no independent evidence that it has solved anything, or saved any lives, except the self-serving statements of those who authorized it. And the truth is: we will probably never know. If they are cynical and brazen enough to destroy incriminating tapes, they are cynical and brazen enough to destroy any evidence within the executive branch that could prove that their torture policy has failed. If this isn't a form of tyranny, annexed to torture, what is? And if the executive branch can simply get away with it, and have serious commentators defend the president's trashing of the Constitution as necessary to fulfill his oath of office, we really have left the rule of law behind in the ditch.

Huckabee opposes torture

It's great that Mike Huckabee opposes torture and acknowledges that waterboarding is, indeed, torture.

After the Iowa poll showed that Republican voters like him but found him much less "presidential" and "electable" than Romney, Huckabee sought to build his foreign policy credentials, meeting with a group of retired generals who are in Des Moines to urge the 2008 candidates to commit to opposing torture. After the meeting, Huckabee joined Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in declaring his opposition to the interrogation procedure known as "waterboarding," and said he would support closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a contrast with the other leading Republicans.

But why did he need to be convinced? You would think that a man who is intimately familiar with the life and teachings of Christ would have figured out a long time ago that torture is an inexcusable assault on the God-given dignity of human beings; and that it does as much, if not more, to degrade the torturer as it does the victim.

I don't find it particularly encouraging that Huckabee needed John McCain and a group of retired generals to help him understand that. We already have a supposedly Christian president with a broken moral compass who needs to be cajoled into doing the right thing. Do we need another?

Sanity!

Turning its eyes to God, America's largest organized group of Evangelical Christians has condemned torture.

The National Association of Evangelicals has endorsed an anti-torture statement saying the United States has crossed "boundaries of what is legally and morally permissible" in its treatment of detainees and war prisoners in the fight against terror.

Human rights violations committed in the name of preventing terrorist attacks have made the country look hypocritical to the Muslim world, the document states. Christians have an obligation rooted in Scripture to help Americans "regain our moral clarity."

"Our military and intelligence forces have worked diligently to prevent further attacks. But such efforts must not include measures that violate our own core values," the document says. "The United States historically has been a leader in supporting international human rights efforts, but our moral vision has blurred since 9-11."

It is shameful that there is even a need to assert that Christians, of all people, oppose torture. That should go without saying, but in Bush's America, it does not. Some of the most prominent Christian activists in this country have, at best, looked the other way when it came to ruinous economic policy, disastrous environmental policy, and the unprovoked, illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

With respect to torture, I don't know why every Christian with a mouth has not been screaming toward heaven in opposition to it. It's not complicated. The Bible tells us all we need to know about how we are to behave toward aliens living among us.

When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.

Leviticus 19:33,34

Thank God that the NAE has seen the light and has demonstrated the courage to speak out.