February 9, 2008
Their tortured mindset
Our government’s fun habit of watering the lungs of a few of our terrorist captives was back as a topic of conversation this week as Our Fine President’s top lawyer and the head of the CIA made weighed in with some important news on the subject.
For the first time the use of the torture known as waterboarding during detainee interrogations was publicly confirmed by the government Tuesday as CIA Chief Michael Hayden explained things to the Senate.
“We used it [waterboarding] against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time,” he said. “There was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were inevitable. And we had limited knowledge about Al Qaeda and its workings. Those two realities have changed.”
So, the technique is needed to prevent those new catastrophic attacks even though it’s illegal under numerous US laws and international treaties. Despite this, and the damage the torture has done to our international reputation, Our Fine President still came out and said waterboarding is not illegal and he could authorize it’s use again in the future.
He even had Attorney General Michael Mukasey tell Congress that there can be no criminal investigation of the use of this torture on prisoners because at the time the water was being poured on our captives, the then Attorney General had given the proceedings his approval. So we’re left with the knowledge that our nation has remorselessly tortured, our Vice President thinks it’s a “good thing” and we might do it again if we’ve got a “ticking timebomb” situation where another attack is imminent and one of our prisoners might know something.
Yet somehow this doesn’t all add up. It’s based on the assumption that torture works to produce accurate information instead of eliciting what the subject thinks is the desired response, or perhaps what the subjects wants to tell in order to mislead the inquisitors to send them on a wild goose chase and buy some time.
See if it really is a “ticking timebomb” scenario, then the prisoner will know there’s a timeline to the end of things and he can just wait out the torture. Our Fine President really should know this as he’s always talking about the negative side of timelines when it comes to ending the war. I guess his logic is that torture is so damn effective it’ll cut right through the whole timeline to endgame thing. It still baffles me that so many people with such an evil and despicable belief about how even the worst of their fellow humans should be treated are running this country.
See, I’m glad you cleard this up. Until I read through your blog, I thought the CIA was “motorboating” prisoners to extract information. I didn’t see how that would be all that effective, ‘cuz it’s not really all that unpleasant unless the CIA guy has a scratchy beard.
But now I’ve got to re-paint my “No More CIA Motorboating” protest signs…