Is doing waterboarding for ‘training’ really different than doing it to ‘torture’?

Didn’t the Military Commisions Act provide for retroactive immunity? Retroactive immunity will be Bush’s legacy.

It is the government fully embracing and echoing the life of George W. Bush.

It spends like a drunk.

It gets into trouble constantly and they have to buy off their judges, so Dubya can get out of jail (how many DUIs?), stay out of Vietnam (daddy helped), “win” an election (SCOTUS helped), make money from a bankrupt company (Harken bought Bushwa), etc..

pma @ 101

The irony is, I never thought I would find myself thinking of John Ashcroft as a defender of our way of life.

I think at this point, we are safe in concluding that irony is dead.

What? Didn’t you hear about their secret Global War on Irony?

Resounding success!

After this terrorism thing they’re going after slapstick.

I’m going to join the EPU parade to say that Liberty Lee’s comments are fascinating. He seems fearful of outside forces, to the point of surrendering his legal rights. He sees the US as being in a struggle to the death with al-Qaeda, or some other dark and mysterious group. …

I think he has lost the capacity for hope and optimism, and it is just another black mark on the republicans that they have hurt so many people in that way.

As he is in the throes of the Conservative movement it only makes sense to believe this is either a natural outcome of being part of that group or it is a calculated result which the leaders of that group are inflicting upon it’s members, and more broadly Americans.

They want to prove our current form of government doesn’t work.

They want to overthrow our government in some way. Dubya is a major first effort. Probably the people behind this aren’t going away, so they will try again later.

It’s just a natural part of our society that these people with money who hire their thugs/employees to do their dirty work will also remain as anonymous as possible and will remain like cockroaches to scurry around in the dark shadows when nobody will see them.

So bush has been has been torturing, murdering, and praticing Satanism since he realized that his Mother was the Bride of Lucifer… I knew that in 1999!

Some people need to be shown now, because they weren’t paying attention before. You know, sorta like in school when some kids didn’t bother learning anything.

Professor Foland @ 11

Also, I’ll make an observation. I think that the Administration has adopted, internally, a stance that basically says, “If it doesn’t break the skin, it’s not torture”.

If it doesn’t break the skin, we don’t have to admit we torture.

Does death in a gas chamber break the skin?

cinnamonape — I’m going to say to you what I said to Sander: You have no idea what didn’t make it into public on the thread. I don’t say things without a reason. Be grateful we have mods.

Sorry Christy. I thought that the statement you made referred to things that WERE on the thread. To my ear those comments (not the ones that were blocked) were justifiable questions that should be asked the nominees.

My apologies, I didn’t know that your original comment was regarding blocked material. I’m sure that it was probably graphic.

cinnamonape @ 154

“yes, that would persuade that person it is torture”

In addition he would demonstrate in this response that the method would compel people to produce either a) true information (that it is torture) or b) erroneous information (it isn’t actually torture, but that person thinks it was). Thus, either way, it entirely undercuts any use of such a technique. It’s either torture or it produces useless information.

But torture doesn’t produce “useless information”. It produced information. Some of it true, some of it (most?) bogus. It brings forth anything and everything, so it is useless on a functional level but it does get the truth. It’s just hidden under a huge pile of shit that cannot be washed off.

As I pointed out…if Mucasey said that THAT individual would admit it’s torture…the information can either be true or false. In either case the justification for waterboarding being a legal interrogation method is undermined. If it produces false information its useless…otherwise it is indeed torture. It could of course be BOTH. But I’m taking Mucasey’s argument that it “might not be” to it’s logical conclusion.