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Harry Truman by Tom Simpson at flickr.com
On Saturday at the latest Republican debate a solid majority of the candidates embraced the prospect of waterboarding a foreigner. Only the marginalized Paul and ostracized Huntsman disapproved.
Carrying on the charade — but then what else does she have — Michelle Bachmann stated this in an interview:
“If I were president, I would be willing to use waterboarding,” the Minnesota Republican declared. “It was very effective. It gained information for our country.”
Well, actually no it was not at all effective. It just made sociopaths feel better.
And then it was time to drop the other non-historical big one:
“I would go back to president Harry Truman who had to make the horrific decision about dropping an atomic bomb on Japan to end World War II. He said if he had to kill Japanese in order to save one American life, he would.”
This is an old conservative canard glorified by the same old never shamed frauds like Cliff May, who must be passing Bachmann large print cards to read it from. The mass bombings, including the dropping of nuclear bombs is not something to excuse or glorify, but neither is it an excuse to torture. Besides, if waterboarding is suddenly fine and awesome why did this happen:
…in 1947, the United States charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian. The subject was strapped on a stretcher that was tilted so that his feet were in the air and head near the floor, and small amounts of water were poured over his face, leaving him gasping for air until he agreed to talk.
“Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor,”
And he wasn’t the only one.
Who was President in 1947 anyway?
UPDATE: In unrelated…but somehow related news for the tenor of the times…Bloomberg has had ENOUGH of this whole First Amendment thing.
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I can say who should be preznit. http://www.themudflats.net/2011/11/15/open-thread-yirqa-kuik-occupy-the-river/
Crap guess i will let er fly. Cant really go back at this point.
Torture is listening to people bend over backwards to believe the unbelievable. Waterboarding worked, no one was permanently harmed and it was used on only three people in a time of great duress. At least the terrorists are prepared to support their fanaticism with their lives, unlike the fanatics here.
Now that sounds a lot like China.
Esther’s my kinda girl, homeroid.
I can understand her more than i can Cain or Perry.
The rethugs need to pull from the minor leagues. This clown car is just not doing it.
I guess i should say that if your going to steal an election. One would run an unattached.
They’re drawing fire from Romney, and trying to make him look moderate. You gotta give ‘em points for trying.
There’s a secret weapon that ensures victory. Which means, of course, the Democrats won’t ever use it.
Cant argue with you there.:)
Good morning all,
Ah, some Torture/ Murder/ Treason by the bush party and celebrated by the o administration
Fascists revel in others pain & death, it’s what their gOD likes them to do . It’s the old sacrifice thingy.
Anyone can see the Atomic energy and the Atomic Weapons developed form that process ushered in a safe and secure world undreamed of , like Hiroshima Nagasaki ,Chernobyl, Iraq (DU) and Fukushima . To hear some glow about it sounds like the best thing since sliced bread.
Love these bible names in the morning today Cain,” from the evil one” at one end and Esther hanging the republican Hamon on a death machine he built to Murder others.
Good day.
O/T NYPD Rape Camp in Zucotti Park last night with counter terrorist units.
o must have said shut it down, shut it down now..
Full throttle fascism is upon us .
Mornin tjbs. I dont think i want to go nucklur in this thread. The rights of the people to assemble is what’s in order today. All the people who are occupying are gods. Just remember they cannot crash the internet but at their demise.
If Bloomberg can order the park cleared for “health and safety concerns”, does that mean he supports all the dictators in the middle east breaking up demonstrations due to “health and safety” concerns?
A-yep. They wanted to go in with rubber bullets but there are too many people there with cameras rolling 24/7 for that.
Heh! Well, guys like Daniel Pipes hate the Arab Spring because it toppled Mubarak, who helped Israel marginalize the Gazans, so it wouldn’t surprise me if Bloomie’s secretly rooting for Assad.
Got proof it worked? Ever? Name three times it did, and be ready to show your work.
Good morning all.
Compared to the rest of that bunch, Romney IS a moderate.
I dunno why they stop at waterboarding, there’s plenty of more macho tortures out there that will get the same quality of information much more quickly.
Yeah, they’re messier, but I assume the GOPers plan to kill the subject after he talks anyway.
Boxturtle (Would be more supportive of torture if it was used on politicians testifying under oath)
I thought we all had a right to assemble? Am i wrong in that understanding.
Only the 1%ers have the right to assemble, and only in Wall St. trading rooms.
Not to worry, we’ll be back. With anti-Obama signs this time. Bloomberg may regret picking this fight, NYC is LOADED with liberal lawyers.
Boxturtle (Bloomberg will be out of office before the lawsuits he’s started are settled)
Conservative talkers and writers love to pull out the old “liberals-are-changing-the-country-from-what-the-founding-fathers-enivisioned” canard over and over but it wasn’t liberals who made the question of whether or not torture is acceptable a legitimate debate question. That the question is even asked is more damning than the responses.
Of course this will earn us at least another dozen or so of Ron Paul is the shit diaries around here.
Why, sure we do. But we have to wait for the government to do something, then we have to sue in court, wait our turn, appeal or defend against an appeal, wait our turn, move it into federal court, wait our turn, move it to federal appeals, wait our turn, then we wait for the supremes.
Shouldn’t take more than 5-6 years, if the supremems decline to hear the case. Then we can go back to protesting.
Boxturtle (Did I mention that the GOPers have given us a shortage of judges, so everything is slower?)
Can we draw and quarter yet, with the four horses no less?
They beat the shit out of a city council person ,drew blood.
You be afraid of them cause they ain’t afraid to go goon after dark.
We can’t use the horses. Laws regarding mistreatment of animals are actually tougher than the ones regarding mistreatment of humans anymore.
Boxturtle (But don’t worry, we can achieve the same effect with Ford’s)
“They” who? Got a link?
Boxturtle (Office blocked some of the links above)
I cannot abide violence. I live in a land filled with war machines. Anyone think they will vote out the MIC Aint gona happen. We live with the fact that it is all about war.Oil is nice on top though. And i am so going to be killed.
Made in U.S.A — mostly.
I mostly agree with Attaturk. Still, there’s not fresh, new info on this subject other than the bobbing and weaving from WH wannabes, which is expected and was heard before from others.
Those held accountable are almost always the losers in combat. There is no support structure remaining to protect the culpable, or itself.
More often than not the victors (and nominal victors) manage to skate, like Stalin and Mao (and their operatives), unless their misconduct gets publicized and controversial, and that becomes a threat to other PTB nearby.
Napoleon and his soldiers were born too early to be tested this way. One can imagine what they would have done with an arsenal as advanced as, say, Hitler’s, AND if they found they could not win without using it to the max. The cause, itself, would have had nothing to do with that calculation.
Back to our times. . . I expect there are lots of other incidents we will never hear about, won’t be prosecuted, etc., simply because they will be kept under wraps and there is no benefit in pursuing them.
Vasilikos, Semprún, and Costa-Gavras on the hygienic approach in the movie Z:
(Link to script)
The cops
Everyone except possibly Huntsman will do exactly as they’re told. I have no hope that Romney is anything but a first class tool. He has better hair, and has marginally better communications skills than anyone in the Krazy Klown Kar.
Torture is very effective… if you want a prisoner to make a false confession. The Bush administration desperately needed an al-Qaeda detainee to say that Iraq was tied in with the 9/11 terrorists, and torture got them what they wanted.