I’m afraid you are incorrect. I just temporarily removed the tin foil and, as usual, I was exposed to Obama’s powerful thoughts. His intentions were not good.

I’m not going to do this again for you. It was pure torture.

Yours,
Tom DeGisi, aka Wince and Nod

Tom DeGisi’s last blog post..Look Out, Janet!

And Bush’s were so, so bad.

This article talks about waterboarding very specifically.

This opinion piece puts the debate in perspective.

Here’s the bottom line. I am in favor of the policy of Mutual Assured Destruction. If some power nukes the U.S., I expect us to nuke them back. For it to work people have to be assured we will do it. I am also in favor of missile defense. Many people (like Walter Mondale) who are against missile defense are even more in favor of MAD. MAD is way, way, way worse than torture. That Walter Mondale! What a horrible man! As Vice President, he and his President (Jimmy Carter) practiced MAD. Lock ‘em up, right?

I also beleive in just wars. Just wars don’t just kill people, they maim them. Some of those maimed people will live with pain the rest of their lives. Being maimed is a form of torture, and it is way, way worse than any of the things our interrogators have been accused of. Bill Clinton made preemptive (of genocide / ethnic cleansing ) just war on Serbia. People were killed and maimed. That Bill Clinton! What a horrible man! Lock ‘em up, right?

I also believe in the American criminal justice system. The American criminal justice system puts innocent people in jail. Can’t be helped. It also subjects people to prison rape.
Prison rape is way worse than any of the things our interrogators have been accused of. Congressman Dennis Moore was a district attorney. That Dennis Moore! What a horrible man!Lock ‘im up, right?

Considering that we have actually had the ticking time bomb scenario with Sheik Khalid, I am in favor of rarely applied torture within carefully prescribed legal bounds including proper supervision from multiple branches of government. That’s better than we had with MAD – MAD is the President’s decision only. That’s better then way we have with war fighting power – as that aspirin factory in the Sudan attests – those missiles were the President’s decision only. And if we design it right it will be better than the criminal justice system – the D.A. has a lot of relatively unchecked power.

Yours,
Tom DeGisi, aka Wince and Nod

Tom DeGisi’s last blog post..Look Out, Janet!

Can you really be arguing that I said there was no law against torture? The words “every anti-torture law I have seen” rather firmly contradict your implication.

Unless that law defines “severe physical or mental pain or suffering”, I would say it is vague and overbroad.

Waterboarding is practiced during SERE training.

“We know waterboarding is torture, because the US has previously prosecuted war criminals for doing it.”

No we don’t. If the war criminals did it to American POW’s it was illegal for entirely different reasons.

“The Spanish Inquisition eventually outlawed the practice– it was too cruel.”

I would rather be waterboarded than have Social Services put my child in foster care for a week – or than spend a night in jail waiting for trial. Both of these can happen to innocent people. Cruelty is in the eye of the beholder.

A broad reading of that law would prohibit police from threatening people with a long prison sentence to get them to cooperate. Facing that choice would cause me severe mental pain and suffering.

You need to think about the very nasty things we already do and that you are comfortable with. I understand waterboarding is over very quickly.

BTW, considering that caterpillar:

I can make a liberal confess – just by putting him in a small box with Rush Limbaugh.

I can make a conservative confess – just by putting him in a small box with Michael Moore.

But wait, this can be improved by using goverment employees to save money!

I can make a conservative confess – just by putting him in a small box with Hillary Clinton.

Too bad Cheney isn’t VP anymore, though, because I can make a liberal confess – just by putting him in a small box with Dick Cheney – and we no longer would need an undisclosed location!

Yours,
Tom DeGisi, aka Wince and Nod

Tom DeGisi’s last blog post..Look Out, Janet!

This was what the Bush admin lawyers were trying to do in these memos- NOT “authorize torture,” but rather define the limit of what techniques are “torture” and illegal, and not to be done. In this they had no precedential guidance at all. Now, setting waterboarding aside for a moment, are you prepared to say that the other techniques involved are so clearly and unequivocally ‘torture’ that no reasonable legal minsd could reach a different conclusion? I don’t think so.

As for the Big One, waterboarding- the Left repeats over and over again the claim that Japanese were convicted of torture for waterboarding, alone, and not including bonafide no-question torture involving split bamboo and the like: but I’ve never seen substantiation of this claim.

It is also extremely important, I think, to distinguish between the form of waterboarding where water is actually introduced into the breathing passages, a form of part-drowning which can cause severe or fatal injury; and the CIA version where the drowning sensation is an illusion, and no water actually enters the lungs.

Several protesters have volunteered to be waterboarded, and all walked away unharmed. How many Code Pink volunteers do you think there would be to have battery acid ripped into their eyes?

18 United States Code Title 18, §2340(2) – “‘torture’ means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control.”

This doesn’t seem ambiguous to me. waterboarding is torture. We know waterboarding is torture, because the US has previously prosecuted war criminals for doing it. The Spanish Inquisition eventually outlawed the practice– it was too cruel.

We engaged in it.

If anti-torture laws criminalize things which are common police practice, I would suggest that police are engaging in torture, and need to be brought to justice.

Punning Pundit’s last blog post..3 Quick hits:

If Punning Pundit can point me to the specific, non-vague, non-broad law that was broken, I would appreciate it. Please remember, the Army Field manual law post dates these events.

Yours,
Tom DeGisi, aka Wince and Nod

Tom DeGisi’s last blog post..Look Out, Janet!

There is no lack of rule by law under that system. It does fairly well at protecting our fourth amendment rights without criminalizing mistakes either under fire – in the case of the cops – or mistakes of interpretation – in the case of the lawyers / officials who developed the policies they worked under.

It is a mistake to criminalize policy mistakes. The officials in this question were trying to properly draw the line between coercive interrogation and torture – just as Bill Clinton was trying to destroy a factory creating WMDs. You disagree with what they did. The destruction of that factory was worse for the people who were killed than those interrogations were for the people who were interrogated. So you must want to prosecute Clinton, right?

Did I can read Ron carefully?

Yours,
Tom DeGisi, aka Wince and Nod

Tom DeGisi’s last blog post..Look Out, Janet!

I read a lot of opinions in the opinion piece at that URL. Well informed opinion. Expert opinion, even. Eye witness testimony, sure. But since I have also read good well-formed analysis which questions that opinion piece, I wouldn’t say facts.

Yours,
Tom DeGisi, aka Wince and Nod

Tom DeGisi’s last blog post..Look Out, Janet!