Part of the problem wingnuts have with torture is distinguishing it from just another fun Friday night- Gary Aldridge was a former dean at Falwell's Liberty University- OCTOBER 8--An Alabama minister who died in June of "accidental mechanical asphyxia" was found hogtied and wearing two complete wet suits, including a face mask, diving gloves and slippers, rubberized underwear, and a head mask, according to an autopsy report. Investigators determined that Rev. Gary Aldridge's death was not caused by foul play and that the 51-year-old pastor of Montgomery's Thorington Road Baptist Church was alone in his home at the time he died (while apparently in the midst of some autoerotic undertaking). While the Montgomery Advertiser, which first obtained the autopsy records, reported on Aldridge's two wet suits, the family newspaper chose not to mention what police discovered inside the minister's rubber briefs. http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/1008072scuba1.html I'm sure tj's compatriot would share his sentiments on water sports and all things anal.
Um, it wasn't quite skinny-dipping. But then you knew that. Notice the attempt by torture apologists to confuse acts of torture... acts done against the will of a person... with choices? That's why you see Abu Ghraib described as fraternity pranks, waterboarding becomes "dunk someone in water," and "skinny-dipping in cold water" is offered up to be the same thing as: Anyone with any shred of humanity can see the difference between the above quote and skinny-dipping. The really sad thing is that both TJ and basso can see it too, but they can't admit it out of some twisted allegiance to the administration.
First, that's crap. They were interrogating a bunch of people. Look at the documentation and the news reports. Heck, just Google Abu Ghraib interrogations. That is truly one of your more moronic statements ever. Second, you say this as if it is some kind of mitigating factor... as if torture is OK if you're not interrogating people. You are truly messed up.
Then be clear... and no apologies for getting the "no interrogations at AG" so wrong? By the way, what do you think of US-approved torture in support of interrogations?
some good reading for you here rimman. i've bolded some important parts so it's easier for Deck to digest. http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110010861 [rquoter]The Insanity of Bush Hatred Our politics suffer when passions overcome reason and vitriol becomes virtue. BY PETER BERKOWITZ Wednesday, November 14, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST Hating the president is almost as old as the republic itself. The people, or various factions among them, have indulged in Clinton hatred, Reagan hatred, Nixon hatred, LBJ hatred, FDR hatred, Lincoln hatred, and John Adams hatred, to mention only the more extravagant hatreds that we Americans have conceived for our presidents. But Bush hatred is different. It's not that this time members of the intellectual class have been swept away by passion and become votaries of anger and loathing. Alas, intellectuals have always been prone to employ their learning and fine words to whip up resentment and demonize the competition. Bush hatred, however, is distinguished by the pride intellectuals have taken in their hatred, openly endorsing it as a virtue and enthusiastically proclaiming that their hatred is not only a rational response to the president and his administration but a mark of good moral hygiene. This distinguishing feature of Bush hatred was brought home to me on a recent visit to Princeton University. I had been invited to appear on a panel to debate the ideas in Princeton professor and American Prospect editor Paul Starr's excellent new book, "Freedom's Power: The True Force of Liberalism." To put in context Prof. Starr's grounding of contemporary progressivism in the larger liberal tradition, I recounted to the Princeton audience an exchange at a dinner I hosted in Washington in June 2004 for several distinguished progressive scholars, journalists, and policy analysts. To get the conversation rolling at that D.C. dinner--and perhaps mischievously--I wondered aloud whether Bush hatred had not made rational discussion of politics in Washington all but impossible. One guest responded in a loud, seething, in-your-face voice, "What's irrational about hating George W. Bush?" His vehemence caused his fellow progressives to gather around and lean in, like kids on a playground who see a fight brewing. Reluctant to see the dinner fall apart before drinks had been served, I sought to ease the tension. I said, gently, that I rarely found hatred a rational force in politics, but, who knows, perhaps this was a special case. And then I tried to change the subject. But my dinner companion wouldn't allow it. "No," he said, angrily. "You started it. You make the case that it's not rational to hate Bush." I looked around the table for help. Instead, I found faces keen for my response. So, for several minutes, I held forth, suggesting that however wrongheaded or harmful to the national interest the president's policies may have seemed to my progressive colleagues, hatred tended to cloud judgment, and therefore was a passion that a citizen should not be proud of being in the grips of and should avoid bringing to public debate. Propositions, one might have thought, that would not be controversial among intellectuals devoted to thinking and writing about politics. But controversial they were. Finally, another guest, a man I had long admired, an incisive thinker and a political moderate, cleared his throat, and asked if he could interject. I welcomed his intervention, confident that he would ease the tension by lending his authority in support of the sole claim that I was defending, namely, that Bush hatred subverted sound thinking. He cleared his throat for a second time. Then, with all eyes on him, and measuring every word, he proclaimed, "I . . . hate . . . the . . . way . . . Bush . . . talks." And so, I told my Princeton audience, in the context of a Bush hatred and a corollary contempt for conservatism so virulent that it had addled the minds of many of our leading progressive intellectuals, Prof. Starr deserved special recognition for keeping his head in his analysis of liberalism and progressivism. Then I got on with my prepared remarks. But as at that D.C. dinner in late spring of 2004, so again in early autumn 2007 at dinner following the Princeton panel, several of my progressive colleagues seized upon my remarks against giving oneself over to hatred. And they vigorously rejected the notion. Both a professor of political theory and a nationally syndicated columnist insisted that I was wrong to condemn hatred as a passion that impaired political judgment. On the contrary, they argued, Bush hatred was fully warranted considering his theft of the 2000 election in Florida with the aid of the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore; his politicization of national security by making the invasion of Iraq an issue in the 2002 midterm elections; and his shredding of the Constitution to authorize the torture of enemy combatants. Of course, these very examples illustrate nothing so much as the damage hatred inflicts on the intellect. Many of my colleagues at Princeton that evening seemed not to have considered that in 2000 it was Al Gore who shifted the election controversy to the courts by filing a lawsuit challenging decisions made by local Florida county election supervisors. Nor did many of my Princeton dinner companions take into account that between the Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court, 10 of 16 higher court judges--five of whom were Democratic appointees--found equal protection flaws with the recount scheme ordered by the intermediate Florida court. And they did not appear to have pondered Judge Richard Posner's sensible observation, much less themselves sensibly observe, that while indeed it was strange to have the U.S. Supreme Court decide a presidential election, it would have been even stranger for the election to have been decided by the Florida Supreme Court. As for the 2002 midterm elections, it is true that Mr. Bush took the question of whether to use military force against Iraq to the voters, placing many Democratic candidates that fall in awkward positions. But in a liberal democracy, especially from a progressive point of view, aren't questions of war and peace proper ones to put to the people--as Democrats did successfully in 2006? And lord knows the Bush administration has blundered in its handling of legal issues that have arisen in the war on terror. But from the common progressive denunciations you would never know that the Bush administration has rejected torture as illegal. And you could easily overlook that in our system of government the executive branch, which has principal responsibility for defending the nation, is in wartime bound to overreach--especially when it confronts on a daily basis intelligence reports that describe terrifying threats--but that when checked by the Supreme Court the Bush administration has, in accordance with the system, promptly complied with the law. In short, Bush hatred is not a rational response to actual Bush perfidy. Rather, Bush hatred compels its progressive victims--who pride themselves on their sophistication and sensitivity to nuance--to reduce complicated events and multilayered issues to simple matters of good and evil. Like all hatred in politics, Bush hatred blinds to the other sides of the argument, and constrains the hater to see a monster instead of a political opponent. Prof. Starr shows in "Freedom's Power" that tolerance, generosity, and reasoned skepticism are hallmarks of the truly liberal spirit. His analysis suggests that the problem with progressives who have succumbed to Bush hatred is not their liberalism; it's their betrayal of it. To be sure, Prof. Starr rejects Bush administration policies and thinks conservatives have the wrong remedies for what ails America today. Yet at the same time his analysis suggests, if not a cure for those who have already succumbed, at least a recipe for inoculating others against hating presidents to come. The recipe consists above all in recognizing that constitutional liberalism in America "is the common heritage of both modern conservatives and modern liberals, as those terms are understood in the Anglo-American world," writes Prof. Starr. We are divided not by our commitment to the Constitution but by disagreements--often, to be sure, with a great deal of blood and treasure at stake--over how to defend that Constitution and secure its promise of liberty under law. The conflict between more conservative and more liberal or progressive interpretations of the Constitution is as old as the document itself, and a venerable source of the nation's strength. It is wonderful for citizens to bring passion to it. Recognizing the common heritage that provides the ground for so many of the disagreements between right and left today will encourage both sides, if not to cherish their opponents, at least to discipline their passions and make them an ally of their reason. Mr. Berkowitz is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a professor at George Mason University School of Law.[/rquoter]
Not that I believe any of the crap above, but since you're pretending you do... If Bush has rejected torture and asserted that it is illegal, why do you have such a problem doing the same?
Thanks for the bolding effort, but again, we have the administration claiming publicly they have rejected torture as illegal (why should it ever have been considered?), but through secret memos they also seek to define torturous acts in ways that give them a legal out. As long as we're quoting at length, here's Greenwald...
I never characterized our military as keystone cops the fact that our military is generally against torture proves they are anything but. We understand human psychology better but human psychology hasn't changed in 60 years. Torture is not a good way of gathering info. That was said by experts during WWII and is what is said now.
I can agree there is a lot of Bush hatred, some of it undeserved, but I have a hard time buying somehow that this is historically worse than previous hatred. Consider the last President was hounded into impeachment. Consider that Lincoln's election was one of the reasons that pushed the South into seccession and lets not forget he was assassinated. So far there hasn't been attempts to assasinate GW Bush or to impeach him. There haven't been fisticuffs on the floor of the Congress. While we have had protests and disagreements we haven't seen them marred with violence like in the 1960's, 1920's and so many other times in our past. This idea that somehow "Bush hatred" is somehow so severe as to be unprecedented just doesn't wash when looking at history. Also to the ide of the idea that somehow hatred of Bush is now celebrated among a class as being unprecedented consider how hatred of Clinton was, and is, cultivated as a sign of moral virtue among other groups. So again this argument to me seems more about sour grapes and a victimhood mentality among supporters of the current Admin.. Nothing about this is new in our history.
1. John Wilkes Booth just strolled amiably right into President Lincoln's box and shot him at point blank range. It was a different time. 2. Re: Clinton, I would suggest that he was more dis-respected than hated. I would hasten to say that I think it has been different.
Security is better but at the same time there was far more animosity towards Lincoln than towards GW Bush. There was a Civil War going on so in terms of hate its not even close. If you read what opponents were saying about Clinton, he was doing drugs in the White House, he was a rapist, he was involved in the murder of Vince Foster and Ron Brown and etc... I don't see much difference between the extreme rhetoric against Bush.
Of course there's a difference. The stuff about Clinton was made up. The problems with Bush stem from the way he administration operates and governs. Only the most extreme dead-enders can overlook things like Katrina, wire-tapping, torture, faked intelligence, the corruption of the IG system, a war pursued for domestic political advantage, the neglect of wounded troops, the no-bid contracts, the obliteration of science, signing statements, the cover-up of poisons after 9-11, etc. and claim that people upset with the administration just hate Bush. There is not another list as long for any other president. Bush is the worst in history. His administration is the worst in history and half of the country strongly disapproves of him. Strong words have definitely been said about Bush, but they are based in the reality of his presidency. I don't hate the guy... I find him more pathetic and unintentionally destructive to the country I love. I do hate what this administration has done and I hate the thinking behind their actions. No, scratch that. I do hate him for what he's allowed and encouraged. The stuff about Clinton was made up and manufactured and spread by political opponents who could not overtly oppose his policies.
Oh and rimrocker, to further expound on your nonsensical, anecdoctal evidence related to your judgment that torture is wrong, HOW does one get into a bathtub of "freezing water"? Is not frozen water, by definition, ice? Is it possible to 'get into' an ice block? So that story is clearly an exaggeration. Obviously that woman has an incentive to exaggerate her story. Furthermore, if you were to describe, in text form, the events of a boxing match, or MMA fight, that would clearly be offered up by you as fitting your definition of 'torture'. I can see it now... bloodied and battered, the helpless Rocky Balboa absorbed a pounding at the hands of the taller, stronger Ivan Drago. Drago punched Balboa in the face repeatedly until Balboa could barely see and blood was spurting from his face. So as you can see, a textual representation of 'torture' can be very misleading.
Wow! People talked about your lack of reading comprehension before, but this takes the cake. Your reading is on par or worse than underprivileged second language learners in third grade. We teach these children that words and phrases have meaning beyond just the rigid literal meaning of each word. Most of these third graders who are second language learners and living in extreme poverty, and yet despite their disadvantages they apparently are able to read far better than you can.
Why we can agree that there is a lot of substance regarding criticism of Bush you have to admit that there has been a lot of extreme and questionable stuff said about him too. Such as that he is to be a coke head, cheating on Laura Bush and so on..
