MANCOW GET WATERBOARDED

WLS Radio ^ | 5-22-09 | me

[Paul46360]

Watch a radio host get waterboarded.

Enter WATER in the box.

[savedbygrace]

Waterboarding might be torturous, but it doesn’t rise to the level of torture legally.

If it were not uncomfortable, I doubt we would ever have included it as an EIT.

[FreedomPoster]

When did Congress do so against the Barbary Pirates? Just to pick one example, that has some historical parallels.

“Declarations of war” take many forms, over our history. Something as cut and dried as, say, WWII, is actually fairly rare.

Make no mistake about it, to those at the pointy end of the spear downrange in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., we *are* at war. To say otherwise is the kind of argumentative nonsense we’ve been hearing from the Dems for the last 7-8 years. It is an argument that doesn’t wash.

[battletank]

Sorry. My response wasn’t directed at you...but to “Those who think we shouldn’t use unpleasant scares to save American lives.” I just wanted to emphasize that Americans ARE waterboarded and replying to your post seemed the place to do it.

I realize after rereading my response that it surely seemed directed at something you had said, but it wasn’t. I apologize.

But my point with these holier than thou types remains. It’s infuriating, isn’t it?

Have a great Memorial Day and please accept my DUH in making it sound like you’re “one of those” when you are most certainly not!

[FreedomPoster]

Exactly! We’re on the same page here.

Same to you, have a great day. Overcast and rain in the forecast here, but should be a good day for yard work and a spa dip.

[van_erwin]

You’re absolutely right. The messed up truth is, every president, Democrat or Republican, going back at least as far as Johnson, probably farther, has presided over an America that tortures.

It weakens our freedom, it weakens our Constitution, and it hurts us when we throw away our own values. We’re supposed to be the good guys.

All Bush/Cheney did was fail to hide it well enough. Now that it’s out in the open, Obama needs to disown it. If we feel like it’s no big deal when we use it on our enemies, it’s not much of a stretch to a government you oppose (like Obama’s) deciding that some of those “enemies” are right here inside our borders.

[Wallace T.]

The use of waterboarding and other techniques commonly described as torture well predates Johnson. We used similar techniques against Filipino rebels during the Philippine Insurrection. One soldier court-martialed for killing a Catholic priest and several others through waterboarding during that war was refused by the military tribunal judging him from presenting into evidence the fact that his commander, General Grant (son of the Civil War general), supervised police officers using the same techniques while serving as Police Commissioner in New York City before the war. American occupying troops used torture against Nazi diehards engaged in a resistance movement in Germany. The U.S. Army, state militias, local posses, and Indian tribes often used inhumane methods against their enemies during the Plains Indian Wars. As the author of Ecclesiastes wrote, there is nothing new under the sun.

The defenders of waterboarding fall into the trap of the ends justifying the means. Its opponents engage in ridiculous exaggeration when comparing the techniques used with the extreme measures of the Japanese, the Communists, and the Nazis.

[van_erwin]

I thought it might go back farther than that. Thanks for the info.

I can’t believe that we’ve reached the point of arguing that torture is okay if it gets information.

You’re right - many opponents overstate the comparison between the torture we’ve been doing and the torture that has happened in even worse cases, and that just because it’s “not as bad” doesn’t make it ok.

[dead]

Personal rule: Anything you would do on a dare is not torture.

I was saying the exact same thing this weekend.

I have never seen journalists or morning shock jocks volunteering to have their fingernails pulled off or have bamboo shoots pushed into their urethras.