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Friday, Nov 9, 2007
Waterboarding
Republicans vs. Supporting Our Troops
by Stephen Crockett, co-host of
Democratic Talk Radio
You cannot honestly say you are
supporting American soldiers if you support the use of torture
techniques like waterboarding. By any objective definition,
waterboarding is torture. The technique is a type of simulated
drowning of a prisoner who has their limbs bound.
The use of simulated drowning is not
new. The Nazis used it in World War II. The Iranian secret police used
it under the Shah. It was used in the Vietnam War. Dictators in South
America have used this kind of torture. It causes severe psychological
damage in most cases and has caused deaths. The Bush Administration
claims that it is not torture but the claim is false.
The Bush Republicans defending the use
of waterboarding are being dishonest with the American people. Torture
usually produces very poor quality information. People will say
anything to stop torture. Prisoners will confess to crimes they did
not commit. They will implicate innocent people. They will invent
fictional plots, fictional conspiracies and fictional dangers. In
military and national security terms, torture is not effective.
Morally, it is simply wrong.
Torture between international combatants
has been outlawed by international law and treaties. Use of torture
makes the user a war criminal. The United States has long supported
this position to prevent American soldiers from being tortured.
American government policies, under Bush, concerning the use of
torture put American soldiers at grave risk. We will have
great difficulty prosecuting enemies who torture our soldiers if we
engage in torture ourselves.
For those Republicans (or Democrats) who
defend waterboarding as something less than torture, I have a
proposal. Whenever a Bush Administration official is called before the
House or Senate to testify, they should be waterboarded the entire
time they are testifying. The technique, according to the Bush
Republicans, elicits honest answers and does not amount to torture.
According to these Bush Republicans, waterboarding does not cause any
lasting damage.
Personally, I do not believe the Bush
Republicans are correct in their position about waterboarding.
However, if the Bush Republicans are sincere in their stated beliefs,
we should give them an opportunity to prove it. Cabinets officers,
White House staffers, Republican Senators, Bush, Cheney, Rove, Bush
appointees like Mukasey and other Bush Administration personnel should
all be given personal opportunities to prove that waterboarding is not
torture and is effective in providing honest answers to questions.
I think it is a much better idea to
waterboard Bush Republican leaders (who support waterboarding) in
order to prove that waterboarding is not torture than it is to put our
soldiers at risk of being tortured. I think all of them would quickly
conclude that waterboarding is torture, illegal, dangerous and
ineffective.
In the Dark Ages, they had a
version of waterboarding. It was called “dunking.” It was a sadistic
kind of torture. Naturally, this type of sadistic, ineffective torture
still has a strong appeal to certain types of barbaric Republicans!
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Written by Stephen
Crockett (co-host of Democratic Talk Radio
http://www.DemocraticTalkRadio.com ).
Mail: P.O. Box 283, Earleville, Maryland
21919. Phone: 443-907-2367. Email:
midsouthcm@aol.com .
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