MucheDumbre

No really.  What is it?  This turned out to be much more difficult to answer then you would think.   Of course, I’m not talking about boiling someone’s feet, or taking a blowtorch to the eyeballs.  Those acts seem to be rather uncontroversially designated as torture.  No, I’m talking about that crown prince of enhanced interrogation; waterboarding.   

 On a philosophical and personal level, I feel waterboarding is torture.  Its purpose is to cause mental anguish enough to cause the subject to spill their guts on plans and operations.  Still, unlike a blow torch to the eyeball or boiling feet, people are lining up to have themselves waterboarded, either for a bet, charity, or publicity.   One wonders why Jackass star Steve-O didn’t think of it.  Vanity Fair journalist Christopher Hitchens did think of it.  As well as Chicago radio personality Mancow (allegedly) and Central Florida radio listener Evil Eye.  Sean Hannity made the offer to do it, but as yet hasn’t made good on his offer.  In a battle of the ratings can Chris Matthews and Glenn Beck be far behind?

On a legal level however, I have grave doubts on if waterboarding meets the standard.   Torture is against Federal law, specifically, Title 18 Part 1 Chapter 113C of the US Code.  However what does it actually say?  The law defines torture this way:

(1) “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;

(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from—

(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;

(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;

(C) the threat of imminent death; or

(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality; and

 It would be difficult to argue in court that waterboarding results in severe mental or physical pain.  No marks or physical damage after all, and no reported mental issues from waterboarding.  Or at least I have not heard of anyone suffering from Post traumatic Stress Syndrome or other long term issue from the interrogation method.

This was the gist of the “Torture Memos” which I had discussed a few weeks ago.  The former Justice Department attorney’s, whom President Obama has decided to give the Kangaroo Court go ahead to the Attorney General, made a fairly good case that waterboarding doesn’t violate US law as torture.  That’s not an argument that waterboarding is a harmless prank, or around the level of good cop/ bad cop when it comes to interrogations, but it does give good evidence that the high bar to define it legally as torture was not met.

And who should confirm that conclusion? None other than Attorney General Eric Holder.  Holder gave away the store a few weeks ago during a Congressional hearing on closing the detainee facility at Gitmo. Holder was being questioned specifically about torture and confirmed again (as he did during his confirmation hearing) that he regarded waterboarding as torture.  Then he was asked if he regarded the waterboarding that Navy Seals received during their training as torture.

Holder:  No, it’s not torture in the legal sense because you’re not doing it with the intention of harming these people physically or mentally, all we’re trying to do is train them —

 Rep. Dan Lungren:  So it’s the question of intent?

Holder:  Intent is a huge part.

Lungren:  So if the intent was to solicit information but not do permanent harm, how is that torture?

 Holder:  Well, it… uh… it… one has to look at… ah… it comes out to question of fact as one is determining the intention of the person who is administering the waterboarding.  When the Communist Chinese did it, when the Japanese did it, when they did it in the Spanish Inquisition we knew then that was not a training exercise they were engaging in. They were doing it in a way that was violative of all of the statutes recognizing what torture is. What we are doing to our own troops to equip them to deal with any illegal act — that is not torture.

 Rep. Louie Gohmert:  Whether waterboarding is torture you say is an issue of intent.  If our officers when waterboarding have no intent and in fact knew absolutely they would do no permanent harm to the person being waterboarded, and the only intent was to get information to save people in this country then they would not have tortured under your definition, isn’t that correct? 

Holder:  No, not at all.  Intent is a fact question, it’s a fact specific question.

 Gohmert:  So what kind of intent were you talking about?

 Holder:  Well, what is the intention of the person doing the act?  Was it logical that the result of doing the act would have been to physically or mentally harm the person?

 Gohmert:  I said that in my question.  The intent was not to physically harm them because they knew there would be no permanent harm — there would be discomfort but there would be no permanent harm — knew that for sure.  So, is the intent, are you saying it’s in the mind of the one being water-boarded, whether they felt they had been tortured.  Or is the intent in the mind of the actor who knows beyond any question that he is doing no permanent harm, that he is only making them think he’s doing harm.

 Holder:  The intent is in the person who would be charged with the offense, the actor, as determined by a trier of fact looking at all of the circumstances.  That is ultimately how one decides whether or not that person has the requisite intent.  

   So Holder, seems to be saying, without outright admitting it, that in a legal sense, under Title 18 Part 1 Chapter 113C, the waterboarding that was done by the CIA was not torture.  It’s all about the intent.  And Holder practices what he preaches.  That is the exact position the Justice Department is taking in another case, Demjanjuk v. Holder.  In that case, John Demjanuk, a former Nazi camp guard was fighting deportation to Germany to stand trial on the grounds that considering his age, poor health, and expected bad treatment at the hands of German jailors (ohh irony!),  would be the equivalent of torture due to the “severe Pain and suffering” that he would be expected to endure.  Demjanjuk lost, since the court found there was no established intent (there is that word again!) by German authorities to torture him.

And yet, law is apparently not going to stand in the way of political opportunism both for the Obama administration and the Holder Justice Department.  A leaked DOJ ethics report on John Yoo and Jay Bybee, two of the authors of the infamous torture memos, will recommend disciplinary action.  All because they devised the legal strategy that Holder is using in another case, and has basically admitted in hearings is correct.

Frankly, this is bullshit.  I know it and Attorney General Holder knows it, but with such a friendly press, there is never going to be a gotcha moment in a press conference; at least not one that will receive wide coverage.  Did you catch Holder’s admission on intent in those hearings leading the nightly news?  Neither did I, even though it exposes the hypocrisy of deriding a legal theory in public that the Obama administration is accepting as it’s own on the down low.

Was it worth it?  The waterboarding I mean.  The former Bush administration took a political risk in adopting that technique, and competing camps have battled on cable shows on whether waterboarding was effective or saved American lives.  However the opinion of the intelligence community seems to be yes, it did.  A Washington Post piece describes the “second wave” attack that had been planned for Los Angeles.  A hijacked airliner would have been used to crash into the Library tower in LA.  Thanks to information collected through waterboarding, we were able to stop the plot before it ever got off the ground (pun is mine).

You can have a philosophical argument on if any sort of enhanced interrogation is ever justified, regardless of the lives saved.  Some people, incredibly, would rather see such plots go forward rather than sully their hands at the dirty work of intelligence collection.  But that’s different from the legal argument on whether the three Al Qaeda terrorists that were waterboarded were legally tortured.  I would have to say, based on the preponderance of evidence that they were not.  As I said at the beginning of this piece, I do personally regard waterboarding as torture, however there are several other techniques I may feel personally are torture that just don’t meet the legal standard.  Letting me drink a couple of beers and then not letting me pee for instance.  President Obama has already banned the use of waterboarding as an interrogation technique by executive order, but don’t look for the Congress to try bring up another bill to outlaw the technique, like they did during the Bush administration.  I imagine if there is another 9/11 style attack, that executive order will quietly be rescinded, in a closing the barn door after the horses are out kind of way.

So we now live in a world in which we can waterboard Mancow, or any other publicity whore, but not Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or if we ever catch him Osama Bin Ladin.  I’m not sure we could even force KSM to listen to Mancow. Maybe if KSM would agree to be waterboarded  for charity…

“I worry very much that what is being done here is saying, ‘We’ve got an economic crisis, therefore, we’re justified in fundamentally remaking the health program in America,’” Cheney said. “I don’t think that’s right.”-Dick Cheney, March 15,2009

Let me get this straight. Dick Cheney, in an interview on Cnn Sunday morning, is worried that President Obama is using this crisis unwisely?…That on the other side of this crisis, the people of this country might actually get….. healthcare? Oh dear Lord please save us from the evils of healthy children.

“I worry a lot that they’re using the current set of economic difficulties to try to justify a massive expansion in the government, and much more authority for the government over the private sector,” Cheney said in his first television interview since leaving office. “I don’t think that’s good. I don’t think that’s going to solve the problem.”

He is worried about a ‘massive expansion in the government and much more authority for the government over the private sector’?  Are you fucking kidding me?  The man who was behind the largest growth of government in the private lives of it’s citizens since the McCarthy era is worried that the government is getting to much authority over the business’ who ruined this countries finances? Is he worried that maybe the SEC will actually take a fucking notice when they are told repeatedly about the next Bernie Madoff?

Is there some law or commandment that says we still have to take this kind of vapid bullshit seriously? We voted for a change in this country, isn’t it time we stop letting this kind of mental retardation infect the populous? The GOP is already playing the game of ‘We’ve completely forgotten the last 8 years and so should you” and the ones that are up in arms over anything President Obama has done or wants to do are the exact same ones who were cheering for Bush and Cheney when they were doing it for the last 8 years. If we wanted more of the same, we’d be calling Sarah Palin Ms. Vice President now and as scary of a fucking thought as that is… it’s still not as frightening that come Monday morning conservatives all over the country will be echoing the words of this dotty old man who it’s obvious must suffer from some kind of elderly mental disorder since he cannot remember his part in the passing of the largest and most intrusive government of all times with the Patriot Act and Department of Homeland Security. Not too mention the part where this same man who is worried about Government influence decided Congress and the Constitution  have no authority over him or his office.

If Dick Cheney was or is so worried about this country, then why is he still furious that George Bush didn’t pardon  the man convicted of lying about his part in the leak of a CIA agents name?  An agent who worked on WMD’s in a time of war, his war, whose covert status, along with the covert ‘cover-story’ corporation she and untold amounts of other undercover CIA agents used, was leaked to not one, not two..but THREE reporters just to take the heat off of Dick Cheney and George Bush because her husband released a report that showed they might be wrong on their Saddam/WMD information.

KING: Since taking office, President Obama has done these things to change the policies you helped put in place…… by taking those steps, do you believe the president of the United States has made Americans less safe?

CHENEY: I do……. And now he is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack.

Where was his concern for the safety of this country and the people giving up their entire identity and possibly their lives in order to get deep undercover and find those who attacked us when he told Scooter Libby to leak classified information?

It’s insanity that any party would endorses secretly spying on it’s citizens, extreme rendition of its citizens,torture and possible assassinations in the name of its citizens as the way to keep the country safe from outsiders, while protecting,ignoring and encouraging those corporation inside it’s borders to fuck every single one of us from top to bottom, young to old, rich to extremely poor and then claim they are the ones looking out for us and the Democrats are the ones who are making us ‘unsafe’ and ‘open for an attack’. But that’s not as insane as the minions who will crawl out from under their rocks Monday morning and pump this kind of idiocy  into the sycophantic minds of it’s followers.

There is hope that instead of picking up this thread and running to attack the nearest Democrat with it, the GOP will come up with a plan to fix what is broken in this country instead of just saying “Nope, that’s not the right way either” I have very little faith that this will happen, because the truth of the matter is no one knows what the magic bullet is, but one thing we should remember, after the success or failure of the Democrats efforts is…. They are the only ones trying. It will be easy if President Obama fails to sit back and say “I told you so” and it will be even easier if he succeeds to claim they were for it the whole time, but what is not easy, what is never easy is being the first one into the deep end.

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2.6 million Jobs lost, almost a million homes foreclosed on, 2 financial icons disappear, the government buying up 9 of the nations top banks, $7 trillion lost by shareholders, one state preparing IOU’s for it’s inhabitants, and a $200 billion surplus to almost a trillion dollar deficit- but hey, we haven’t been attacked

on our soil since 9/11.

1434 lives lost in Katrina and 300,000 homes lost, largest Government expansion in 50 years and the largest civil rights shredding law ever seen in this country- but you know what? We’ve been safe since 9/11.

Confirmed torture by the US government, 30,000 held in secret by US Government, 2 wars, one member of the inner circle of the Oval Office convicted of lying about his involvement in outing an undercover CIA agent working on WMD’s and the systematic attempt at public humiliation for anyone who tried to tell the truth -but that 9/11 thing didn’t happen again on his watch.

Disappearing glaciers, dying species and dwindling funds for public schools -but we’ve thwarted the

terrorists.

One admitted mistake with a banner, one  WMD regret, one forged report, one ignored PDB and a lie in the State of the Union address-but the terrorists haven’t struck us at home since 9/11.

I’m not indifferent to what George Bush is trying to do here. I understand that all Presidents want a grand legacy and all of them will slant their time in office so as to make them seem better than they were. I get that and I’m even OK with it. What pisses me off, what just sticks in my craw is watching the conservative MSM coo and gush over  that spin like a 12 year old girl watching a Jonas Brothers video. This is the same media who 8 years ago defined the last President as the liar who lacked morals because he got a blow job and lied about it. Not a one of them stepped up to say anything about his accomplishment in welfare reform, how he’d kept American soil safe after the first WTC bombing or that from 1991 to 2000, the United States experienced 37 quarters of economic expansion, the longest period of expansion on record.. Oh, but they will sure swoon over George Bush like he was the 1st President to have ever kept this country from being attacked after he ignored the intelligence that allowed for us to be attacked in the first place.

President Bush said the other day that he had inherited a recession and he leaves under a recession. No, he’s leaving an economy that hasn’t been this bad since the Depression. An economy that  is getting worse and has everyone in the world putting all of their hopes in the newly elected hands of a man who has all of 2 years of political office under his belt. I’m not saying Barrack can’t do it, I’m saying that Barrack shouldn’t have to be the president that is leading the United States of America in it’s most pivotal moment ever, the moment when it will either climb above the failures and destruction caused by it’s previous administration or the moment where it will crumble and burn out of existence. He shouldn’t have to be the leader during this time because we should have never come to this fork in the road.

Although, there is something to be said for the symbolism of the United States rising out of the blood of her original inhabitants, being built off the backs of it’s imported minorities and the threat of it’s final shudder and swan song under her first minority leader.

If President Bush can step away from another one of his disastrous leadership roles and all that conservative MSM cares to drill into our heads is once again the fear mongering of 9/11,9/11,9/11 and the horrible state of affairs that he inherited from the last guy that he couldn’t do anything but worsen over the last 8 years, then I hope these same conservative media heads will give President Obama the same pass no matter the outcome of his tenure.

It amazes me that Bill Clinton gets the blame for 9/11 because it was his inaction that lead to President Bush having to deal with a massive crisis 9 months into his tenure. It does make me wonder if there is another attack, can we finally blame something on George Bush? But I’m sure the conservative MSM will rant and rave that it’s not his fault, it’s the Democrats fault.

My colleague at the muchedumbre news desk tells me I don’t understand the war on terror the way he does, I don’t understand why there is such an extreme need for the massive size and secrecy of our Government  and that I’m naive because I fear giving any government that much power over it’s citizens. I don’t understand that terrorists will do whatever it takes to kill us so we must

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meet them on an even playing field. What he has never understood is that there are worse things out there then another 9/11. There are other forces out there that can crumble a nation and while he and his conservative media friends were busy discrediting me and others like me, those other forces were allowed in. He never understood that another 9/11 wouldn’t destroy this country, it would hurt and it would piss us off, but we’d survive it like we did the after the other attacks on our soil. But another era like the 1930’s? Another Dust Bowl? Well I guess we’ll get to see if this country can survive another era of greed.

But hey, we’ve been safe since 9/11 so what am I worried about.

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