Torture

Count me among the folks who didn't find the humor in this story from the Alzheimer's Association roast of Kit Bond on Saturday night.

A video montage of Bond's on-air gaffes also showed an interview in which Bond said of water boarding: "It's like swimming, there's different types like freestyle or the backstroke." The video then showed synchronized swimmers in a pool.

"Maybe we should make water boarding an Olympic sport," [Kenny] Hulshof said.

Torture isn't funny.

Two years ago today, Sen. Kit Bond told PNS' Gwen Ifill that waterboarding isn't exactly torture – it's actually a lot "like swimming."

"There are different ways of doing it. It's like swimming...uh, freestyle, backstroke."

When did the radical notion that people who break the law should be held accountable become the same thing as a "witch hunt"?

Sen. Kit Bond, as you may know, is one of the Senate's leading critics of Attorney General Eric Hodler's appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate “nearly a dozen” detainee cases involving torture under the Bush Administration.  In Bond's mind, this appointment is actually the opening up of "a criminal witch-hunt on the CIA."

Via The Star's Yael T. Abouhalkah, the Time magazine summary of the 2004 report by the CIA Inspector General is a disturbing, but important read. In it, John Ashcroft's actions are featured prominently:

The CIA IG repeatedly brought what it viewed as abuses or violations of law to the attention of Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Justice Department, without any positive result.

After a review of the program determined that one detainee had been waterboarded “in a manner inconsistent with” the description of the technique in military training and in the Justice Department legal guidance, the matter was brought directly to Ashcroft by the CIA general counsel.

According to the report, Ashcroft disagreed with the CIA IG assessment.

Ashcroft responded by telling the CIA that he saw no problem with waterboarding one detainee 119 times, deciding that the “CIA is well within the scope of the DoJ opinion and the authority given to CIA by that opinion.”

This is not the only difference of opinion between the Justice Department and the CIA IG.

Read More »

Share

• Tweet Widget
• Google Plus One
• Facebook Like

Pro-life legislator Brian Nieves took to the floor of the General Assembly this past week in defense of our God-given right to torture select human beings. His speech, which will forever be known as the Missouri Call to Torture, was magnificent! School children will recite it along with the Gettysburg Address in years to come. But we at FiredUp seek further clarification of his position, and thus, are asking that Mr. Nieves answer the following questions.

1. In addition to Gitmo detainees, which of the following would you waterboard?
   1. adulterers
   2. drug dealers
   3. pedophiles
   4. the Unabomber
   5. flag burners
   6. Darwinists
   7. illegal immigrants
   8. all of the above, except (a)
Read More »
Share
• Tweet Widget
• Google Plus One
• Facebook Like

Late yesterday afternoon, as GOP Leaders were running out the clock to avoid votes on health care for the working poor and autism coverage, Denny Hoskins' private prisons bill was brought up for debate. No doubt, the leadership was hoping to give Hoskins a feather in his cap to balance out some of the problems he's had in his first session. 

But during the debate on the measure, for reasons unknown, Rep. Brian Nieves thought he'd found the perfect opportunity to respond to Thursday's post about his offensive mocking of the ongoing national debate about the utility, legality and wisdom of torturing terrorist suspects and detainees. In the clip below, you can Nieves embark on a second disconcerting rant about (the first one is here), apparently upset that I'd questioned his devotion to waterboarding.

Unwilling or unable to make any progress on things that matter to Missouri families -- health care, jobs, etc -- the House took up the pressing matter of a nonbinding resolution asking Congress to ask the President to not let Guantanamo detainees come anywhere near Missouri and Kansas.

Apart from the general absurdity of the meaningless resolution (none of these now-outraged state reps were outraged when convicted terrorist Omar Abdel-Rahman was imprisoned in Springfield), the most ridiculous bit of bloviating (in my mind) came from GOP Majority Whip Brian Nieves, who (ironically) took to the floor to bemoan what he saw as the bloviating of others. In the clip below, you can hear Nieves' disgust with the fact that some people call Guantanamo detainees "suspects."  This was a particularly dumb complaint, since the resolution under consideration was titled, "HCR 16 - TERROR SUSPECTS IN MISSOURI."

And then shifted his attention to waterboarding:

Via the Post-Dispatch and Star, I see that Kit Bond is accusing Barack Obama of "politicizing" the issue of torture, while showing no restraint in throwing around words like "banana republic" and accusing the President of "stabbing CIA agents in the back." Bond is also accusing the Obama administration of withholding information about the "value" of torture, wonders why Bill Clinton didn't stop the 9/11 terror attacks, and says that Obama is undermining American safety by releasing the information.

I totally agree. The question of whether America should engage in torture should not be a partisan issue.  Thankfully, none of the accusations from Bond in the past week can be considered "politicizing" the issue; such "politicizing" would be unconscionable. Here's a good example of why Kit Bond isn't a huge hypocrite: 

For an  alternative point of view, check out these statements from FOX News Host Shepard Smith.

How do you distinguish yourself in a crowded field of very conservative candidates?  Support torture earlier and louder than everyone else:

Jeff Wisdom doesn't think waterboarding is torture. But does believe "very good information" came from waterboarding, facts be damned.

That said, he doesn't support torture, "per se."

The full interview with KY3's David Catanese is here.

Wisdom is one of several conservative candidates in the race to replace Roy Blunt in Congress.

Sen. Claire McCaskill comments on Judge Jay Bybee's role in the drafting of Bush Administration torture memos on Fox News Sunday:

More here.

Today,the Obama Administration released Bush-era Justice Department memos approving "enhanced interrogation techniques" like waterboarding. Sen. Kit Bond and others are upset that the information has been made public, preferring that the government continue to hide the abuses it conducted our behalf.  The release of the memos will "make us less safe" and "heighten anger" in parts of the world "where we're trying to make friends," Bond said.

Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, dismisses Bond's protests:

I don't think and the president doesn't believe it's the existence of enhanced interrogation techniques in memos that has made us less safe...It's the use of those techniques in the view of the world that has made us less safe. And that's precisely why the president moved swiftly to end [their use]...

You can read the torture memos yourself here.

Bond's statement about their release is here.