That's just such a sad statement for you make here Rob... and you know although we are on opposite sides "politically" I think you know I do believe you to be a good & decent guy.
The fact that the simulated DROWNING... I SAID DROWNING... was done by dunking a RESTRAINED PRISONER IN YOUR CARE & CUSTODY in a dunk tank... or by stuffing his mouth with a rag and then pouring buckets of water into the rag... or by using hoses down the throat and nose is just absolutely a pitiful and I do mean pitiful defense.
It would be exactly like the Viet Cong saying... we didn't pull your soldiers fingernails off... we just jammed bamboo shoots under them all the way to the cuticle. You cannot seriously rationalize this.
It's ridiculous and saying this is OK only guarantees our captured the worst treatment possible without us having any moral high ground on the issue to the rest of the world. It's just plain sad.
Then you always want to grope for that one supposed legal loophole as to why the TORTURE was OK.
Your pat answer is always symantics... by what name did the Bush administration tag these prisoners... some names ALLOW TORTURE. It's still PEOPLE being TORTURED by the UNITED STATES of AMERICA! That's just beyond anything even remotely reasonable.
These were soldiers in an organized and declared conflict. The fact that this force didn't have nice crisp issued uniforms is no excuse to TORTURE. And I'll go back to the Viet Cong... most of the time all but the high ranking wore just plain solid black standard clothing for that region.
It's distressing to me because I see good people like you able to look the other way and rationalize something so obviously not right and certainly not up to our American values & standards.
PLC1 got it exactly right. For some anything our side does is OK and justified. This is such a slippery slope I thank GOD for President Obama if for nothing else for making this an issue.
Because if not soon under the Bush/Cheney doctrine we'd have been waterboarding school kids with families in the Taliban or Al-Qaeda or burning whole villages to scare the women into maybe giving up some information... and using your exact same rationale.
Rob you're a good man... but you're just totally ethically , morally and I believe if it were to go to open trial legally wrong here.
And when I hear people try and cover for things Bush did like this it even makes me want to be in the group lobbying for war crime trials and not just be content to let this sorry time in our history pass... like I really am trying to be.
This is a prime example of why I and a whole lot of people always are and should be worried & frankly scared of Conservatives with any power. They can rationalize anything as OK as long as it's for their side.
[media=youtube]4LPubUCJv58[/media]
