Category: Old Dish

My response is now posted here.

A GOOD THING: Afghans are grateful for being liberated from the Taliban. More work to do, though.

Islamo-fascist murderers get a massive propaganda victory against the West – and, in civilized countries like the UK – the evidence against them procured by torture is inadmissable in court. The ruling today was unanimous. Terrorists may go free because of it. Congrats, Mr Cheney. You really are helping keep us safe, aren’t you?

The Wall Street Journal would have no problem with Torquemada, one of the most vehement of enforcers of the Inquisition, condoned by the Vatican and enforced by the Spanish monarchy. The WSJ has argued that the practice of “waterboarding” isn’t “anything close” to torture. Torquemada apparently disagreed. Here’s an extract from James Reston Jr’s, book, “Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors.” It describes various methods deployed by Torquemada:

When the rack did not produce the desired result, the churchmen turned to the water torture. In this hideous remedy, the prisoner was tied to a ladder that was sloped downward, so that the head was lower than the feet. The head was held fast in position by a metal band, twigs were placed in the nostrils, and ropes winched tightly around his appendages. The mouth was forced open with a metal piece and a cloth placed over the mouth. Then a pitcher of water was brought, and water poured over the cloth. With each swallow, the cloth was drawn deeper into the throat, until in gagging and choking the victim nearly asphyxiated. The terror of suffocation was extreme, and the process was repeatedly endlessly, bloating the body grotesquely until the victim was ready to confess … From the inquisitor’s standpoint – for he was there to record every detail – the treatment was easy to administer and left no telltale signs.

The distinction, I think, is that the technique used today, as endorsed by our Christian president, does not result in water actually being drawn into the stomach and so bloating it. But the experience of suffocation is identical. (And notice that Torquemada regarded waterboarding as worse than pulling people’s limbs apart on a rack.) From the CIA’s guidance:

“The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.”

So, according to Heather Mac Donald, John Yoo, and the WSJ editorial board, Torquemada was just using a legitimate interrogation technique, against recalcitrant Muslims. He wasn’t a torturer. He was fully in accord with American and conservative values.

Tell me something: aren’t evangelicals in the forefront of demanding that the Ten Commandments be observed? So why are they not honoring the Sabbath – on Christmas day?

BILL O’REILLY, CALL YOUR OFFICE II: The war against Christmas continues … thanks to News Corporation, the owners of Fox News (and of the Sunday Times of London, where I’m a columnist). Here’s the invite to their “Holiday” party. Now, how long do you think it will take Bill O’Reilly to attack his own boss as a liberal heathen? Or the president? Or evangelical churches?

“I think it is inappropriate and illegitimate for an international civil servant to second-guess the conduct that we’re engaged in in the war on terror, with nothing more as evidence than what she reads in the newspapers.” – John Bolton, our U.N. ambassador.

Bolton is surely aware that the evidence that the U.S. has engaged in torture, and “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment of detainees may be found in more than just the newspapers. Has he read his own briefs? He could also read the Schmidt Report, the Jones-Fay Report, the Taguba Report, the Schlesinger Report, the Bybee memo, the Yoo argument, the reports from the International Red Cross, and on and on. His own government has provided ample evidence of its own violation of American law and basic human rights. What you find in Bolton is something democratically repulsive, but one that is very close to the view of Dick Cheney. That view is that the public should never second-guess its own government in the conduct of a war. I wish we didn’t have to. But when you have bungled a war this badly, and committed war-crimes in the process, what would Bolton have us do? Trust, sadly, is no longer an option. It no longer became an option the minute looting broke out in Iraq and the secretary of defense, responsible for maintaining order in a country he had just invaded, shrugged his shoulders. From that moment of complete and proud dereliction of duty, we were on notice that these people couldn’t be trusted.

My response to Charles Krauthammer is now posted.

More analysis of her contorted, distorted, meaning-free, pre-packaged, lawyered, Orwellian assertions that the United States doesn’t torture anyone.

A return for my old college friend and former Tory leader, William Hague, as shadow foreign secretary in David Cameron’s Tory shadow cabinet. Great news. Hague has far too much talent to be wasted on the back benches or on the rubber-chicken circuit. The British conservatives are coming back. At last.

Another beaut.

Condi seems to have signaled a shift in administration policy on allowing “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment of detainees. I’m going to wait for confirmation. The key thing to realize is that the last three years have proved beyond any doubt that no one in this administration can be trusted to enforce that without clear legislative back-up. They’ve lied before. They can lie again. Pass the McCain Amendment. No exceptions. No immunity – especially for those who signed the memos and warrants that ordered the illegal torture of detainees.