Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Shameless, part II

by Capt Fogg

Malcom Nance knows whether waterboarding is torture or not, even if Michael Mukasey doesn't know and if God's own president doesn't think you know. Nance is a former master instructor and chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego. He's a counterterrorism consultant for the Government's Special Operations, Homeland Security and intelligence agencies and he's had it done to him. Even though he knew he wasn't going to be killed, those who undergo such treatment in some sordid basement in a third world hellhole don't know that and like most of us, they'll say anything to make it stop.

Nance was waterboarded and supervised the waterboarding of 300 other men, not to elicit information, but so that our men would know what might await them at the hands of some evil empire on a par with the United States of America.

In an op-ed piece in The New York Daily News today, Nance tells us that no matter how you look at it, waterboarding is torture.
"In the media, waterboarding is called "simulated drowning," but that's a misnomer. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning. Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word. Usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch."
I doubt Mukasey would be able even to watch such a proceeding without being overcome. I doubt that most people would, but the truth is, such evil really does lurk in the hearts of men and the most ordinary people will do the most heinous things given the opportunity and the immunity and there are countless histories to prove it.

But our prospective Attorney General is capable of being evasive and we're capable of looking the other way or telling ourselves that "these people," these "terrorists" deserve it, even when they're kids picked up on the street in random sweeps or for having a suspicious name or because some enemy denounced them. face it we're capable of almost anything.
"One has to overcome basic human decency to endure causing the effects. The brutality would force you into a personal moral dilemma between humanity and hatred. It would leave you questioning the meaning of what it is to be an American."
says Nance, but moral dilemmas don't exist in our administration and are usually avoided by our citizens and beyond the degradation of all our claims of leadership, our pretended ideals, we have created by this sort of action, a worldwide culture of anti-American hate that will not go away in our lifetimes, if ever.

It's well that history will remember Bush as the man who murdered America, but it is not well for us. I think we have been tried and found wanting, our values reduced to meanness our democracy eaten away by the cancer of patriotism and we haven't the slightest ability or inclination to seek redemption.

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4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I've heard mukasey is a hard core zionist whose wife is involved in some sort of pro-settlement charity of dodgy legality. I'm sure he has no problem with torture if it's for the sake of the holy land

4:51:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

If we are going to tout ourselves as the humane big brother of the world, we need to practice what we preach. Any sort of torture committed by representatives of American citizens should be protested loudly and ceaselessly. By condoning torture, our government leaves our soldiers vulnerable to the same treatment at the hands of our enemies.

7:23:00 PM  
Blogger Capt. Fogg said...

I don't know anything about his background but if Bush nominates somebody, you can be sure his closet has more skeletons than the average catacomb. Actually the term Holy Land burns me up - its either all holy or none of it is holy and the world would be better off if all the religious nuts were sent to Antarctica where they can be holy all they want and not bother the rest of us.

The point about torture being a danger to our troops was brought up a few years ago, but somehow, we just can't stop them from doing what ever the hell they please.

This country really did itself harm by not impeaching Bush and Cheney and putting them behind bars for the rest of their lives.

10:25:00 PM  
Blogger Capt. Fogg said...

And by the way Lester, I looked into those "Zionist" charges and they seem entirely to be found on websites promoting the idea that the Jews blew up the World Trade Center as a false flag operation and that Mukasey is part of a cover up. If this were my blog, I would suggest you could stick that neo-Nazi idea up your holy land along with a bottle of Tabasco sauce.

I take this as a personal insult as well as a monument to willful stupidity. If this vicious idiocy had a germ of truth to it, the Jews must have been pretty clever to fool Prince Bandar into thinking the same expat Saudi group that attacked us and has been attacking them aren't really Saudis.

I don't take kindly to anti-Semitism, and particularly when it comes from snotty little nudge and wink shits.

10:18:00 AM  

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