Sunday, April 26, 2009

Throw Away the Key

Today is Thursday, 30 April 2009.

Here's something important I'd managed to miss, or perhaps forget: At the war crimes trials of Japanese soldiers after World War Two, one of the crimes for which some were executed was water-based interrogation, now popularly known as "waterboarding".

See this from Paul Begala at The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-begala/yes-inational-reviewi-we_b_191153.html

Of course, waterboarding was defined as torture during the presidency of Harry Truman, who, as any good Nixo-Reaga-W.ite-Cheneysta Republican can tell you, was the wimpy weenie girly-man too cowardly to go to war in Korea or drop the A-bomb, so what can we expect?

The only serious argument advanced by the pro-torture gang is familiar to admirers of Jack Bauer: it’s The Only Way to save thousands, perhaps millions, of lives. And we’ve done that. If only we could give you specifics, sigh.

First, the argument is the essence of the moral bankruptcy of The End Justifies The Means, whose only virtue is stripping the bark off the claim of the torture crowd that they’re Christian Gentlemen. Second, the If Only We Could Tell You What We Know exactly tracks that of self-proclaimed messiahs who preach that, if only you’d acknowledge their divinity, you’d understand why it's imperative they have sex with children.

While I never endorse executions, waterboarding is torture, and should be punished by disgrace and imprisonment. And not just scape-goating the actual "hands-on" torturers - most importantly, punishing the gangsters at the top of the Bush regime foodchain who authorized what the Soviets quaintly named "enhanced interrogation techniques".

Bush and Cheney and friends, your cells are ready. Will the Obama regime have the decency to prosecute and imprison?

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