My Political Rant for the Week...

How could we have done this?

There were some internal CIA documents released recently that detailed the waterboarding “interrogation techniques” (TORTURE!) of suspected terrorists. It included these startling revelations:

“Interrogators pumped detainees full of so much water that the CIA turned to a special saline solution to minimize the risk of death, the documents show. The agency used a gurney “specially designed” to tilt backwards at a perfect angle to maximize the water entering the prisoner’s nose and mouth, intensifying the sense of choking – and to be lifted upright quickly in the event that a prisoner stopped breathing…Interrogators were instructed to start pouring water right after a detainee exhaled, to ensure he inhaled water, not air, in his next breath. They could use their hands to “dam the runoff” and prevent water from spilling out of a detainee’s mouth. They were allowed six separate 40-second “applications” of liquid in each two-hour session – and could dump water over a detainee’s nose and mouth for a total of 12 minutes a day. Finally, to keep detainees alive even if they inhaled their own vomit during a session – a not-uncommon side effect of waterboarding – the prisoners were kept on a liquid diet. The agency recommended Ensure Plus.”

The controversial “enhanced interrogation” practice was far more brutal on detainees than Cheney’s description of a “dunk in the water” sounds. It makes me sad and angry to think that we as the greatest country in the world had so little integrity, so little moral compass that we would allow this to be done. ALL of the participants should be punished - from the guy who brought the buckets into the session to the people who ordered it / allowed it / looked the other way about it. This includes the POTUS at the time and his amoral henchman Dick. If you see this differently, all I ask is that you think about how you would feel if one of our brave soldiers in our amoral Afghanistan mission was captured and they released video of his interrogation that included even one minute of waterboarding. The indignation would be over the top. We would be calling for the US to drop the big one and wipe them off the face of the earth for doing this to a US citizen. Well, if you are so inclined, now switch and try to rationalize doing it to someone else, to US officials doing it to other people. If you are not repulsed by this you are a cold, amoral bastard!