“At the time my lungs emptied and I began to draw water, I would have sold my children to escape. There was no choice, or chance, and willpower was not involved.
I never felt anything like it, and this was self-inflicted with a watering can, where I was in total control and never in any danger.
And I understood.
Waterboarding gets you to the point where you draw water up your respiratory tract triggering the drowning reflex. Once that happens, it’s all over. No question.
Some may go easy without a rag, some may need a rag, some may need saran wrap.
Once you are there it’s all over.
I didn’t allow anybody else to try it on me. Inconceivable. I know I only got the barest taste of what it’s about since I was in control, and not restrained and controlling the flow of water.
But there’s no chance. No chance at all.
So, is it torture?
I’ll put it this way. If I had the choice of being waterboarded by a third party or having my fingers smashed one at a time by a sledgehammer, I’d take the fingers, no question.
It’s horrible, terrible, inhuman torture. I can hardly imagine worse. I’d prefer permanent damage and disability to experiencing it again. I’d give up anything, say anything, do anything.
The Spanish Inquisition knew this. It was one of their favorite methods.
It’s torture. No question. Terrible terrible torture. To experience it and understand it and then do it to another human being is to leave the realm of sanity and humanity forever. No question in my mind.”
So there you have it folks, the next time some wingnut tries to sell you on the notion that this is not torture, well now this is just one more example of how wrong they are.
Now that Canada’s Newest. Government. EVAR. is launching (relaunching?) some kind of war on drugs in this country, here’s something from Ron Paul (ht):
“Pioneers of new technology and new medicine are rarely regarded as humanitarians by the media or the liberal intelligentsia… [snip] I’m not saying charity-workers do not deserve our support and praise. I’m saying that the definition needs to be expanded. But that would include the drug companies, wouldn’t it?”
I can appreciate that as someone who essentially owes his life to new innovations in pharmaceuticals Sullivan might feel a soft spot for them, but that’s just silly. Drug companies take a very substantial chunk of change for their innovations, they are paid in full. Charity is giving without expecting reward, drug companies expect a reward. They may be helpful, but they do expect a financial reward.
I have to say that I tend roll my eyes at the cliche of “politically incorrect” information that “they” are keeping from you. I suspect that what is really keeping this out of the headlines is the reality that there are far greater risks to smoking that offset this alleged benefit. It’s like touting how an increase in the murder rate could be good for the casket industry.
Despite having watched Parkinson’s claim my grandfather’s life, Harsanyi’s magical smoking secret is not going to cause me to stroll down to the convenience store for a pack of smokes. There is no conspiracy here, David, it’s just that most people know a bad bargain when they see it.
On the way into work this morning I heard on the radio that the judge in Conrad Black’s trial has said that Conrad cannot use the Ostrich defence in his trial (i.e.: his lawyers can’t plead that he had his head in the sand about this whole thing if he was deliberately ignorant).
Meanwhile it appears that Rumsfeld is attempting the very same thing when it comes to the issue of torture at Abu Ghraib. It now appears that he deliberately made a show of not looking at photographs of what had happened. Andrew Sullivan writes:
“The most plausible inference is obviously that he covered his tracks and feigned ignorance and did not look at the photographs to create a record of complete deniability. The incompetence comes from ordering torture at Abu Ghraib and not realizing that evidence of it would spread and disseminate through new media that Rumsfeld probably wasn’t that familiar with.”
One wonders whether Rumsfeld will get away with this defence for what amounts to a war crime when Black has been denied this defence in a white collar crime trial.
I have to give credit to Andrew Sullivan for sticking to this issue relentlessly. Anti-torture conservatives are important allies on what has to be one of the most vital moral issues facing the West right now. It makes it harder to deflect criticism on the grounds that this is just the whinging of the usual bleeding hearts – even if I think us bleeding hearts are 100% right on this one.
Anyway, today Sullivan quotes Greg Dejerejian on the need to have tough questions posed to both the sitting president and all the candidates about this matter. When is it torture? When is it enhanced interrogation? What is the difference between those two.
I’ll save everyone some time and give you the working definition of the torturephiles: When we do it, it’s enhanced interrogation; when they do it, it’s torture.
Every time I read that someone is trying to use the Bible as a basis for foreign policy decisions, I cringe. This has to be, on some level, a great exercise in laziness. Let’s not investigate the history of colonialism, let’s not bother with the whole Sunni-Shi’a thing, let’s overlook the economic interests in the region (read: oil), and finally, let’s avoid any attempt to understand things from several points of view. No. Instead let’s just read one chapter in the Bible and assume that it is not talking about the time in which it was written but rather that it is talking about this particular moment in history.
Whatever insights might be gleaned from studying the Bible, I can almost guarantee you that foreign policy guidelines are not among them. Dobson should actually go out and, you know, read some modern history, or Middle Eastern cultural studies, or, well, you get my point.
An angry reader of Andrew Sullivan wrote a letter that Sullivan posted. In it the reader tries to bolster his argument on politics with his credentials:
I am a Hindu, Indian American, more educated than you (B.A, M.D., double board certified in subspeciality surgery, giving his specialty services for free for over 30% of my patients)
While I have a vague understanding that board certification is quite an achievement for a doctor, I’m not sure how this improves the political pronouncements made by such a person. I have my Masters degree, does that reflect on my general knowledge of everything? Put another way, should you trust me or my mechanic (who is a genius under the hood but, to my knowledge, not holding any kind of advanced degree) when it comes to mechanical advice.
I’m in favour of education generally. I think that everyone needs a good grounding in a variety of subjects, but at the same time we live in probably the most hyper-credentialist culture ever. “I’m a doctor, a good one, my political views are better than yours.”
Andrew Sullivan takes time today to refer to Sao Paulo as a “post-capitalist dystopia” since the city had banned billboards. I looked at the group of Flickr photos myself and, well, it doesn’t look so bad. I mean the light boxes (or whatever they call them) where the signs used to go obviously look empty, but if the boxes themselves were taken down, who would miss them? I wonder what the folks at illegalsigns.ca would say about this “dystopia?” At least no one would be suing them.
For the record, most of the futuristic dystopias produced by our cultural imagination have an oppressive amount of advertizing (see Bladerunner) or at least some kind of massive visual propaganda (see 1984). I also fail to see how this makes Sao Paulo a “post-capitalist” society either. Local governments put all kinds of restriction on capitalism – e.g.: you cannot open a slaughterhouse in a residential neighbourhood.
I do not know how any of this renders Sao Paulo a dystopia.
