Mr President, You Would Understand If You Had Fought

[cal04]

I want to commend Senators McCain, Graham and Warner, and also General Colin Powell, for their unequivocal stand against the use of torture on enemy detainees. They are right on this issue. And the President is wrong.


(snip)
For the safety of our own troops, it is absolutely imperative that we take an unequivocal stand against the use of torture on all enemy detainees. Not only is it the right thing to do, it is also the smart thing to do.

It is insulting that the President, who has never served in combat, would dismiss the credible and reasoned advice of men like Senator McCain, a brave combat veteran who endured years of torture as a prisoner of war.

This issue is an example of the President's questionable commitment to our troops, and further demonstrates his failure to grasp the true dynamics of the modern battlefield. How can the President say to our men and women in uniform that he is willing to risk their safety over this? His new rules would put the lives of our fighting men and women serving overseas in jeopardy. The move would also further undermine America's struggle to win hearts and minds worldwide. Maybe the President would understand the righteousness of our stance more clearly if he had personally served in combat.

more
Paul Rieckhoff
http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/specialguests/2006/sep/15/mr_president_you_would_understand_if_you_had_fought

[Monkeyman]

1. Can you imagine if they guy missing in Iraq is tortured the outrage then

[Virginia Dare]

2. This is what happens when

you put feeble minds and chicken hawks in charge.

[tularetom]

3. Shhhhh - he thinks he DID fight

somebody told him when you put on a space suit, stuff a pair of socks in your skivies, and prance around the deck of an aircraft carried in San Diego Harbor that's just like serving in combat. Don't disillusion him.

[DavidDvorkin]

5. I think his delusion goes even deeper than that

When he said, "I've been to war and I've raised twins, and I'd rather go to war," or something like that, I think that was before the stupid carrier landing stunt.

[Thickasabrick]

4. The president needs to look at this from the viewpoint that

probably 75%+ of detainees are ultimately found innocent. He needs to see how he would feel if he were subjected to the same type of treatment because he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I would like to suggest that the president undergo being stripped, left in a frigid room with only the concrete floor to lie on. He would then be subjected to water boarding.

If he can withstand that treatment and still come out of it thinking this is not torture - then fine.

He wouldn't last an hour before he'd be whimpering for momma Babs.

[Lisa]

6. you're too generous, whutgives

Even 5 minutes would overwhelm him! This is a man who, earlier this year, thought it would be funny to tell a roomful of injured servicepeople about the tiny scratch he received while cutting brush. "As you can probably see I was injured myself, not here at the hospital but in combat with a cedar. I eventually won."
http://www.dubyaspeak.com/war.phtml

The fact that he would consider this worth mentioning (even as a "joke") suggests that he takes to extreme the saying that "comedy is what happens to other people, tragedy is what happens to you".

Here are the stories of two men who were tortured with a variety of psychological and physical methods. In Mr. Arar's case, his suffering was a direct result of Bush's decision to play fast and loose with the "vague" legal definitions of torture.
"In September 2002, Arar was in Tunisia, vacationing with his wife Monia Mazigh and their two small children. On Sept. 26 while in transit in New York’s JFK airport, he was detained by US officials and interrogated about alleged links to al-Qaeda. Twelve days later, he was chained, shackled and flown to Jordan aboard a private plane and from there transferred to a Syrian prison. In Syria, he was held in a tiny “grave-like” cell for ten months and ten days before he was moved to a better cell in a different prison. He was beaten, tortured and forced to make a false confession."
http://www.maherarar.ca/

And in William Sampson's case -- this is routinely done in Saudi Arabia -- he was framed for a killing done by Al Qaeda, and the authorities bet that Western governments would betray their own citizens rather than risk stopping the flow of oil. The local people have even less protection against this kind of abuse. Is it any wonder that governments which do this sort of thing ... and those which help prop them up ... are so mistrusted and loathed?
"The worst that I endured of it at the time was being hung upside down and beaten across the backside, the feet, the scrotum. The pain from that is just incredible. I just felt like my entire body was about to explode out of my ears and my eyes. And your pulse rate is thundering throughout that, you're in constant pain, and parts of your body feel like they've set light to them, they are so inflamed and sore. And it doesn't let up when they stop that for a while, because the pain doesn't die down because the beating is so severe. The pain stays and it only builds for the next session, and even when they stop the beating and chain you back to the door, then you have the next few hours standing on your feet, in my case which are swollen and bloody, which are in agony but you can't do anything to relieve them, so they're actually getting more sensitive by the minute, and you know you've only got this to go back to the next day or the day after."
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/sampson/interview1.html