STATE Department: American Citizens Could Be Waterboarded

[kpete]

You too may be waterboarded

Philippe Sands: Let me put it in yet another way. Could you imagine any circumstances in which the use of water boarding on an American national by a foreign intelligence service could be justified?

John Bellinger: One would have to apply the facts to the law, the law to the facts, to determine whether any technique, whatever it happened to be, would cause severe physical pain or suffering.

Philippe Sands: So you're willing to exclude any American going to the international criminal court under any circumstances, but you're not able to exclude the possibility of water boarding being used on a United States national by foreign intelligence service? I mean, that just strikes me as very curious.

John Bellinger: Well, I'm not willing to include it or exclude it, I mean, these are issues that our justice department as a matter of interpreting both the domestic law on torture and international law, has concluded that just don't want to get involved in abstract discussions of applying the law to any set of facts.

I can certainly tell you as a State Department official that it makes it very difficult to explain to the world and to provide the important assurance of what we're doing or not doing if we can't talk about intelligence activities or we can't even talk about hypotheticals.

But the decision has been made at least so far and maybe Judge Mukasey, if he's confirmed as attorney general, will make a different decision, that he would talk more about techniques. But at least, so far, the conclusion that we should not talk about specific techniques even in terms of hypotheticals.

more at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2204442,00.html

[EFerrari]

1. They've already tortured John Walker Lindh and Jose Padilla.

There is no "could" about it. Hello? McFly?!

[GodlessBiker]

2. Sticking a hot iron in someone's eye. Would Mukasey consider that torture?

[EFerrari]

3. He doesn't know. But if it is torture, it's illegal.

Now, Senator Feinstein's position is that only the CIA can torture people.

[GodlessBiker]

5. I'd laugh if it weren't so sad.

[EFerrari]

6. Whatever humor we can muster to get ourselves through this

and to fight back is a good thing. Keep the faith, GodlessBiker.

[GodlessBiker]

7. Thanks. You recharged me!

[Land Shark]

11. Saying that no American will come under jurisdiction of the Int'l Crim Court

is equivalent to saying Americans are outside the law, i.e. "outlaws" as to the Int'l Criminal Court. k&R

[gratuitous]

4. Hell, just bring out the thumb screws and rack

You know you want to, Republicans and other authoritarians.

This is what this whole "debate" is about: Pretending that we haven't already settled these issues, and that the American people (except for some ass-covering sadists and useful idiots) aren't foursquare against torture. The scenarios cribbed from popular TV shows don't pan out, the argument that we'll be safer is ridiculous, and the other apologist gymnastics are just plain insulting to the listener's intelligence. What it boils down to is that we've sold our laws and our nation's soul to a band of lawless thugs who have already put us all in danger with their craven cowardice.

Anyone making these specious arguments should be assumed to be accomplices after the fact, and their putting these arguments forth considered prima facie evidence of having committed either a war crime or a crime against humanity.

[Ezlivin]

8. I went abroad and all I got was nearly drowned

[EFerrari]

9. What about "I went to the airport and all I got was this t shirt

and nearly drowned."

God, we're making jokes about torture. :(

[Supersedeas]

10. Bushist Doublespeak -- and Mukasey is supposed to be the promised saviour?