GOP Senator Says Waterboarding Torture Technique Is Like "Swimming"

[marmar]

from AlterNet's PEEK:



GOP Senator Says Waterboarding Torture Technique Is Like "Swimming"

Posted by Amanda Terkel, Think Progress at 9:53 AM on December 12, 2007.

Conservatives have repeatedly tried to dismiss the seriousness of waterboarding, referring to it as a “swim lesson.”



Yesterday on PBS's Newshour, host Gwen Ifill asked Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) whether waterboarding constitutes torture. Bond replied that the technique is actually more like "swimming":

GWEN IFILL: Do you think that waterboarding, as I described it, constitutes torture?

SEN. KIT BOND: There are different ways of doing it. It's like swimming, freestyle, backstroke. The waterboarding could be used almost to define some of the techniques that our trainees are put through, but that's beside the point. It's not being used.

Conservatives have repeatedly tried to dismiss the seriousness of waterboarding, referring to it as a "swim lesson."

There's no doubt that waterboarding is torture. There's also no question that it's been carried out on detainees. Former CIA interrogator John Kiriakou came out this week and confirmed that in 2002, al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded on orders from the White House.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/70434/

[Lucinda]

1. Jeez....Maybe someone will challenge him to do it. And he can see whats its really like.

What a jerk.

[spanone]

2. i love how they make light of a criminal endeavor

[PDJane]

3. Torture was practiced

in every totalitarian state. In Germany and Italy, the torture was well-known and CONDONED! It wasn't until the torture started being practiced on "normal people like us" (i.e., not gypsies, tramps, thieves, gays, students and dissidents) that the practiced was condemned.

[LeftHander]

7. did you just tip your hat to Cher in a torture post...??

That is just wrong...

lol

[PDJane]

11. I keep warning people

That I have a vile sense of humour.

[B Calm]

4. So Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) thinks it's okay for the enemy to waterboard

our captured US soldiers! Nothing surprises me anymore...

[magellan]

5. Yeah, I tell all my secrets while doing the backstroke

:eyes:

[varkam]

6. In other news: Sen. Kit Bond (Repugnant - MO) says that stress positions are like playing Twister

:eyes:

[Bobbieo]

8. I am (was) a river swimmer and almost drowned a couple of times.

That is why this waterboarding shit scares the hell outta me.

In my opinion, those in favor of the waterboarding technique should be may to undergo it, themselves. They might not like it!!!

[hootinholler]

10. That's a good one!

That wasn't a naked pyramid of detainees, it was a rousing game of strip twister!

-Hoot

[shain from kane]

9. If the ocean was whisky,

And I was a duck,
I'd dive to the bottom
To get one sweet suck.

Bond's idea of swimming.