Ted Rall for May 14, 2009
Transcript:
In the near future. (Woman: Dick Cheney's secret memos show that waterboarding successfully extracts info that saves American lives. What about pedophilia? Does raping a terrorist son in front of him make him talk?) (Man: Absolutely! It's effective! Until we ramp up these "harsh sexualization techniques." We'll be fighting with our genitals tied behind our backs.) (Woman: What about amputation? Does it work?) (Man: We prefer the term "enhanced jumbo coercive interrogation debriefing."
Lavocat about 15 years ago
Ding, ding, ding, ding!
We have a winner! Bull’s eye, Ted. Bull’s eye!
tpenna about 15 years ago
You know, frequently I think Rall crosses a line of taste for no good reason. But this one does a good job of showing where the utilitarian argument that “Waterboarding works” ultimately gets us. Well done, Rall.
mattro65 about 15 years ago
Rall gets right to the heart of the matter-again.
cdward about 15 years ago
The heart of the matter is right – Rall does a great job here. But it makes me wonder which of these techniques we’ve already employed.
lcbiiimd about 15 years ago
We do know that the jihadists have practiced amputation and decapitation up to this point.
lifeofB about 15 years ago
if you can’t beat them, join ‘em… right, Ichbiii ?
wmclay about 15 years ago
“We do know that the jihadists have practiced amputation and decapitation up to this point.”
So let’s become what we’re fighting against? We’ve lost the War on Terror when we become a Terrorist State ourselves.
Lavocat about 15 years ago
We’re Americans which means, by definition, that we are incapable of acting illegally and - when we inevitably do so - it becomes legal.
Wow. I foolishly spent all that time and money on law school for nothing, apparently.
audieholland about 15 years ago
Well, most Americans do not torture or kill people in far away countries. That’s up to the ‘intelligence and special forces’ and some of the armed forces of America.
The thing is, what most Americans do think about rape and torture by a select few American operatives, does not matter at all.
Because the US of A is not a free country and murder, torture and mass destruction have always been instruments of American foreign policy whether the common American citizen approved of it or not.
School of the Americas, for instance. Sponsoring the Contras to terrorize Nicaraguan civilians, another example. Supporting Pinochet’s coup in Chile in the 70s.
Dropping more tons of bombs over Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia than were dropped in the entire 2nd World War.
sfiller about 15 years ago
NPR: “enhanced interrogation techniques” NYT “harsh”; “waterboarding” as in “snowboarding,” “surfboarding,” “skateboarding”
sfiller about 15 years ago
Progan1 says to Fennec that “the US Constitution … talks about all people being equal,” and the Fourteenth Amendment does provide equal protection of the laws, I think, but we tend to confuse the Constitution with the Declaration. The Fourteenth makese ex-slaves citizens and does other neat stuff. Louis Filler used to have a T/F quiz item that started, “With its declaration that all men are created equal, the Constitution established a basis,” etc.
daza22 about 15 years ago
@Bill_Clay
“We lost the War on Terror when we became a Terrorist State ourselves.”
FTFY