Getting Your Face Wet
John Hinderaker wows us again with his caring and decency (emphasis added):
“Torture has been illegal for a number of years, and President Bush insisted just as strongly as Obama that the U.S. does not torture. There was a legitimate debate about waterboarding, which does no physical injury, and which I do not believe constitutes torture. But according to press reports, only two or three top-ranking terrorists were waterboarded, none after 2003. And waterboarding has been banned by the U.S. military since 2006. So what was Obama’s purpose in implying that until he came along, his own government was engaged in torturing prisoners? His speech was carried live by Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, broadcast into countries where “torture” doesn’t mean getting your face wet. Obama at least impliedly exaggerated the supposed sins of his predecessors and the “change” brought about by himself. Why? For what purpose? Isn’t the campaign over?”
Getting your face wet! That’s clever. I await with great anticipation Hinderaker’s characterization of some of our other interrogation tactics. Holding people in a coffin-sized cell: not giving them the luxury suite at George V. Stress positions: enforced yoga classes. Hitting someone’s legs so often that the autopsy report claimed that they “had basically been pulpified”: a soothing massage. (So soothing that it sent its recipient to an eternal rest!) Sensory deprivation: just like those nice little eyemasks the airlines give you, only more so!
How on earth could anyone object?
