Hoekstra says waterboarding was legal, claims ‘there is a wide range of waterboarding.’
Hoekstra says waterboarding was legal, claims ‘there is a wide range of waterboarding.’
In a tense interview on Fox News today, host Shep Smith repeatedly pressed Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) if waterboarding is torture. Hoekstra initially dodged, saying, “I don’t know if it’s torture or not.” “I’d like an answer, sir,” Smith responded. Asked a fourth time, Hoekstra finally said he believes that interrogations used in the “immediate aftermath” of 2002 — which included waterboarding — were “consistent” with the law:
Q: And waterboarding is or is not torture?
HOEKSTRA: There is a wide range of waterboarding. I’m telling you, that I know waterboarding was used, Shep. I’m not mincing words. I’m saying that I believe the techniques used in 2002, in 2003, which included waterboarding in a specific format that I’m aware of how they used it, that I believe that was consistent with U.S. law.
Watch it:
Of course, waterboarding has for decades violated domestic and international law.
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Is mincing words a form of torture? Sure sounds painful.
May 14th, 2009 at 6:25 pmHOEKSTRA: There is a wide range of waterboarding.
Hoekstra continued: “For instance, there’s what we call “slalom waterboarding”. There’s barefoot waterboarding. There’s tandem waterboarding. Frankly, i don’t know why people call it torture. I do it all the time on vacation. Sure, when you take a spill at top speed it can be nasty, but I wouldn’t call it torture by any means.”
HOST: Umm… Congressman? I believe you’re thinking of water skiing, not waterboarding.
HOEKSTRA: What’s the difference?
HOST: Well, waterboarding is when a detainee is strapped to a board, feet elevated aove the head, and water is poured over a cloth covering his face so that water slowly fills the lungs.
HOEKSTRA: WHAT? Wow. THat sounds pretty bad.
HOST: Um hm.
HOEKSTRA: And President Bush authorized that?
HOST: Sure did, Congressman.
HOEKSTRA: Oh. Well, all in the name of freedom, I guess.
May 14th, 2009 at 6:25 pmThere’s a wide range of murder too. 1st degree, 2nd degree, conspiracy to commit, attempted murder. ALL CRIMES!
May 14th, 2009 at 6:25 pmThose republican congress people are not qualified to speak about much at all except republicanism. The MSM keeps trotting them out like they had lifetime contracts with TV producers. They had a good run – let the republicans fade away now please MSM, and they can take their crimes and torture with them.
May 14th, 2009 at 6:26 pmMr. Hoekstra. Do you believe that if you were subjected to the same waterboarding techniques as Zubaydah 183 times in one month that you would still feel it wasn’t torture? I don’t.
Mr. Hoekstra, you are lying. And what’s worse, you are lying because you put your loyalty to your political party ahead of your loyalty to your country and to your oath of office to support and defend the Constitution.
You, sir, do not belong in Congress.
May 14th, 2009 at 6:26 pmOk, it is obvious the new GOP “path to success” is to brand themselves the pro-torture party. Mission accomplished.
May 14th, 2009 at 6:27 pmHoekstra says waterboarding was legal, claims ‘there is a wide range of waterboarding.’
– - Well obviously we used….. The New!!, Improved!!, WATERBOARD LITE! It’s SO LITE you can use it 183 times and STILL not suffocate!!
May 14th, 2009 at 6:33 pmWide range of waterboarding? WTF does that mean? Dear Lord these guys can’t sink any lower. Oh, and by the way, where was Dick Cheney today? Why isn’t he spreading his doom on MSM?
May 14th, 2009 at 6:36 pmI like how Chris Matthews keeps saying, “Anytime you intentionally deprive someone of oxygen, it’s torture.”
May 14th, 2009 at 6:37 pmWould these asshats plz go start their own country???…Maybe on an island somwhere off the coast of alaska. Sarah and Rush can run the place…
May 14th, 2009 at 6:38 pmA small island off the coast of alaska would hold, comfortably, Hoekstra and his ilk…
Why isn’t this guy working hard for Michigan to get its economic feet back to help its people? Isn’t michigan about to become a barren wasteland because this clown isn’t helping his constituents…..? What he believes is irrelevant…what is law is what he’s there to uphold….now STFU and get back to work!
Can we waterboard HIM for charity? Isn’t any repug man enough to be waterboarded?
May 14th, 2009 at 6:41 pmTypical BS coming from one of the immoral members of the Republic Fascist Party.
What unethical, immoral, scum bags the R’s are.
Fcuk the Republic Fascist Party
May 14th, 2009 at 6:41 pmMy mistake. It was KSM who was waterboarded 183 times, not Zubaydah. But I doubt that Hoekstra could stand even the 83 times that Zubaydah was waterboarded.
Funny side note: I use Firefox which puts a spell checker in the comment box. It didn’t recognize the name “Hoekstra”, and it’s first suggestion was “Jockstrap”.
May 14th, 2009 at 6:42 pmHere’s what I find so freaking hysterical:
THE REPUBLICANS ARE FOR TORTURE, THINK THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH IT, AND THINK IT’S THE BEST THING TO HAPPEN TO OUR COUNTRY SINCE SLICED BREAD, but yet….
THEY’RE BLAMING NANCY PELOSI FOR WATERBOARDING!
Why aren’t they surrounding her with love & respect? I thought they loved torture? Say wha?
May 14th, 2009 at 6:42 pmSince waterboarding is “legal” now, I’m going to waterboard my boss to find out why I was passed over for that promotion last year. I know he’s lying! (/snark)
May 14th, 2009 at 6:44 pmBuckie, ALL the right wingers love torture, rape, killing, and seeing animals in pain and/or dying. Case in point:
Today on Howie Carr’s show (right winger out of Boston on WRKO) couldn’t wait to tell his listeners that he had photos of the coyote that was on the airport runway which ended up being hit by a truck and then shot to death after it lay in pain & agony. I’m telling you….he was orgasmic over these pictures! It was so disgusting to hear this American Taliban member speaking! Gawd.
By the way, it was a mother coyote and her nipples were swelled, meaning, she was feeding her pups still. Howie didn’t care. Running over an animal, watching it agonize in pain, and then seeing guys shooting it IS BETTER THAN SEX TO HOWIE AND THE REST OF THE RIGHT WING PIGS OF AMERICA!
http://www.wrko.com/pages/681308.php (scroll down to the bottom of the page)
Thought the photos themselves aren’t graphic like you’d think they would be….it’s the whole premise of it. Hearing Howie Carr gleefully explaining this coyote’s death should be grounds for him to be fired. I’ve gone after this a**hole before when he laughed at the DC Madam’s mother’s call to 911 right after she found her daughter hanging & dead in the shed. She was in shock and Howie didn’t give a flying rats arse at all!
Republicans have no compassion about people or animals. They’re dispicable human beings. An embarrassment to the human race!
May 14th, 2009 at 6:51 pmI’m saying that I believe the techniques used in 2002, in 2003, which included waterboarding in a specific format that I’m aware of how they used it, that I believe that was consistent with U.S. law.
So does he mean that waterboarding that required a physician be present to perform a tracheotomy if necessary? He found that was consistent with U.S. law? The only law it was consistent with was the bad legal opinions written by hack lawyers.
I am really loving this. The right really doesn’t realize that criticizing Nancy Pelosi right now is not working in their favor. All it is doing is to keep torture front and center and no matter how hard they try, they can’t divorce themselves from being responsible for torture.
May 14th, 2009 at 7:00 pmRemember the new GOP talking point:
Sen. Graham: “Since torture techniques have survived for about 500 years, apparently they work.”
May 14th, 2009 at 7:00 pmWouldn’t it have been great if Jesse Ventura had stepped onto the stage at that moment with a board and jug of water?
May 14th, 2009 at 7:01 pmWayne Ant Schneider Says:
Funny side note: I use Firefox which puts a spell checker in the comment box. It didn’t recognize the name “Hoekstra”, and it’s first suggestion was “Jockstrap”.
That spell checker in Firefox can be a little tricky. It used to try to change Obama to Osama. But, I’m glad I have it because I hate posting something with spelling errors. It’s worth switching from IE to Firefox for the spell checker alone.
May 14th, 2009 at 7:03 pmI hope President Obama finds rounding up the neocons, torturing them until the brink of death, and then imprisoning them for the rest of their lives is consistent with U.S. Law.
May 14th, 2009 at 7:04 pmThe Republicans made the one mistake the American people will not forgive. They underestimated our intelligence and played us for fools AND counted us a non-people.
A prime EXAMPLE: Now they cannot even decide if waterboarding is “TORTURE”, pretending to be confused and expecting us “The American People” to believe they can’t come to a conclusion. That is BULL SH*T! They know what it is, what is was and disrespect us when they bring this crap to the table. Just blatantly lying to us to our face. The must compelling, interesting part of all of this is they cannot understand why, with perdormances like this, they are losing elections and dying on the vine.
The hawked small government and increased it exponentially. They campaigned against homosexuality while sleeping with persons of their own sex. The opposed abortion while secretly having them performed themselves. The preached morality and Christianity while lying and stealing. They convinced us that we needed to protect the country, at all costs, while simultaneously acting in a manner that left us horribly exposed to danger. To add insult to injury, when they were being systematically exposed they told us: Don’t believe your lying eyes just keep believing what we are saying. Man they are DONE! Stick a fork in them!
There is not a more insulting thing you can do to an another human being than consider them stupid and play them for a fool. They Republican party has managed to step on this landmine and when uncovered they jumped and down on it exploding our pride, hurting our feelings and insulting us to no end. Since when they were in power they had no need nor consideration for our continued existence, now we as a country can find no need for theirs. GOOD LUCK AND GOOD RIDDANCE!
May 14th, 2009 at 7:09 pmOT
KayInMaine @17, We have a couple Squirrels that hang around and eat the seeds that the birds drop from our feeder. We started to feed them from our window and 3 have proven to be very smart. They actually come to the window when they see us and hope for food now. We have two males and one female. We’ve named them (Rusty, Rusty’s Cousin and Bear) and they are our “outside” pets. So, it really saddens me to hear about that coyote. I suppose these people get all HOT when the “abortion button” is pressed but screw those stupid animals!
Where’s the humanity?!?! It’s like these people are suck stupid or juvenile and never grew up!
May 14th, 2009 at 7:13 pmRE: Bilbo Hussein Baggins
“…It’s worth switching from IE to Firefox for the spell checker alone.”
Amen.
May 14th, 2009 at 7:13 pmKudos to the GOP to actually accomplish making the “viability” of torture a common talking point. Never mind the fact we have demonized any country that condones it for decades!
For all their stupidity and evil you gotta admit they know how to manipulate the media.
May 14th, 2009 at 7:15 pmThis republicani hack can shut up about the grey areas of human torture now…
Please tell me Cheney can’t worm his way out of this:
[the good part is near the end]
http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/cheneys-office-wanted-prisoner-waterboa
If cheney goes unpunished we can kiss the good world we once knew goodbye.
May 14th, 2009 at 7:17 pm@26 eyeswideopen1 Says:
Yes, and the Media would be lost without the GOP. It will take outside forces to effect any change at all.
May 14th, 2009 at 7:20 pmBilbo says:
I am really loving this. The right really doesn’t realize that criticizing Nancy Pelosi right now is not working in their favor.
Yeah, they probably know it’s not good but they can’t stops themselves. their knee jerk reaction is to attack Pelosi even though it’s undercutting their 0wn argument. It’s the same thing about kissing rush’s ass.
May 14th, 2009 at 7:20 pmRepublicans are fond of “slippery slope” rhetoric, and use the term quite freely when discussing things they disapprove of – well, allowing the waterboarding of prisoners is a greased chute, to lowering the standards for treatment of all US prisoners, not just suspected terrorists. Some enterprising sheriff (like that nut, Arpaio), will use the fact that we torture political prisoners as a baseline for allowable torture of non-political prisoners. There is the precedent that he, and others of his ilk, will cite to bring back rubber hoses, brass knuckles, and the third degree. And if anyone objects, he’ll use a modified version of the ticking time bomb scenario, and what we have done at Guantanamo, to justify his acts. And since Obama has allowed the precedent to be set to ignore clear violations of law regarding the treatment of prisoners, no court in the land can, or will object, even though “we don’t do that anymore.”
May 14th, 2009 at 7:31 pmSo the prisoners were annoyed into providing all this alleged information.
May 14th, 2009 at 7:43 pmOk, Congressman, if we subject detainees to the Rack and our stretching of them is controlled per Judge Bybee’s instructions(which is US Law, apparently), is that cool too with you, tough guy?
May 14th, 2009 at 7:47 pmget these goon imposters posing as legislators out of here.
May 14th, 2009 at 7:59 pm“I’m not mincing words.” Pete Hoekstra, make no mistake but you are mincing words. The re-education of the American public in the nuances of the English language according to the RNC isn’t going well. I don’t believe a word you are saying, and it’s obvious you don’t either.
Torture is torture.
May 14th, 2009 at 8:00 pmAnd that, Rep. Hoekstra, is why your party is falling apart and faces complete irrelevance for the foreseeable future.
On a related note, Shep must have a pretty secure contract or he would be banished from FAUX. Heck! If he would just call out some of his coworkers I might have to respect him.
May 14th, 2009 at 8:31 pmI’m still waiting for one holier than thou Evangelical nut job to denounce torture.
May 14th, 2009 at 8:39 pmThese rethuglicans will say anything to cover their proverbial, cowardly ass.
May 14th, 2009 at 8:41 pmThere’s all kinds of water boarding. Tap water. Distilled water. Toilet water. Bath water. Natural spring water. Well water. Even flavored water.
I think what this fascist accomplice is saying is that they allowed the detainees to chose their favorite flavor to be drowned with multiple times per day.
May 14th, 2009 at 9:10 pmThanks for the link. Did al Libi hang himself with the same kind of rope the DC Madame and the Anthrax scientist used?
May 14th, 2009 at 9:26 pmRodeskawler Says:
There’s all kinds of water boarding. Tap water. Distilled water. Toilet water. Bath water. Natural spring water. Well water. Even flavored water.
“But, but, Your Honor, we used holy water, it was practically a sacrament!”
May 14th, 2009 at 9:32 pmpete Says:
Shep must have a pretty secure contract or he would be banished from FAUX.
—
i know. that guy might have a future in news broadcasting one day if he would just leave fox.
May 14th, 2009 at 9:33 pm… snort …
May 14th, 2009 at 9:38 pmI think Shep sees the handwriting on the wall and is going to abandon the sinking ship.
May 14th, 2009 at 9:39 pmWaterboarding is an Enhanced Interrogation Technique like Rape is an Enhanced Seduction Technique.
May 14th, 2009 at 9:40 pmThis is the NEW rightwing talking point since they cannot get past the FACT that we sentenced Japanese to PRISON for waterboarding, coutmartialled our OWN soldiers just for overseeing others doing it and sentence one of our OWN Sherrifs to ten years in prison for waterboarding. It is ridiculous of course but the rightwing doesnt need a talking point to make sense just be something simple enough for their brainwashed minions to repeat endlessly.
May 14th, 2009 at 11:54 pmIf waterboarding isn’t torture I want Bush and all of the gang who say it isn’t to go to Japan and find the families of the Japanese soldiers who were tried and convicted for war crimes when they waterboarded American GI’s in WWII. Either it is or it isn’t…there is no gray area here.
May 15th, 2009 at 1:04 amSorry..meant to say go to Japan and find the families…. and apologize to them.
May 15th, 2009 at 1:05 amI’m still waiting for one holier than thou Evangelical nut job to denounce torture. Oto Kiralama l Araç Kiralama l Rent a car
May 15th, 2009 at 3:48 amTo Jane E Schneider: LMAO. I forgot the most important water.
May 15th, 2009 at 6:24 amWater boarding is torture. Torture is a WAR CRIME…PERIOD.
Hoekstra is defending a WAR CRIME..
May 15th, 2009 at 11:34 amWhen it comes to National Security, the biggest difference between liberals and conservatives is how we look at the world. Liberals believe and make decisions based on a mythical harmonious utopia that they want the world to be, can’t we all just get along. Not to bust your bubble but it will always be unobtainable and you will never be satisfied. While conservatives deal with the world as it actually is, there are bad people in this world that hate everything we stand for and we have to deal with them. I would love for this to be resolved by being nice to them but history has shown that being nice to your enemies won’t work and it never has. Being nice to your enemies only makes it easier for them to defeat you; democrats should know this because it is the tactic that the left used against a spineless GOP to win the last couple of election cycles. The only thing being nice to enemies achieves is making it easier for them to enslave your people.
I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you this but it is a fact that these extremist want to kill us, not just conservatives, and I am sure this will surprise you, but liberals as well. There is nothing you can do to change their minds, the more cordial and appeasing you are the weaker they believe you to be. In the wild does the lion attack the largest most dangerous source of food, ie.. the hardest target or does it take on the weak and/or juvenile, ie.. the weakest target?
If you will remember, they hit us multiple times over a couple of decades before we even accepted the fact that we had to fight them. To your disagreement, guess what, when the despised President Bush began projecting American strength the attacks on our soil stopped, didn’t they?
You can call me all the names you want but if my family, and yours as well, was in immediate danger of being killed and the only way I could save them was to hurt someone that I knew had information that would prevent the attack, guess what give me a knife and I’ll start with the pinky.
Go and visit the graves of the people who have died at the hands of extremists over the last thirty years and tell me that if you could have done anything to prevent their deaths you wouldn’t have. Pouring water in someone’s mouth 183 times, not 183 sessions but 183 pours saved kids from growing up without their parents. Saved husbands from being taken from their wives and prevented untold damage to our country. I would rather fight than die, what about you?
May 15th, 2009 at 12:20 pmTo compare our water boarding techniques to what the Japanese did is a joke and you should be ashamed of yourself for being that intellectually dishonest. Take off your rose colored glasses and stop viewing your country with disgust. You might not like it but the US is the greatest force for good that the world has ever seen and as much as you want to convince yourself otherwise history will prove you to be utterly ridiculous. Are you so brainwashed that you can actually look at history and change it. Do you hate the citizens of this country that much? These people, the military, provide you with the freedom to hate your country without impunity. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you do you realize that your buddies Castro and Hugo would cart you away in the middle of the night to never be seen again. Is that really the vision of America that you are promoting?
May 15th, 2009 at 12:33 pmYou see . .
Waterboarding is NOT torture if they let you smoke a Marlboro in between drowning sessions . .
Get it?
May 15th, 2009 at 12:59 pmjburr, I backed Bush for the was in Afghanistan. I did not back the war in Iraq. There now you have someone on this site backing a war.
Another point – I don’t like being lied to. The war in Iraq was built on a lie and torture was used to prove the lie. This should anger any American with a solid mind based in reality.
May 15th, 2009 at 1:42 pmrw-lw, Look at the last twenty years. Look at not only what the Bush administration said but what the Clinton administration said, the British govt said, what most intelligence agencies said and what the left leaning members of congress all said about Iraq, until it became politically expedient to conveniently forget what they said .
A vast majority of conservatives agree that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 but in the same breath you can’t ignore the fact that al queda was in Iraq before the towers fell and we did find weapons of mass destruction there, albeit not a massive amount, but they were there.
When it comes to the terrorist we used EIT’s on, it was not to prove that we should have gone to war but to prevent future attacks on our soil.
Speaking of being lied to. Look at the trail from the EIT documents. When President Obama released the original EIT documents the damage was done, so lets release the rest of them and see who is really telling the truth. Only the fear of the truth would stop them from releasing everything. Don’t give me it puts us in more danger, we are already in danger. They were cutting heads off long before any secret documents were released, and by the way the left didn’t give a second thought to the consequence of releasing secret documents before because it would hurt George Bush and that was all that mattered. Get real they attacked us before we even took notice of them.
I don’t think that Iraq has gone as smooth as we had wished but the fact is we did not lie to get in there and the democrats were on board full steam ahead until the political winds changed and they saw an opportunity then they jumped ship. I hate to have to tell you, but history will record that we did a good thing and should be proud of ourselves. We freed millions of people from a tyrannical dictator who hated America down to his core and was making efforts to try and destroy us, isn’t that a good thing?
May 15th, 2009 at 2:49 pmjburr, There are and will be things that we won’t know as civilians. There’s a lot of CYA in our government past and present. Dictators exist and will continue to exist. Promoting our “democracy” at the end of a bayonet is not the answer in my eyes. And who would want our form of “democracy” which is filled with corporate and bureaucratic cronyism, greed and corruption?
The truth will set us free and, for now, we have no truth, therefore we are not free.
Thanks for your thoughts and input.
May 15th, 2009 at 3:07 pmSomebody should waterboard Nancy PEElosi, what an idiot she is, plus a blatent liar. Obami sure has made a mess of everything.
May 16th, 2009 at 3:47 pmBaloney,
Care to share what President Obama has done to mess everything up (seeing that he’s been in office for less than 150 days and all)?
Care to explain why torturing a member of congress is alright to do?
If you were “accused” of a wrong doing, would you be alright with being waterboarded?
May 16th, 2009 at 3:55 pm