http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/world/24intel.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

1. Rendition is TORTURE! There’s never been any legitimate dispute to this.

2. Clinton and now Obama tortured people.

3. Clinton and now Obama ordered the torture.

We can’t ever allow our elected officials to forget those three things. I hate to sound overly dramatic but, our survival as a nation may well depend on bringing these evil men to trial.

And, we have to then realize that not only did they commit Felonies, but they committed TREASON for not abiding by their oaths of office to “Protect, and defend the Constitution.”

They are TRAITORS and MUST be brought to justice.

Call the Whitehouse comment line 202-456-1111 and tell President Obama that this country CANNOT survive UNLESS these traitors are brought to justice. And the only justice for TREASON is HANNGING. Please remind Pres Obama that he cannot pardon treason.

I guess mancow is a WUSS.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/24/734853/-Krugman-After-Voluntarily-Waterboarding:-Not-Torture

Sat May 23, 2009 at 10:47:49 PM PDT
New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, a vocal critic of the Bush administration’s use of waterboarding, today reversed his position after subjecting himself to the controversial technique. “I was wrong,” said Mr. Krugman shortly after toweling himself off, “It’s not torture. I owe the Bush administration–Vice President Cheney in particular–a big apology.”

Mr. Krugman was the latest in a growing line of journalists who agreed to be waterboarded in order to determine whether or not the tactic constituted torture. Unlike conservative talk radio host Matthew Erich “Mancow” Muller and columnist Christopher Hitchens, Krugman emerged from his experience convinced that not only was it not torture, but “rather pleasant.”

“It reminded me of nothing so much as this time when I got splashed with water by Shamu at Sea World. For a second there, it’s pretty scary, then you just kind of relax and enjoy it. I think I was seven.”

Self Identified Hipster’s diary :: ::
In addition to waterboarding, Mr. Krugman also submitted himself to several other Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, including the Attention Slap, labeled by Mr. Krugman “gay,” the Belly Slap, which, according to former SERE instructor Greg Davenport, who administered the techniques, made Mr. Krugman titter “like a drunken prom queen,” and Long Time Standing, which Mr. Krugman shruggingly referred to as “like the Seventh Inning Stretch, but without the organ music.”

Mr. Davenport expressed admiration for Mr. Krugman’s fortitude. “I have to admit, when I saw him, I was awfully glad we had an EMT with us. He’s not really a Vin Diesel, you know? More of a Woody Allen. But the guy’s got stones, I’ll tell you that. Woulda made a hell of a Marine.”

The entire process, which began with a forced extraction of Mr. Krugman from a Starbucks in Midtown Manhattan, took approximately twenty-three hours, at which time Mr. Krugman uttered the safe word he and Mr. Davenport had agreed upon prior to the experiment, “Teabags.”

“I would have liked to take a crack at KSM’s record,” said Mr. Krugman, referring to terrorist Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times in one month. “But I realized I had a column deadline. Maybe next time. You know,” added Mr. Krugman, shaking his head and smiling, “It had been so long, I almost forgot what the safe word was, then I remembered and I just had to laugh. ‘Teabags.’ Aren’t those Republicans the dickens?”

His regular readers seemed surprised by the shift. “I’d say I was disappointed,” commented Patty McFarlan, 32, “But to be honest, I’m mostly impressed. I mean, twenty-three hours? What is that, 1,200 times as long as those conservative jokers lasted? Liberals rock.”

Vice President Cheney could not be reached for comment, but his daughter, Elizabeth, did have this to say: “Well, my father is glad to hear that at least one member of–wait, did you say 23 hours? I’m sorry, but that’s–okay, one member of the liberal press corps finally gets–not seconds? Really? Anyway, the Vice President accepts his apology.”

Other conservatives, such as radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, stayed on message. “This confirms exactly what I’ve been saying all along: not only are we not being too hard on these terrorists, we’re being far–far–too easy on them. I have to thank Paul Krugman for doing what, due to risks related to my debilitating AIED [Autoimmune Inner Ear Disease], my physician would not let me do myself: expose what a joke our current interrogation techniques are. I mean, when a bleeding heart liberal like Paul Krugman can last twenty-three hours, you know it’s time to get tougher. Bring on the rack! Bring on the Iron Maiden! Why don’t we draw and quarter these people?”

When informed of his comments, Mr. Krugman replied, “Did he really? That’s so–I said the exact same thing! Just to be clear, I still feel there’s a line we as Americans cannot cross, but after my experience, the Bush administration did not cross it. Bamboo shoots, maybe? Don’t get me wrong; I still think the Bush administration set the standard for incompetence–the Glasgow smile?–degraded our government, and undermined the rule of law. You don’t need to torture to do all that. The Picquet?”

[Updated because I was dissatisfied with the ending. I do appreciate all the comments--positive and negative. This obviously missed with some people; for my intent, below is my comment to Yirmiyahu:

I realized after watching the Mancow video [last] evening that only an idiot would need to be waterboarded to realize it’s torture, and found the thought of a smart, buttoned-up columnist agreeing to it–then having an identical view shift–absurd enough to be amusing. Perhaps more so in theory than execution, but I enjoyed giving it a whirl.]

Will Mr. Muller remain willing to defend, on his program and elsewhere, the use of waterboarding for intelligence gathering? Will he continue to justify torture, even on an exceptional basis, as a legitimate means of protecting national security? That is the proof in the pudding as to whether Mr. Muller has truly learned from his experience, particularly as more time has passed to allow his sense of its severity to fade. Will he call it drowning or simply the sensation of drowning as he did in the video?

Another thing: Why do so many sources still refer to waterboarding as simulated drowning? Hitchens’s chronicle of his own experience made clear that death was quite possible even in the controlled environment of his trial. How would public support for waterboarding differ if it’s “only” simulated drowning vs. the real deal?

pete says:

We can’t ever allow our elected officials to forget those three things. I hate to sound overly dramatic but, our survival as a nation may well depend on bringing these evil men to trial.

And, we have to then realize that not only did they commit Felonies, but they committed TREASON for not abiding by their oaths of office to “Protect, and defend the Constitution.”

They are TRAITORS and MUST be brought to justice.

Call the Whitehouse comment line 202-456-1111 and tell President Obama that this country CANNOT survive UNLESS these traitors are brought to justice. And the only justice for TREASON is HANNGING. Please remind Pres Obama that he cannot pardon treason.

They are fcuked.

I have endured what I consider to be torture. So what?

ya live and ya learn

I would have been more impressed if the board had had no soft material, if he had had both his arms and legs restrained (also in a not so gentle method as well), the cloth completely covering his head, and no method for stopping the procedure (rubber cow). Then he would have come closer, like I, to what the CIA was doing.

I make no claims that what I went through was comparable to what was done to the terrorists or that we should pamper the guilty ones for what they did, but I will lament the demise of our honor because of acting out of fear, in the name of political expediency, and ratings .

As I said before I don’t know this “man-cow”, but he must be a better man than I because after my boarding I was not so verbose and not just my hand was shaking (my whole body shook as I “admitted my guilt. Perhaps it is because he is a broadcaster, on that vein, could this have just been a way to become a more liberal broadcaster and in that way increase his ratings? Maybe he sees the way the wind has changed and wants to make the change as well…

Once again I don’t know this man, but in this day and age I’d say anything is possible…

This was the most intelligent post for this topic. Thankyou Perry. The Militants we interrogated DID get better at this form of interrogation. Those of us who’ve been thru SERE-C can attest that after you’ve been awake 5-7 days straight running thru the wilderness without sleep, the delerium you’re in after being “captured” makes it more of a bath experience. Not fun but…. Nah, those Iraqi boys are tough. They can take it and they look forward to facing their enemy on this to show us how tough they really are. TRUST ME!!!

Bath experience? I went through SERE and you sir are totally full of sh*t. Bath experience my *ss.

You are a liar and a fool. Regurgitating the LIES you have been told to believe. There is NO DIFFERENCE between the waterboarding we did and the waterboarding the Japanese did. It is EXACTLY the same thing you lying moronic piece of shit

they are new souls that fail to understand the lack of benefits of torture.

they have watched too many seasons of 24

this was bound to happen once we let the christian right take over the gov

you see christianity died on the cross

They get no quarter from me. I repeat: their evil needs to be wiped off the face of the earth.

CFP, you’re missing the point…Mancow had the choice of calling it quits when it got too much for him. Did the prisoners have a choice? Many of them were picked up by greedy bounty hunters looking to make a buck. C’mon. Even those who might not question as much should ask themselves, “bounty system + eager bounty hunters = Are these really ALL terrorists?”