On Monday 9/25 i wrote this quickie on that whole torture conundrum the junior Gmen on the hill were mulling over and the general crappiness of mainstream media political interviews:
Alright, so we've all heard the Response According to Hoyle from the GOP on the water-boarding issue. A great example was given by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, and you can watch it here if you'd like (http://crooksandliars.com), but it's the same thing you've heard a dozen times by now and it goes something like this:
Q: 12 human rights organizations have united to petition this government to keep practices which violate Common Article 3 of the Geneva convention, such as water-boarding, illegal. This law was in fact used to prosecute Japanese soldiers after WWII for that exact practice. Does the senate's "clarification" of the language of that law keep those practices illegal?
A: See, you have it all wrong. The whole point of this clarification is to clarify the very vague language of this law that's been agreed upon by everyone in the world for more than 50 years. If we can't clarify this law, the interrogation of Terrorist suspects, which has saved lives in America, will have to stop, and we can't allow that.
Q: But are the specific practices mentioned by the human rights groups still illegal? You should know since this law is so clear now right?
A: I can't talk about specific practices because that would be giving the terrorists a play book. They could train themselves to endure the techniques that are allowed by the very clear law and terror would ensue.
It's at this point that every single journalist I've seen engaged in this discussion, which is many, then moves on to another topic (or maybe they repeat the last question, getting the same response and then move on, but what's the difference?). This is the problem, they don't follow up with simple questions that would nail it down, leaving the issue up in the air and defined by the GOP spin doctors, which generally turns the "interview" into propaganda.
Here is an easy one for example.
Q: But if water-boarding wasn't allowed in this new rule, wouldn't it be okay for the terrorists to know, since we're never going to do it them? We haven't told them what we will be doing, so they still can't train to get around what we will be doing, so we haven't lost any future information. It almost seems like by saying that you can't tell us whether the practice is in or out, you're saying that it is going to be allowed, and wouldn't that be eroding the law as it's stood for more than 50 years? This is a practice that's been illegal and that the US has prosecuted foreign nationals for, so including it in our interrogation programs would be changing the law, not clarifying, right?
Was that so hard?
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thought i'd post it here with this update:
Cheney was interviewd on Tuesday on a conservative talkshow and had this to say of waterboarding (Miami Herald).
''Again, this debate seems a little silly given the threat we face, would you agree?'' Hennen said.
''I do agree,'' Cheney replied, according to a transcript of the interview released Wednesday.
''Would you agree that a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?'' asked Hennen.
'It's a no-brainer for me," said Cheney.
So, it seems that we can talk about individual practices afterall. What a bunch of assholes.
