Cohen: Hey, Maybe Cheney Is Right About Torture

Nothing like a reliable liberal have the audacity to agree with Dick Cheney. Of course Richard Cohen throws in all the necessary caveats about Cheney being a bad guy just to keep his street cred, but he trying to be honest and tell the truth. Not that it does him a lot of good with his core audience.

Cheney says he once had the memos in his files and has since asked that they be released. He's got a point. After all, this is not merely some political catfight conducted by bloggers, although it is a bit of that, too. Inescapably, it is about life and death -- not ideology, but people hurling themselves from the burning World Trade Center. If Cheney is right, then let the debate begin: What to do about enhanced interrogation methods? Should they be banned across the board, always and forever? Can we talk about what is and not just what ought to be?

In a similar vein, can we also find out what Nancy Pelosi knew and when she knew it? If she did indeed know about waterboarding back in 2003, that would hardly make her a war criminal. But if she knew and insists otherwise, that would make her one of those people who will not acknowledge that the immediate post-Sept. 11 atmosphere allowed for methods that now seem abhorrent. Certain Democratic politicians remind me of what Oscar Levant supposedly said of Doris Day: "I knew [her] before she was a virgin." They have no memory of who they used to be.

Naturally, the forces of tolerance react kindly to Cohen with their typical class.

Surprise! Media Lied About KSM Being Waterboarded 183 Times

This piece of garbage may have had water poured on him 183 times, but it wasn't waterboarding.

Let's see how fast all the media outlets and leftwing blogs who breathlessly reported this go and correct themselves.

The New York Times reported last week that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, was waterboarded 183 times in one month by CIA interrogators. The "183 times" was widely circulated by news outlets throughout the world.

It was shocking. And it was highly misleading. The number is a vast inflation, according to information from a U.S. official and the testimony of the terrorists themselves.

A U.S. official with knowledge of the interrogation program told FOX News that the much-cited figure represents the number of times water was poured onto Mohammed's face -- not the number of times the CIA applied the simulated-drowning technique on the terror suspect. According to a 2007 Red Cross report, he was subjected a total of "five sessions of ill-treatment."

"The water was poured 183 times -- there were 183 pours," the official explained, adding that "each pour was a matter of seconds."

The Times and dozens of other outlets wrote that the CIA also waterboarded senior Al Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah 83 times, but Zubayda himself, a close associate of Usama bin Laden, told the Red Cross he was waterboarded no more than 10 times.

Still, for all time the left will repeat the waterboarded 183 times mantra and never cite this report.

Thanks, New York Times, another great service to the nation.

Practice Makes Perfect: Two AQ Honchos Waterboarded 266 Times

You know what really upsets me the most about this report? I had 270 in the office waterboarding pool. Damn, just missed hitting it on the nose.

C.I.A. interrogators used waterboarding, the near-drowning technique that top Obama administration officials have described as illegal torture, 266 times on two key prisoners from Al Qaeda, far more than had been previously reported.

The C.I.A. officers used waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002 against Abu Zubaydah, according to a 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum. Abu Zubaydah has been described as a Qaeda operative.

A former C.I.A. officer, John Kiriakou, told ABC News and other news media organizations in 2007 that Abu Zubaydah had undergone waterboarding for only 35 seconds before agreeing to tell everything he knew.

The 2005 memo also says that the C.I.A. used waterboarding 183 times in March 2003 against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The New York Times reported in 2007 that Mr. Mohammed had been barraged more than 100 times with harsh interrogation methods, causing C.I.A. officers to worry that they might have crossed legal limits and to halt his questioning. But the precise number and the exact nature of the interrogation method was not previously known.

The release of the numbers is likely to become part of the debate about the morality and efficacy of interrogation methods that the Justice Department under the Bush administration declared legal even though the United States had historically treated them as torture.

Since some are apparently upset waterboarding may not be all that effective, new methods of torture now include reading aloud NY Times fashion stories on Michele Obama, Twitter updates from Meghan McCain, and feigned outrage from RawMuscleGlutes.

Bush to Veto Waterboarding Ban, Man Who Left Woman to Drown Objects

It never ceases to amaze me how the left gets so unwound over waterboarding, which reportedly has only been used three times, and even then on the most vicious monsters the world has ever knowsn.

I know the left hates this country and George Bush in particular, but has it ever occurred to them the terrorists would also like to kill them if given the chance? Has political animosity so clouded their judgment they're willing to makes themselves more vulnerable to terrorists?

Apparently so.

Bush to veto waterboarding bill

President Bush is poised to veto legislation that would bar the CIA from using waterboarding — a technique that simulates drowning — and other harsh interrogation methods on terror suspects.

The president planned to talk about the veto in his Saturday radio address.

Bush has said the bill would harm the government's ability to prevent future attacks. Supporters of the legislation argue that it preserves the United States' right to collect critical intelligence while boosting the country's moral standing abroad.

"The bill would take away one of the most valuable tools on the war on terror, the CIA program to detain and question key terrorist leaders and operatives," deputy White House press secretary Tony Fratto said Friday.

Now here's what galls me. A guy who left a woman to die a slow death by drowning offers his vociferous objection.

"President Bush's veto will be one of the most shameful acts of his presidency," Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said in a statement Friday. "Unless Congress overrides the veto, it will go down in history as a flagrant insult to the rule of law and a serious stain on the good name of America in the eyes of the world."

Mary Jo Kopechne was unavailable for comment.

Note also the URL that goes with the story. More objectivity from the media: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080308/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_torture

Workplace Genius: Motivation By Waterboarding

This waterboarding is the gift that keeps on giving, much like the Abu Ghraib photos.

Just the mere mention of it drives the left into paroxysms of rage and incoherence.

Well, they're incoherent most of the time, but you get the point.

Report: Employee Lawsuit Alleges Company Used Waterboarding to Motivate Workers

A supervisor at a motivational coaching business in Provo is accused of waterboarding an employee in front of his sales team to demonstrate that they should work as hard on sales as the employee had worked to breathe.

In a lawsuit filed last month, former Prosper, Inc. salesman Chad Hudgens alleges his managers also allowed the supervisor to draw mustaches on employees' faces, take away their chairs and beat on their desks with a wooden paddle "because it resulted in increased revenues for the company."

Prosper president Dave Ellis responded that the allegations amount to "sensationalized" versions of events that have gone uncorroborated by Hudgens' former coworkers.

"They just roll their eyes and say, 'This is ridiculous . . . That's not how it went down,' " Ellis said.

The suit claims that Hudgens' team leader, Joshua Christopherson, asked for volunteers in May for "a new motivational exercise," which he did not describe. Hudgens, who was 26 at the time, volunteered in order to "prove his loyalty and determination," the suit claims.

Christopherson led the sales team to the top of a hill near the office and told Hudgens to lie down with his head downhill, the suit claims. Christopherson then told the rest of the team to hold Hudgens by the arms and legs.

Christopherson poured water from a gallon jug over Hudgens' mouth and nostrils - like the interrogation strategy known as "waterboarding" - and told the team members to hold Hudgens down as he struggled, the suit alleges.

"At the conclusion of his abusive demonstration, Christopherson told the team that he wanted them to work as hard on making sales as Chad had worked to breathe while he was being waterboarded," the suit alleges.

Nothing like so fun team-building exercises.

Update: Hot Air links. Thanks!

Democrats Reaffirm Moral Superiority, Vote to Ban Waterboarding

Sure, it gives them a chance to preen for the cameras and pander to their hardcore base--you know, those who support the other side--but in the end Bush will veto it anyway.

Forget the safety and well-being of potentially millions of Americans, they're more concerned with our image.

Congress on Wednesday moved to prohibit the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods on terror suspects, despite President Bush's threat to veto any measure that limits the agency's interrogation techniques.

The prohibition was contained in a bill authorizing intelligence activities for the current year, which the Senate approved on a 51-45 vote. It would restrict the CIA to the 19 interrogation techniques outlined in the Army field manual. That manual prohibits waterboarding, a method that makes an interrogation subject feel he is drowning.

The House had approved the measure in December. Wednesday's Senate vote set up a confrontation with the White House, where Bush has promised to veto any bill that restricts CIA questioning.

Arguing for such restrictions, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said the use of harsh tactics would boomerang on the United States.

"Retaliation is the way of the world. What we do to others, they will do to us — but worse," Rockefeller said.

He's right. Next thing you know, they might chop off the heads of our soldiers or torture them in unspeakable ways.

Oh wait, they do that already.

Never mind.

"This debate is about more than legality. It is also about morality, the way we see ourselves ... and what we represent to the world."

What you represent to the world, Mr. Rockefeller, is pusillanimity on a grand scale. What you represent, Mr. Rockefeller, is fecklessness, timidity and weakness.

No wonder our enemies want more Democrats in office.

Update: Thanks to Stop the ACLU for the link. Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin has the roll call, while Bryan at Hot Air discloses more unspeakable horror at Club Gitmo.

Curious to not neither Barack Obama or Mrs. Clinton showed up for the vote. How convenient. Senator McCain voted against this absurdity.

Oh, the Humanity! U.S. Could Again Use Waterboarding

Sure, we could do it again. Never take that card off the table.

Of course, seeing the way the presidential races are shaping up, it won't ever be used after January 20, 2009.

The United States may use waterboarding to question terrorism suspects in the future, the White House said Wednesday, rejecting the widely held belief that the practice amounts to torture.

"It will depend upon circumstances," spokesman Tony Fratto said, adding "the belief that an attack might be imminent, that could be a circumstance that you would definitely want to consider."

"The president will listen to the considered judgment of the professionals in the intelligence community and the judgment of the attorney general in terms of the legal consequences of employing a particular technique," he said.

His comments came one day after CIA director Michael Hayden for the first time admitted publicly that the agency had used "waterboarding," a practice that amounts to controlled drowning, to question three top al-Qaeda detainees nearly five years ago.

After years of insisting that disclosing any specific interrogation techniques would harm US national security, US President George W. Bush "authorized General Hayden to say what he said," Fratto told reporters.

Seeing how much our image around the world will magically improve next year, I can't see anyone ever perpetrating acts of terror against us that would ever make us do this again.

Right?

We'll just have the magic of dialogue.

Will the Chimpy McHitlerburton Horrors Ever End? Waterboarding Cows For School Lunches!

It's the perfect storm. We've got the confluence of animal rights wackos, the dastardly interrogation technique that turns leftwing knees into jello and a pet Democrat program all rolled into one.

Possibly the only thing that could make this a four-star bonanza were if it occurred at Club Gitmo.

Too good to be true.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Humane Society of the United States said on Wednesday a California slaughterhouse was using a range of torture including "waterboarding" to prod unfit animals into the slaughterhouse so they could be processed into food that may have ended up in school lunch programs.

The Humane Society displayed a video from its own undercover, six-week investigation that it said showed abuse by workers at the Hallmark Meat Packing Co of Chino, California. However, the name of the plant was not visible in the video.

The video showed workers kicking cows, ramming them with forklift blades, applying electric shocks and even using a hose to simulate the feeling of drowning so the animals would revive long enough to pass federal inspection.

"The attempt was to make them so distressed and to cause them so much suffering that these animals would get up and walk into the slaughterhouse," Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States, told reporters,

No word whether they were subject to lights or bad rap music.

"We've heard a lot about waterboarding in 2007 as a torture technique and we saw this applied to these animals where a high pressure hose was put in the mouth and through the nose," he said, referring to a controversial technique used in the past by the CIA in its terrorism interrogation program.

The company was not immediately available for comment but said in a statement that operations had been suspended at the plant and two workers fired.

Pacelle said the plant supplies meat to the Westland Meat Co, which is the second-largest supplier of beef to the USDA Commodity Procurement Program Branch.

This branch distributes beef to needy families, the elderly and to more than 100,000 schools and child-care facilities nationwide under the national school lunch program.

The man who called our troops in Iraq Nazis was immediately available for comment.

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, on Wednesday called for an immediate federal investigation into the safety of ground beef used in the school lunch program.

"The treatment of animals in the video is appalling, but more than that it raises significant concerns about the safety of the food being served to our nation's children," Durbin said in a statement.

H/T Shiplord Kirel.

UPDATE: Hot Air links. Thanks. Gateway Pundit also links and has the video.

Memo to Democrats: Waterboarding Works

For all those on the left--and some on the right--who get all squishy over the concept of waterboarding terrorists, here's all you need to know about how effective the method is.

Thirty-five seconds of waterboarding was all it took to get a top al Qaeda terrorist to break, his CIA interrogator revealed yesterday.

Abu Zubaydah, a top lieutenant to Osama bin Laden captured in March 2002, gave up his conspirators after a half-minute of the technique, according to now retired CIA officer John Kiriakou.

"The next day, he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate," Kiriakou told ABC News.

"From that day on, he answered every question."

He added, "The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks."

Zubaydah was reportedly the first insider to finger Khalid Sheik Mohammed as the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, as well as Jose Padilla's alleged dirty bomb plot.

So for all the caterwauling and handwringing about our image around the world, for all the incessant whining, I have a simple question: Would you have preferred those possible dozens of attacks to have occurred or would it have been better to stop them?

More reaction here.

Nutroots Clown: Pelosi Waterboarding Revelation is Blackmail

You can't make this stuff up.

Now that it's been revealed Nancy Pelosi and a number of Democrats were briefed on waterboarding five years ago, the tiny brains on the left just cannot fathom their heroine is a duplicitous fraud.

There must be another answer: Blackmail!

Hence, we must have an investigation!

Too funny for words.

There is a simple way for Speaker Pelosi and Congressional Democrats to counteract the implicit blackmail to which they were subjected in Sunday's Washington Post. Go public. They should call the White House's bluff and immediately create a Joint Investigative Committee to commence public hearings on the entire history of US torture and interrogation practices under the Bush Administration.

Let's get it all out there: who ordered it; who sanctioned it; who knew about it and when; who opposed and who remained silent. Then let the chips fall where they may.

Uh, just one problem there, genius. Pelosi doesn't deny any of this.

Good grief, these people are naive.

One of the more humorous aspects of this idiotice screed is they complain about leaks. Coming from a Democrat, that's absolutely hilarious.