Posted by
Jonathan Cooke on Friday, November 09, 2007 9:05:10 PM
The mainstream media doesn't mention Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, have been funding waterboarding for the past 40 years.
In our continued capitulation to the sensitivities of our own pacifistic left, we are debating the usage of an effective means of interrogation while our enemies must be dumbfounded by our weak-kneed protestations. Oh, and there's a major hypocrisy in this also. Both parties have been funding it for decades.
What our enemies do …
Our Islamic Jihadist enemies (the artists formerly known as Religion of Peace) regularly use knives to slowly cut through the necks of victims until their heads are severed from their bodies. Many of us will still remember how long American hostage Nick Berg screamed before the screaming came to a final end. Even our “allies” in the Middle East such as Saudi Arabia regularly conduct public spectacle beheadings where the head is chopped off by a gleaming scimitar in public squares in front of crowds of eager spectators for such crimes as converting to Christianity. Such behavior is so commonplace I’m surprised there are no popcorn vendors. We have probably all seen the burnt and mutilated bodies of civilian contractors being dragged through the streets of Fallujah before being strung up from a bridge over the Euphrates while ecstatic crowds danced below with glee.
To get time critical information out of these people, I personally would not object if it were extracted out of them by the cutting off of their fingers and toes with pruning shears if, and I stress if, there was a reasonable suspicion that the asset had information that if extracted quickly enough could save innocent lives. But I’m not in charge, and that’s not what we’re even discussing. We’re talking about pouring water on their heads.
What we're doing, and only to a rare few …
Waterboarding consists of immobilizing the person and in a variety of subtly different methods mostly involving the body being strapped down at an angle (approx. 30 degrees) back down, head up commonly with a rag being placed into the person’s mouth or cellophane wrapped over the face, and water being poured over the head to simulate drowning. In many cases the lungs do start to take on some water. While extremely uncomfortable no doubt, this process does not pose an actual threat to life nor limb especially when there is always a physician and "rescue team" present.
Oh, did they tell you?
What most mainstream media talking heads aren’t reporting is that while this practice is by no means widespread in its use on our enemies during interrogations (only three official usages so far, one being Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11th attacks on the United States) it is in fact in widespread usage during U.S. military training. The U.S. Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) schools employ waterboarding as one of their techniques to train U.S. forces to withstand interrogation by foreign forces.
The Hypocrisy!
The United States Congress approves all military spending bills. For the past 40 years, the United States Congress has been approving spending bills that have included the cost of SERE schools. So for the past 40 years Congress has been funding the waterboarding of American military personnel. I find it highly interesting that when they find out that instead of Americans being waterboarded, which is what they regularly pay for, to their horror they find that some of the most dangerous high value enemy prisoners are having the same thing done to them. They pick then and only then as the time to suddenly become incensed and attack the administration. “Oh how can be do this to the poor enemy!” “It’s torture!” Oh so silent those voices have been, for so long indeed, while they have been paying for exactly the same thing to happen to their fellow Americans.
In conclusion ...
Today, maybe right now, U.S. military personnel are being waterboarded at Fairchild Air Force Base, Fort Bragg, Fort Rucker, NAS Brunswick, NAS North Island and North Training Area Camp Gonsalves. Congress is not calling their training “torture”, neither has the media. Congress is not attempting to stop it, neither is the media. Interesting then that when it’s used on someone who has actively tried to kill us, or has succeeded in killing us, during the run-up to an election year, then and only then do Republicans suddenly become “the bad guys”, despite the Democrats funding it since the 60's. If that doesn’t have the vile stench of politics on it then I don’t know what does.
Jonathan RF Cooke
09 November, 2007
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[ Go to the main blog of Jonathan Cooke at http://coffee.townhall.com ]
Sources:
NY Times, “Iraqis Found in Torture House Tell of Brutality of Insurgents”, 19 JUN 2005
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_hostages_in_Iraq