God/FSM help us. Senator Kit Bond, the ranking Republican on the Senate intelligence committee said something completely unhinged to Gwen Ifill on PBS Newshour. She started out with a clear definition of waterboarding and asks whether it’s torture.
GWEN IFILL: Let me ask Senator Bond a little bit about this issue of waterboarding. And let me describe for our viewers first to remind them what it is. It’s when there’s a piece of cloth that’s placed over the mouth of a person who’s been strapped down, and water is poured on their face so they feel like they’re inhaling water, and it gives a sensation of drowning. Do you think that’s torture?He goes on at length, but Ifill asks him again to specifically address whether what it’s torture and this is what came out of the man’s mouth. (via TPM):SEN. KIT BOND: First, let me go back and take issue with some of the things that have just been said. Number one, what the CIA is doing is not torture. It conforms to the Detainee Treatment Act, the Geneva Convention, the Convention against Torture. None of these things that are being used, by any stretch of the imagination, could be described as torture.
Now, I think it was a terribly bad idea that in the intelligence authorization bill there was a ban imposed on the CIA using any techniques other than those in the Army Field Manual.
GWEN IFILL: I just would like to — but do you think that waterboarding, as I described it, constitutes torture?
SEN. KIT BOND: There are different ways of doing it. It’s like swimming, freestyle, backstroke. The waterboarding could be used almost to define some of the techniques that our trainees are put through, but that’s beside the point. It’s not being used.
13 Responses to “U.S. Senator: waterboarding is like doing the backstroke”
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OK, but in fairness, didn’t Sen. Kit Bond also say that anal sex was just like whipping up a batch of fudge?
“There are different ways of doing it. It’s like swimming, freestyle, backstroke.”
…and it’s such a thing of beauty when done with great skill - when torturer and torturee work together in perfect synchronization, each carefully anticipating and coordinating with the other’s moves…quite incredible…
New Olympic event? Torturing With the Stars on TV? On some science/adventure channel on cable: The Dog Torturer. Mattel selling Barbie Home Waterboarding Adventure…
Parents torturing their kids to get them to confess how that stain got on the carpet…boyfriend tortures his girlfriend to find out who she slept with before him…business tortures employees to find out who’s been running up large long-distance charges and using the copy machine too much…
America v2.0: It’s not the founding father’s country anymore…
“Hell, when a 4-year-old learns to doggy-paddle, that’s a lot like some kinds of waterboarding.”
“Surfing can be much harder on the body than waterboarding. Nobody ever dashed their skull on the rocks in waterboarding.”
While he gets extra stupid points for comparing it to different swimming strokes, in my book, he’s already pegging the stupid meter for this:
She asked if it was torture as she described it: whether there are different methods or techniques is completely fucking irrelevant.
Gods, I’m so tired of being ruled by people who can’t pass a fifth grade reading comprehension test–especially if they do this shit on purpose.
The proof is in the pudding. Let Mr. Senator Man try it himself and report back on whether it’s torture.
Does this mean we’re going to see professional waterboarding as an Olympic event?
Oh DAMMIT; I go back up the line and see MikeEss already claimed this one! (sulk)
Back in Missouri, I always wondered why the Bond kids wept openly during their swimming lessons. Now I know why.
Yeah, it’s like doing the backstroke while some asshole keeps pushing you under and a bunch of the asshole’s friends are standing around ready to beat you to death if you try to get out of the water.
And I’m sure any number of US military personnel will be looking so kindly on Bond when they’re captured somewhere, and some smiling villain tells them they’re going to spend the next few hours doing the backstroke…
Has anyone else noticed that whenever the wingnuts start harping over something outrageous and offensive that someone on the left said, the culprit is usually an English proffessor at some community college, while whenever we start harping over something outrageous and offensive that someone on the right said, it is usually the ranking Republican on a Senate committee?
Decnavda, that’s because in wingnutlandia a “Leftist Community College Professor” has more influence on politics, morality, and human affairs than a Reichwing Senator.
Now their views on this may be a little off - they also believe the most urgent thing for congress to do is protect the rights of oppressed christians who make up the majority of American citizens…
Herm. One big problem with Ifill. One doesn’t get “the sensation” of drowning. Waterboarding is pouring water over a person so that if they breathe in, they *breathe in water*. What happens if you breathe in enough water? You drown.
Waterboarding is *not* simulated drowning. It is controlled drowning. By controlling the amount of water used, you control the amount that can get in the lungs.
I really, really think anyone who minimizes waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation, etc, is volunteering to have it done to them. At best, they lack imagination to such a degree they need to experience it to understand. More likely, they just don’t care.
Wow, I’m surprised that he didn’t invoke Chappaquiddick in his new spin on waterboarding, as Rush always does.
(Although there seems to be an unspoken rule among Senators to not bring up long-past regrettable events. I’d rather drive with Ted Kennedy than Laura Bush; it’s only fitting that she married someone like George who’s killed many through the Iraq war.)