I believe the guys then in charge knew it is torture and lied about it being so because they believe it to be necessary for the well being of the country. Those lower down on the food chain believe the party line.
I love when Starving Artist swoops in and triumphantly proclaims “If things were opposite, I’d be right.”
I can understand why people might want to see Cheney be waterboarded. Not to punish him for alleged misdeeds, not as retribution for actions he may or may not have taken as Vice-president, but to see if he would still declare “it is not torture” afterwards. That, I could get behind.
Torturing him, as punishment for ordering the torturing of others? Sounds like two wrongs not making a right, as usual, like giving murderers the death penalty.
Oh gah! If I’d known that the thread would be sent back to GD, I never would have posted my big-fonted snark earlier. I figured it was ultimately headed to the Pit. I’d delete it if I could.
The snark was posted because Starving Artist always brings up Clinton’s penis in an effort to distract from the topic at hand, when the topic is disparaging of conservatives. It never fails, it’s like clockwork. He rails about hypocrisy and a double-standard but he conveniently forgets about past threads where people (liberals) have told him that they did not and do not give Clinton a free pass. Over and over and over and over and over and over again he’s been told, but it’s more convenient to forget/ignore what he’s been told because it’s easier to paint ALL liberals with his broad delusional brush.
It also seems to be a “Hey, look over there! A shiny thing!” tactic designed to divert an uncomfortable discussion — in this case, a more-or-less conservative public figure changing his mind about waterboarding based on personal experience — to less dangerous channels.
Works pretty well, too. 
It’s certainly a serious topic, but I lack sympathy for the people who choose to undergo it voluntarily and then get freaked out by it. Especially these days, when we have so much more information about what goes on, it doesn’t seem necessary to go through it before understanding that it’s a bad thing.
It’s equivalent, in my mind, to boldly declaring that touching naked live wires couldn’t hurt that badly, then grabbing hold of them and going “Holy shit that hurt!” My response in that situation and this is, “sigh Of course it does. Dumbass.” So yes, I’m going to make light of the issue in their case.
I did some quick googling and I can’t find anyone who’s been waterboarded who thinks it’s not torture.
On a tangent, Liz Cheney, who is, in my estimation a rancid maggot-filled lump of shit crudely sewn into a woman skin, keeps making the argument that waterboarding isn’t torture because we did it to our own troops. Conveniently forgetting that we do it to prepare them for being tortured by our enemies if captured. :smack:
Seriously, the only people left on the waterboarding isn’t torture side are the stupid, the gullible and liars like the Cheneys.
I understand why SA tries to deflect. His side is morally bankrupt and he can’t argue the case without looking like a fool. So instead he makes a fuss pretending that Clinton was as bad as Bush. Which is laughable.
Ever come close to drowning? Mine too a few minutes instead of a few seconds, but I also didn’t have someone shooting it straight in…
-Joe
In your weird circular way, you actually made sense 
The undead don’t need air.
OK, give us the cites, links or quotes.
Actually you show by this post that you haven’t the vaguest idea about my thinking or what I try to accomplish. Neither does Equipoise.
It isn’t about deflection and it most certainly isn’t about Clinton’s penis. It’s about hypocrisy, double-standards and the fact that a certain political ideology in this country which has held itself for decades to be more evolved, enlightened and progressive than its opponents is in reality no different and no better, it just exists at the opposite end of the political scale.
Now to get back to Clinton for a minute, I’ll illustrate what I mean. All during the feminist era the message from the left was that there was no difference between men and women at all, save the ability to give birth. Any suggestion that this was a ridiculous stance to take was instantly met with the same sort of derision that is these days visited upon people who fail to wholeheartedly embrace SSM. It was also contended by some and refuted by no one engaging in public discourse that anytime a woman accused a man of rape, it was automatically proven to be so because rape was such a serious offense that no woman would ever lie about it.
And of course the idea that a man in a position of power would ever use that position in an attempt to obtain sex from a female subordinate was also considered the height of heinousness. Just like today where saying the wrong word or not wholly embracing SSM is viewed by most on the left as grounds for excoriation and the loss of one’s career, any man who dared to try to use his position to leverage sex from a female subordinate was reviled as one of the most evil creatures to ever walk the face of the earth.
And when it came to encountering women in the course of one’s day, it was absolutely verbotten to speak to them in a way that even remotely suggested that one found them different from men or respected more than men…such as holding doors for them and so forth.
So in other words, anything that any woman anywhere might possibly find a reason to take offense at was instantly championed by the left, and scorn and revulsion visited upon anyone who dared cross that constantly moving line of what women found offensive.
Then enter Bill Clinton, with his pants-dropping greetings to women procured for him by the Arkansas Highway Patrol, his ‘bimbo eruptions’, his encouraging women to lie to cover for him ala Genifer Flowers, his - here it comes - Oval Office blowjob and the sheer effrontery to all that is feminism by sticking his cigar into her before smoking it, and there’s nary a peep from NOW, nary a peep from womens’ magazines, nary a peep from Hollywood leftists, etc. In other words, nary a peep from any of those on the left who had so stridently been insisting that anyone mistreating a woman in any way, real or imagined, was the lowest form of scum on the planet.
And this was clearly because Clinton was on the correct side politically and was therefore in a position to get other things done which the left favored, so they didn’t want to do anything to erode his power, or it was because he was one of their own and therefore his actions were viewed as more forgivable.
Either way, it puts the lie to the implied notion that mistreating women was the worst and lowest form of behavior a man could engage in, and that any man who did engage in it more or less ought to be shot.
Now it’s true that not every liberal gave Clinton a pass, but the public face of liberalism issued hardly a peep of condemnation to offenses of his that played out time and again over the years.
And then there is the issue of H. Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s stated opposition to SSM. Miss California was raked over the coals mercilessly and her crown threatened because of her (sensitively worded, IMO) personal belief, based on how she was raised, that marriage should be between a man and a woman, and yet there’s been scarcely a ripple from the public face of the left about Hillary and Obama taking the exact same position. (And it has not escaped my attention that in all whinging about my allegedly focusing on Bill’s penis, no one has seen fit to include my observation about Hillary and Obama and SSM. ;))
And so it isn’t about Clinton’s penis, and it isn’t about SSM. It’s about double-standards and hypocrisy coming from a segment of society that holds itself as being better than everyone else, and therefore presumably above the kinds of hypocrisy and double-standards that admittedly exist on my side as well.
Starving Artist, stop changing the subject. This thread was supposed to be about torture. Nobody wants to listen to you yammer about EVUL LIBRULS for the 85th time.
What, you stopped counting in 2001?
-Joe
Oh, just shut up about Clinton.
Allow me to paraphrase that rambling stupidity. "It’s not about deflection. DEFLECT!"
It would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic.
No, 1962. That’s about when he started.
Maybe I missed it. When does Starving Artist show us its’ waterboarding video? I’m sure we’ll all get bored about 15 minutes in, but it’ll still be interesting to see.
-Joe
Starving Artist, Nobody died when Clinton lied.
And that saying is already old.
During the long years of Republican control of congress they decided to not put members of the Bush administration or corporations under oath.
It seems that baseball was one of the few things that the republican congress then decided that it was important enough to make that step.
IMHO the republican congress knew what to do to prevent Bush or Cheney from being taken to justice.
I started out talking about torture and the hypocisy involved in liberals cheering the prospect of it when Republicans/conservatives are the target rather than mere murdering terrorists.
Since then I’ve mostly responded to things said to me or erroneous things said about me, both of which I fully intend to continue doing, given that I pays my fees and have just as much right to post around here as anybody else.
So the short answer is no.
However, I am leaving for some delicious genuine Mexican tacos, with cilantro and everything, to be washed down with a couple bottles of ice-cold beer.
So you have a little time to masturbate yourselves over evil Republican torturers and pretend you’re better than they before I return.