I'll try again, 101, since your skull is as thick as ever. Hitchens wasn't tortured because he could stop the waterboarding and knew he could. Therefore he had no fear of dying. People being waterboarded for real think they will die and have no assurance that the person inflicting on them will not let them die.

Peeling somebody's skin off, cutting their eyes out, cutting their fingers off is torture. Sticking light fixtures up their ass as was done at Abu Ghraib is too. But waterboarding, according to you, is not torture. So how is it different? It doesn't hurt quite as much, is that your argument? The people suffering it should man up and tell themselves they are not drowning? Please explain.

“If waterboarding is torture why are so many people volunteering to do it?” - 101

God, you are stupid.

Torture is not consensual. That's why it's called torture. The infliction and cessation of torture is not within power of the person being tortured. The outcome of torture may be death leading to fear of dying being put in the mind of the person being tortured. Even somebody as thick as you can probably figure out that this is cruel and unusual punishment. Even that dickhead in the White House says that torture is against our laws and against our values because he, being a dickhead, thinks that what he has authorized is not torture. His get out of jail card is that, like you, he is stupid and convinced that waterboarding has suddenly stopped being torture because he has decided it isn't. And he is THE DECIDER, after all.

What Hitchens did was consensual and could be stopped at any time. You could make the argument that that therefore is not torture and few would disagree with that argument. But the argument you are making is that waterboarding is not torture when it clearly is because those who have suffered it non-consensually have said that it induced a fear of death in them. And that's torture.

This post has essentially repeated itself a bit but it seems that it needs to be spelled out in minute and repetitive detail to have any chance at all of penetrating your skull.

Hey Murphy,

Your president disagrees with you.

"I want to be absolutely clear with our people, and the world: The United States does not torture. It's against our laws, and it's against our values. I have not authorized it -- and I will not authorize it."

He may be lying, of course.

(Sigh)

"I want to be absolutely clear with our people, and the world: The United States does not torture. It's against our laws, and it's against our values. I have not authorized it -- and I will not authorize it. Last year, my administration worked with Senator John McCain, and I signed into law the Detainee Treatment Act...."

George Walker Bush, President and Commander-In-Chief, United States of America. September 6, 2006.

We shouldn't need Hitchens to tell us that waterboarding is torture but in BushCheneyWorld there is a need for people to do what he did and let us know that it really is torture.

Don't always agree with him but in general he cuts right through the BS whether it comes from Republicans or Democrats. Good for him.

The vast majority of people in America and the world believes that people have been tortured in American prisons these last seven years or so. Only the American far-right believe that they haven't or at least that's what they say. It's disgraceful that Bush and Cheney are going to get a free pass for dumping America's reputation in the toilet by authorizing torture but they are. The far-right will regard this as a victory. Nobody else will.

"They deny involvement."

Yellow as they come as well as dirty red.

I think we can take it for granted that Al Qaeda watch C-SPAN. I'm sure they watch CNN, MSNBC and FOX too, the latter for propaganda tips if nothing else. That sounds like a good reason to shut them all down or would be if the Cheneys and Addingtons of this world had their way.

So what's this snake Addington's concern here?

It's that the illegal and unconstitutional behavior of the Bush administration and their lackeys, of whom he is one, sees the light of day. If you had used your legal skills to enable the torture of prisoners, allow illegal searches and weaken Habeas Corpus and were asked to justify them you wouldn't want the details to see the light of day either.

As a reactionary, hard-right fascist(not conservative, which is an honorable political position) you'd use the occasion to throw in some gratuitous, sneering disrespect for the people and their elected representatives too. You shouldn't be blamed too much for that as that socially despicable behavior seems to be embedded in the DNA of people who would do the more reprehendible things that are under scrutiny.