blog@cliffdweller

So impeachment is off the table. Well, screw that.

Our Monkey in chief is endorsing terrorism by vetoing limits on torture.

Bush speaks:

He said he rejected the intelligence bill, passed by Senate and Congress, as it took "away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror"

read the whole fabulous article here

He should not be allowed to speak. Everything he says is the misguided-black-and-white-with-us-or-against-us-no-room-for-diplomacy ideals that we all learned in the second grade.

Unfortunately, where most of us moved on as we turned 9, GWBush appears to have stopped right there. Preferring to learn how to be the biggest bully around instead of how to work with people. And somehow this friggin idiot got appointed president of what used to be the greatest nation on earth. Thanks to him, now we're just the world's biggest police state.

The people out there that are not in the CIA (and some who are) agree that torture does not produce actionable items in the war against terror. They also agree that waterboarding is torture. For some reason Bush and his handlers have found some sort of legal definition (a la "I did not have sex with that woman") that allow them to sleep at night by splitting hairs.

• Harvard Law Faculty Letter Urges Senate to Call for Accountability on Waterboarding

I don't know how they rationalize it but it must be something like this: The 16th century French didn't use waterboarding, so it must not be torture.

Our next president must be anti-torture. Nothing else matters. Human rights are the most important thing there is.

On a personal note to George W. and Laura Bush, you make me ashamed of my religion. I would like for you to stop telling people you are United Methodists. It's hard enough in this world to explain why I go to church without having to explain why I go to a church that has the same name over the door as the religion that you claim to be. The doctrine of my church has never supported torture, it never will. You are liar.

More on waterboarding from Mindfully.org

The current practice of waterboarding was known previously as "the water cure." It involves tying the victim to a board with the head lower than the feet so that he or she is unable to move. A piece of cloth is held tightly over the face, and water is poured onto the cloth. Breathing is extremely difficult and the victim will be in fear of imminent death by asphyxiation. However, it is relatively difficult to aspirate a large amount of water since the lungs are higher than the mouth, and the victim is unlikely [but quite possible] actually to die if this is done by skilled practitioners. [No definition of skilled practitioners provided by Wikipedia, but when used with the word torture, it should probably be found in close proximity to executioner or bully. Required qualities for such a practitioner would be a rather low self esteem and a desire to see others suffer. These qualities are regularly found in armed services and guards. Furthermore, people doubt this are generally those same people who would perform torture on others. It is nothing more than a sadistic practice that has no positive outcome on gaining truthful information. Quite the contrary, even the military has stated repeatedly that tortured prisoners state what their torturers want to hear in order to stop the torture. This fact is obvious once someone experiences waterboarding. Experiencing waterboarding is to experience drowning.] Waterboarding may be used by captors who wish to impose anguish without leaving marks on their victims as evidence.