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Topic: Christopher Hitchens: Waterboarded
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Catchfire
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4019
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posted 03 July 2008 05:26 AM
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It's sad but, before I clicked the link, I really wasn't sure whether Hitchens would be pro or anti-waterboarding.
I wonder why? Could it be because he previously labelled waterboarding 'extreme interrogation' as opposed to 'outright torture'?
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At a time when Congress and the courts are conducting important hearings on the critical question of extreme interrogation, and at a time when accusations of outright torture are helping to besmirch and discredit the United States all around the world, a senior official of the CIA takes the unilateral decision to destroy the crucial evidence.
(Via The Vanity Press)Like I've written elsewhere, waterboarding might not be "simulated drowning" but it is simulated torture. Hitchens can pretend to be tortured because there's no danger of it actually happening to him. This is lost on his outrageous presumption and gall that ignores the countless testimonies that have already proved that waterboarding is torture. The problem is, most of them had brown skin (except for the unfortunate group of U.S. Generals in Vietnam who declared it illegal). As for his blighting self-righteousness, from Hitchens' article:
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I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.
Aside from the inauspicious self-comparison to Lincoln, and the grotesque tautology that any sane and ethical person should already have known without the sombre, grave and repentant words of Christopher Hitchens, I'll only point out that Lincoln didn't need to be chained, whipped and raped before he knew that slavery was a sinister, evil thing.[ 03 July 2008: Message edited by: Catchfire ]
From: On the heather | Registered: Apr 2003
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CMOT Dibbler
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4117
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posted 03 July 2008 08:45 AM
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At least he came around...
I don't think he will come around. He supported the invasion of Iraq, which killed over 100, 000 people. I don't think any self-respecting leftist will trust him ever again. [ 03 July 2008: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]
From: Just outside Fernie, British Columbia | Registered: May 2003
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