The link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15433467/
I can't even find the words to explain how totally embarassing I find the debate on water boarding. The fact that we even debate it is humiliating. Should we use water boarding as a technique to break terrorist operatives? YES. WHAT THE FUCK? YES.
Am I losing my mind? Why are we even debating this? Why the HELL are Republicans saying we shouldn't?
This is not breaking bones, cutting off fingers, dislocating shoulders, gouging out eyes, or burning with hot irons. This is water boarding. Our own CIA agents, the guys who are doing it, have experienced it themselves during their training. How can it be torture if we're doing it our own guys? How can it be torture if they're signing up, willingly, to have it done to them?
It's simply not a debate. It's not at all nice to experience, it's extremely traumatizing. It's also not permanently physically damaging when done by a trained interrogator.
This isn't “siding with the enemy” as some pundits might suggest. Siding with the enemy would, at least, be picking a side, and taking a stand. The American left is full of morally vacant people. Not immoral. Morally vacant. They have no concept of morality. They simply demand that we do whatever is least offensive to anybody in shouting distance. They don't do this out of compassion or love of humanity, they do it because they've grown up in a society so safe, so utterly devoid of real stress and real conflict, they have no concept of morality.
Morality isn't about capitulating to anyone who happens upon you. Morality isn't about curling up in a fetal position and crying when you think of anybody else having a bad time. Morality is about balance, about making decisions, about having convictions and beliefs, and honoring them. Yeah, water boarding is closer to cutting off fingers than it is to giving hugs. So what? A moral person can use water boarding, recognize the unpleasant task it is, but make responsible, restrained use of it, and not turn into a torturing psychotic.
Not only is water boarding seriously being debated in this country, but the mainstream media seems to be that it's fairly unbelievable that Dick Cheney is so crazy as to suggest it's a valid tactic. It should, as Cheney says, be a no brainer. Not only is it not a no brainer, it's being debated. Not only is it being debated, but it's being framed as totally unreasonable.
It's insane.
We're insane.
If this is the product of American democracy, this pitiful, mewling moral vacancy, then wouldn't it be torture to inflict this upon Iraq?