Water Over the Damned

by Mxyzptlk

Washington Post, October 28, 2006

Vice President Dick Cheney said Friday that he was not referring to an interrogation technique known as waterboarding when he told an interviewer this week that dunking terrorism suspects in water was a "no-brainer."

Cheney said aboard Air Force Two late Friday that he did not talk about any specific interrogation technique during his interview Tuesday with a conservative radio host.

"I didn't say anything about waterboarding. ... He didn't even use that phrase," Cheney said on a flight to Washington, D.C., from South Carolina.

Earlier Friday, White House press secretary Tony Snow said the vice president was talking literally about "a dunk in the water," though neither Snow nor Cheney explained what that meant or whether such a tactic had been used against U.S. detainees.

"A dunk in the water is a dunk in the water," Snow said.

And a dumb shit who believes that is just a dumb shit.

So Cheney, do our folks really dunk people in some water like bobbing for apples to obtain information? Is that what you meant? Perhaps next we'll hear about our guys using a soft cushion to wring confessions from suspected terrorists.

McCain, I hope, is feeling the fool for signing on to the bill that permits this. He said it prohibits waterboarding, but it doesn't have any specific prohibitions and leaves everything up to the judgment of the President. Nice going, McCain, you sucker.

Washington Post, October 5, 2006

...in 1947, the United States charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian. The subject was strapped on a stretcher that was tilted so that his feet were in the air and head near the floor, and small amounts of water were poured over his face, leaving him gasping for air until he agreed to talk.

"Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) told his colleagues last Thursday during the debate on military commissions legislation. "We punished people with 15 years of hard labor when waterboarding was used against Americans in World War II," he said.

Darth Cheney can obfuscate all he wants, can join a talk show host in making light of this, but what is clear is that the Administration believes waterboarding to be a legimitate "technique" in interrogations. If they didn't, it would be to their advantage to say so.

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