It is absolutely disgusting that not only is water-boarding acceptable, it is now fully understood that it is torture and people on a nationwide television show can ADVOCATE it as something that seriously should be done. And not get fired on the spot.

How about this for a new rule: You cannot talk about subjecting people to water-boarding until you have been water-boarded. In fact, you cannot advocate anything harsher than simple imprisonment (ie. hard labor, torture, death penalty), until it has been done to you. Fuck you and your Christian-hypocrite strong talk. I'm sick of it.

(I think this is my longest post ever, and I really hate long posts, and now I'm just making it longer. But read this one. It's pretty good)

The Constitution is a document that, like a lyric poem, is ultimately a flawed representation of the understandings and intentions of those who wrote it. Differences in the interpretation of the words, clauses, punctuation, and structure of the document can and do mean vast differences in the meaning and application of the rules of the nation. This principle of interpretation is as elementary as it is meaningful.

The Geneva Convention is likewise a document, or series of documents, that poses a similar jurisprudential problem. What Yoo presents in this interview is an indirect, yet unimpeachable explanation of the process by which such documents are examined and applied. There is what is called a "bright line rule" in the Geneva Convention regarding "torture"--i.e. it is a violation of the agreement. However, unlike in local and national statutes where definitions of terms often constitute thousands of pages, the Geneva Convention does not enumerate torturous acts. The term is left largely undefined. What Yoo explains here is that he was tasked with coming up with a legal definition of that term.



The problem many have with this task is that Yoo was directed to define the term as strictly as possible to allow his client (the Office of the Executive) as much leeway as possible. As it turns out, as Yoo tries to explain, there is a dearth of constitutional and legal precedent regarding the legal definition of "torture" (not that such precedent is nonexistent, however, as D_J points out above). Compounding this (for us liberals) is the correct determination that Yoo made regarding the broad powers that the Constitution, the legal precedent and indeed the framers themselves intend the Executive to hold in times of crisis. (For a more in-depth understanding of these claims, read about Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, and about the Society of the Cincinatti). Applying this broad-power tenet to the analysis of the legal definition of "torture" yields a hairy result: the Executive actually has a right and a duty to define the ambiguous term in a way that will most effectively protect the national interest. This is the conclusion that Yoo, and any other lawyer or legal scholar, would come to.

Now, my problem with the recommendation enumerating interrogation techniques that are and are not torture is not that the DoJ or the Bush Administration bent the rule. There was no way to implement the rule without bending it: without an established legal definition, any implementation requires interpretation. There could be no alteration of interrogation techniques ever without interpreting or reinterpreting the term "torture." My problem (and I suppose that this is the problem I am trying to convince you to have as well) is that they did not include enough factors in their calculation of the national interest.



Yoo argues (believes?) that the majority of American citizens support/supported waterboarding, but this is irrelevant. It is not the job of the Executive, and certainly not of the DoJ, to do the will of the people. This is a Republican democracy where (ideally) we elect people not because we think or hope they will execute our will in government, but because we believe them to be more capable of making the analyses and decisions of government. Therefore, a popular mandate does not justify public policy nor excuse elected officials from accountability. It cannot be right only because the people wanted it. This principle is written into the Constitution (which decentralizes power like you wouldn't believe, including the power of the people) in numerable ways, and has been upheld in many aspects by the Supreme Court of the US.

It is the duty of the Executive Office to calculate the national interest in every way multiple times a day. I think what Stewart was trying to get at (in an uncharacteristically poor way) is that the people involved in this decision made a potentially catastrophic failure in their calculation, because they didn't weigh the repercussions (both foreign and domestic) of using waterboarding and other questionable techniques in interrogations. He spends too much time trying to debate the constitutionality of the process and trying to enforce his perception that water boarding is obviously torture (and here the perception of the masses might be relevant, as it might mean that it is not obviously torture, although there is a strong argument that the public perception might truly be that water boarding is torture, but that we're cool with it). Stewart doesn't focus on the policy issues of using questionable techniques. What Yoo says in this interview about the process he used to interpret the not-so bright-line rule "No Torture" is not and should not be the issue. Even though I come down on the "yes it is" side, whether waterboarding is torture under the Geneva Convention is, I'm sorry to say, truly a matter of legal opinion. The issue we should have is that it doesn't matter whether you can legally define "torture" to include or exclude waterboarding, but that waterboarding should not be used regardless of definition.

This could replace water boarding... put it over their head and move it slowly closer and closer till they talk

I vote we get a FOX jorunalist to test it to prove weather it's torture or not...

I recall Mr. Hannity on Fox News once dared anyone to water board him for charity. And Mr. Obermann took him up on the offer. Mr. Hannity denied having ever done such a 'silly thing'.

The only people who believe Fox News as a credible source of news, are the same ones who voted Republican in the last three elections. They do not use facts, or logic. Nor do they listen to wisdom. They believe all other news outlets are just a bunch of 'neo communistic, muslim liking, socialistic, unamerican, blatently liberal' lies.

I got a chuckle that Fox News photoshopped the Canadian flag from the picture. Yes, Fox News hates Canada. Anyone that's not 100% Aryan, and 100% American, and 100% Christian, are not American.

In the last election, Democrats fielded a number of individuals from a spectrum of America. There was Hillary for the lady voters, and Mr. Richerson for the Hispanic vote. We had Mr. Obama for the African American, and even a few for the germanic europeans. Republicans fielded only one class of canidates: Rich, Old, White, and Out of Touch, Men.

Should it have been any real surprise that American won out, and not Republicans? =)

>> ^bmacs27:
Ok... I'm a graduate student advised by a member of the national academy of sciences. You don't need to talk to me about belief without evidence. You assumed my belief.
What you may or may not understand about science is the concept of a prior probability. Any confirmation of a hypothesis involves first the assignment of a prior probability to that hypothesis. That's simply Bayes rule. That is, some hypotheses are more tenable than others prior to the collection of data. All I'm saying is that I'm more open to a "conspiracy theory" of the sort that involves a small number of actors, or willful inaction on the part of someone like Dick Cheney. Such a hypothesis is much more likely, and more deserving of testing, than hypotheses about magic shows that somehow duped thousands of witnesses. Ignoring that fact is as much a religion as persistent belief in detonation squads. Do I need to remind you of how the gulf of Tonkin incident dragged us into a quagmire in Vietnam?
Dick Cheney absolutely had the say as to whether or not that plane gets shot down, as he was the highest ranking official in Washington. He was in the presidential emergency operations bunker at the time. He could have made the call, and didn't. Frankly, because of him, our enemies world wide know that they can hit the epicenter of our military operations. No amount of water boarding or genital electrocution is going to reinstate the security compromised by that one fact.


If you really believe this nonsense, I can't have a real conversation with you. You really believe that Dick Cheney, knowing in advance (either on the day or having been part of the grand conspiracy) that Flight 77 was going to hit the Pentagon, sat back and did nothing, in order to further his political ends? How would you go about proving a hypothesis like that? Or is this just something you will believe no matter what because it is essentially unprovable?

Ok... I'm a graduate student advised by a member of the national academy of sciences. You don't need to talk to me about belief without evidence. You assumed my belief.

What you may or may not understand about science is the concept of a prior probability. Any confirmation of a hypothesis involves first the assignment of a prior probability to that hypothesis. That's simply Bayes rule. That is, some hypotheses are more tenable than others prior to the collection of data. All I'm saying is that I'm more open to a "conspiracy theory" of the sort that involves a small number of actors, or willful inaction on the part of someone like Dick Cheney. Such a hypothesis is much more likely, and more deserving of testing, than hypotheses about magic shows that somehow duped thousands of witnesses. Ignoring that fact is as much a religion as persistent belief in detonation squads. Do I need to remind you of how the gulf of Tonkin incident dragged us into a quagmire in Vietnam?

Dick Cheney absolutely had the say as to whether or not that plane gets shot down, as he was the highest ranking official in Washington. He was in the presidential emergency operations bunker at the time. He could have made the call, and didn't. Frankly, because of him, our enemies world wide know that they can hit the epicenter of our military operations. No amount of water boarding or genital electrocution is going to reinstate the security compromised by that one fact.

What is wrong with the audience, so simplistic and pathetic ,

don't mind Kevin Smith and this clip is fine , its just the stupid retards shouting idiot comments out should hunt them down and water board them all.

I stand by that statement and I'm not ashamed of it in the least.

Refer to: http://www.videosift.com/video/Democrats-knew-about-Water-Boarding-Torture-and-yet-Remain#comment-788728

However, calling me "Mr. Torture Works" without context may mislead people into believing that I support torture, which is completely false. We wouldn't want to mislead people.


>> ^rougy:
^ Hammered me?
"Torture DOES work. I don't believe in torture but I don't pretend that it doesn't work. Don't take my word for it, though. Just ask Khalid Sheikh Mohammed."
You said that, torture boy.
You said that based on Cheney's word.

>> ^deedub81:
Oh, you must be talking about this:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Democrats-knew-about-W
ater-Boarding-Torture-and-yet-Remain
...where I hammered you with my superior debating skills.

would you say that you have master debating skills?

Oh, you must be talking about this:

http://www.videosift.com/video/Democrats-knew-about-Water-Boarding-Torture-and-yet-Remain

...where I hammered you with my superior debating skills.

stop floundering

You're the only one floundering here, trying to shove your loose interpretation of poorly spoken words down the throats of everyone with any sense who is explaining rather simply the actual meaning of an often wrongly worded phrase. The bottom line is, in almost every situation, people should say "I couldn't care less" when they actually say "I could care less."

Most people just don't care enough about the words they speak to analyze or understand their meaning. Then, of course, there's that rare 0.01% of wackos who do understand but still try to defend, pervert, and proliferate twisted words because they have a false sense of entitlement and a magnificently inflated ego. These are the nuts who'd probably also try to convince you that saying "I don't not care" is also a valid way to express your lack of interest in something. "Sure it am not not a double negative and sure the speaker are actually saying it cares, but hey that am okay. You can figuring it out what they could mean any ways, so we should encourage every people to speak those way! Hooray for bastardization of these Ynglish lang wedges!" Let's encourage everyone to exercise incorrect language because, hey, everyone else can figure out what they mean anyway, right? GMAFB.


It is never misinterpreted by the listener

This is not true at all. I forget the particular song, but on Green Day's American Idiot album, a line says something like "I could care less" and I've always wondered and will never know if he added stress to the phrase to make it clear he's speaking literally about actually caring or if that stress was just for the melody and he actually misspoke as most people do and he really does not care.


Whenever this phrase is used, it is a whimsical way of saying they're in danger of caring less than they already do.

When someone exclaims, "I could care less if we water board George W.," what they're really saying is, "I'm in danger of caring less than I already do if we water board Old Georgie. Everyone pay close attention to the needle on my caring gauge because I think it's about to drop a little bit!" Right. You just keep looking at your reflection in that diploma frame and telling yourself that, friendo.

Out of curiosity, what about when people say, "If I never see you again, it'll be too soon?" Is that a whimsical way of someone saying they actually hope to see you again and preferably sometime soon, or is it someone who suffers from bad word choice and is attempting to inform that they never want to see you again?

If you ever comment on this again, it'll be too soon, and if you do, I couldn't care less.

Am still amazed Americans need to have this discussion, the "is it or is it not torture?" I think it detracts from the more important facts that came out from all this. The case for that has always been closed, its pretty clear from day 1 it was torture.

- the administration put torture forward as a policy
- the OLC wrote laws and legislation allowing torture to occur
- torture was renamed and regulated in an effort to legalize its application
- it was carried out in 3 US military complexes in Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and Bagram airbase
- it was actively applied by forward intelligence agents with the US military and was encouraged
- it was used as well through US cooperation with states that torture (egypt, syria, uzbekistan and etc)
- the administration lied about torture being 'isolated bad apples' post Abu Ghraib
- private military contractors were involved in its application and administration
- the military and intelligence apparatus was forced into producing results and green light into using torture techniques.
- far worse techniques were used other then water boarding which are still being blacklisted
- they did everything to cover it up, then spin the argument around one technique, then make it seem necessary, remember that once the scandal broke the KSM argument was put forward
- its been shown not to work at all no single intelligence agency has put forward any actionable intelligence produced through torture
- there has been no ticking time bomb scenarios a la 24
- there will be no persecutions of those who were responsible for these policies
- massive international damage to american standing

Not only was this a lame example of water boarding. If anyone knows or has listened to this guy, they would know that this was all staged. Mancow Muller is a cheap, two-bit want-to-be imitation of Howard Stern. But is even more over-the-top with his theatrics. He's a huge wrestling fan and subscribes to the "bigger, and more outrageous is better" mentality when it comes to his show.

As you can see, if you are not concentrating on the subject, but paying close attention to his reaction in the video, Mr. Muller is a really, really, really bad actor. His reaction is contrived. And very poorly contrived at that. I mean seriously, he lasts what, 2 seconds? And as many others have already said, this was nothing even remotely resembling what a real water boarding would be like. I was going to post this a few days ago when it appeared on YouTube, but did not because I thought for sure most of the intelligent people on here would see right through the obvious and very poor acting job of Mr. Muller and the completely fake "demonstration" of water boarding and not give it one single vote. Guess I was wrong.

Not trying to offend anyone, I seriously thought you guys would see right through this facade. Very surprising.

What's up with this new water boarding trend? Can't we change the subject? Who cares about waterboarding, it's not like it's mutilating you or anything. Check out some medieval torture ways, waterboarding is nothing compared to that.

"you want to stick your head in the sand and live your life simply to make life "comfortable and enjoyable for you and yours."

Assumptions and perception-bound assessments that make one feel comfortable when faced with veracity are infantile and counter-productive. youmadelkittymad goes from one extreme to another with my suggestions. Did not say stop using money. Did not offer who might be included in the "you and yours": Could have included the planet's entire population now couldn't it. Enoch? You don't have to do anything you do not desire nor are compelled to do.

"farm or build things?" Inferred without evidence or acceptable reasoning.
Merely stated fact. That this issue of water boarding is represented here as some undeniable subject which must be resolved, that stopping it will make people feel better about what part they may have had in its cessation, and that there are an inordinate amount of videos posted on this site (and others) about it and that due to the programming pumped into homes and minds, through major media outlets, which are owned by folks who wish to guide the minds of the easily led. We have a nation in the U.S., of somnambuloids.

Much more important are the day's issues of some far more meaningful significance. Find those videos. It's much more easy to please the crowd and accumulate votes finding thousands about water boarding.

*the mob grows restless as meaning rears its ugly head
My head is as far out of the sand as a satellite in low orbit.

Most politicians are sucking the teat of special interest and lean increasingly more towards state control. Not all. The few that are not are the minority and get no air-time save to lambast and deride them.

One must try harder to chop a head off using a dull edge. Few more swings perhaps??