TW: The mere fact that this is at least the 7th post I have put up regarding the topic of torture annoys me. The phrase American torture should have never entered common usage. But it has and now as this piece illustrates the rationalization of those on the right has become endless.
I have little respect for most at Fox but Hume and Wallace are two of their more reasonable voices but their dialogue on the latest revelations on the Bush authorized American torture processes is pathetic. This stuff really makes me want to grab a Bushie and inflect some of those "controlled, cautious" acts.
From Economist:
"IF NOTHING else, [the recent] torture revelations—America used waterboarding 266 times on two suspected terrorists—reveal how far would-be conservatives have moved away from one of their core principles. Yesterday on Fox News, Brit Hume and Chris Wallace tried to make the case that the administration's torture policy was controlled.
"What we really need is to have all these techniques at our disposal... they talk about the banging of the guy's head against the wall. It turns out to be very controlled and it's a soft wall that gives way... I'm not at all sure that's torture."
The program's host, Chris Wallace, agreed with Hume's assessment of the "soft wall" technique -- "it strikes me as fairly cautious and careful."
Aside from the fact that it's torture, the agency's waterboarding technique also seemed to be cautiously and carefully applied... until this morning. When did conservatives lose their healthy distrust of the state? According to the New York Times, the Bush administration knew that it was not, in fact, being cautious or careful: "A footnote to another 2005 Justice Department memo... said waterboarding was used both more frequently and with a greater volume of water than the C.I.A. rules permitted." Will the next conservative argument be, "At least there were rules"?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/04/trust_us_on_torture.cfm
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