John Kerry on Cheney’s “N0-Brainer” Torture Statement

[kerrygoddess]

John Kerry on Cheney’s “N0-Brainer” Torture Statement
October 27th, 2006 @ 1:37 pm

It’s a “No-Brainer“, Dick Cheney has always been for torture although the White House said they were against torture, Cheney let the cat out of the bag and took a dunk into the deep dark water of moral depravity yesterday when “Cheney agreed with Hennen’s assertion that “a dunk in water” may yield valuable intelligence from terrorism suspects.”

John Kerry responded to Cheney’s admission of moral depravity with the following statement:

“Is the White House that was for torture before it was against it, now for torture again?

First Senator McCain says that “waterboarding and other extreme measures” are off limits. Senator Graham said we “let the world know we are no longer engaging in” waterboarding. I guess no one let the Vice President know. He said waterboarding—or simulated drowning— is “a no-brainer.”

Who can we believe? The Vice President? The White House spin team? Or Senate Republicans who have no say in how this policy is enforced? It is clearer by the day that an Administration that lobbied for the right to torture got exactly what it wanted. If that’s not the case, Senate Republicans who defended the Administration’s intentions and defended the Administration compromise need to demand answers and accountability from their White House.

MORE - http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=4572

[ProSense]

1. That's one of the

best friggin rebuttal ever---a packaged smack down of Cheney, WH and the GOP Congress!


:applause:


Thank you Senator Kerry!

[beachmom]

2. I put the interview with Dick Cheney on the local blog in Virginia

Kinda felt weird linking to the White House gov site to prove that Dick Cheney approved torture. I always thought JK went too easy on the Bush WH when he said "no president should be against torture before he was for it". The truth was Bush had NEVER flip flopped on torture -- he's ALWAYS been for it and it was only the Courts that made him have to get congress to pass that awful law. He just simply lied, lied, and kept lying about it.

The RW trolls are all over us there, but it keeps going back to the fact that THEY'RE for torture and we're not.

Edited to add: great smackdown, senator

[ProSense]

4. He publicly denounced it in 2003.

Of course, he was lying:

Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit. Beating, burning, rape, and electric shock are some of the grisly tools such regimes use to terrorize their own citizens. These despicable crimes cannot be tolerated by a world committed to justice.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/06/20030626-3.html

[beachmom]

5. I guess that's my point. Hmmmm

actually, maybe Kerry is paralleling the flip flop remark both in words and substance. Kerry never flip flopped on the war. He was talking about a couple of versions of a Senate bill and the GOP took it as being a "flip flop". Bush never flip flopped on torture. He just lied in George Orwellian language that "we don't torture", in a Clintonian fashion of "that depends on what the word torture means".

[karynnj]

3. This is great - this makes it clear who is unambiguously

against torture.