LTTE: Wingnut Decries the Perversion of the Word "Torture".

[Mr. Ected]

From todays Atlanta Journal Constitution:

"...One wonders...how Thurston leaps from medieval witch hunts to our own interrogation of terrorists. What the Bush administration did was not torture. Throwing someone against a wall or dripping water on a rag is not analogous to splintering bones or forcing "gallons of water down a victim's throat". The word torture is being perverted by politicians more concerned with the comfort of terrorists than the safety of their constituents."

PLEASE, President Obama, do not allow this debate to be owned by persons like this letter writer. So far, the Democrats have allowed Dick Cheney and Company to frame the debate and the issues. Many Americans' decisions have already been colored by their uninterrupted, unilateral pre-emptive attack on reality. The stakes are far too high.

[CrispyQ]

1. One wonders if he would consider this torture?

Book Excerpt: 'Oath Betrayed'
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5516533

snip...

Dilawar was a twenty-two-year-old farmer and taxi driver, whom American soldiers tortured to death over five days at Bagram Collection Point in Afghanistan in December 2002. When the soldiers pulled a sandbag over his head, Dilawar complained that he could not breathe. He was then shackled and suspended from his arms for hours, denied water, and beaten so severely that his legs would have been amputated had he survived. When he was beaten with a baton, he would cry "Allah, Allah!," which guards found so amusing that they beat him some more just to hear him cry. During his final interrogation, soldiers told the delirious, injured prisoner that he would get medical attention after the session. Instead, he was returned to a cell and chained to the ceiling. Several hours later, a physician found him dead. By then, the interrogators had concluded that Dilawar was innocent and had simply been picked up after driving his new taxi by the wrong place at the wrong time.

and more...

An autopsy on December 13 found that Dilawar's death was a homicide, caused by extensive and severe "blunt force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease" (inexplicably, "coronary artery disease" is typed on the death certificate in a different font). The Pentagon reported that the prisoner died of natural causes. Later, a coroner testified that Dilawar's legs were "pulpified" and that the body looked as if it had been "run over by a truck."

===
What's perverted to me is how many of our fellow citizens believe that torture is acceptable or lamely claim that what we are doing is not torture.

Thanks to madfloridian for posting the link to the above article in this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5529238

[gratuitous]

2. The giveaway is in the description

"Dripping water on a rag." Perhaps the letter writer didn't see Mr. Mancow's performance? Seven seconds, tops. But if the writer thinks he could do better (and I'm betting, sight unseen, that we're dealing with a "he"), by all means, let's have another round of just what "dripping water on a rag" really constitutes.

No plastic cow "safety," either.

[zbdent]

3. should write a LTTE challenging the original letter-writer to take the Mancow Plunge ...