Punk’d
Posted on July 17th, 2009 by John Schwenkler
I’m told by folks here at Berkeley that this sort of thing has happened to John Yoo before, but it’s nevertheless a joy and a privilege to watch it go down:
Filed under: torture
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I’m told by folks here at Berkeley that this sort of thing has happened to John Yoo before, but it’s nevertheless a joy and a privilege to watch it go down:
Filed under: torture
Or did Jody Bottum just describe the possible prosecution of interrogators who violated even the Bush administration’s laws governing the treatment of detainees as a way of “criminalizing policy differences”, and accuse Eric Holder of attempting a coup?
Filed under: government/law, torture
This is just terrific (h/t Sully, and click here for a larger view):
Filed under: torture
Pretty stupid, apparently. I’m sure that this line of “thought” has been picked apart plenty of times in the anti-torture blogosphere, but Newt deserves a fisking of his own:
… waterboarding is not torture. Waterboarding has been routinely used to train American pilots in the military to understand what interrogation techniques they might encounter.
By extension:
Having sex [...]
Filed under: torture
By H.C. Johns
(Cross-posted at The Other Right)
There are a lot of figures in Roman history who Dick Cheney resembles quite strikingly. Cicero, however is not one of them, despite David Carlin’s argument to the contrary:
Cicero (like Cheney) was faced with a choice: Do I break the law, or do I let Catiline and his friends carry out [...]
Filed under: patriotism, torture
So I’m really having trouble following the argument in this paragraph of Chris Bodenner’s:
As Andrew noted yesterday, Obama has done a lot to defang Cheneyism; he has postponed an exit in Iraq, retained Gates, increased troop levels in Afghanistan, elevated McChrystal, kept rendition, revived military tribunals, and punted on the torture photos. So what’s left [...]
Filed under: civil liberties, politics, torture, war
Damon Linker has up a response (check the second update) to my latest post at the Scene, in which he grants the importance of “hard-nosed analysis of whether the Bush administration was justified in torturing terrorist suspects in the specific, concrete circumstances it faced after 9/11”, but then objects:
… I think thought experiments like the [...]
Filed under: morality, philosophy, torture
At the Scene, I explain why thinking clearly about torture means thinking clearly about real circumstances, rather than imaginary ones.
Filed under: morality, personal, philosophy, torture
A lengthy e-mail exchange with a reader who took issue with the tone of this post and some others made it clear to me that I ought to state my position on the relevant issues a bit more clearly (and calmly). In no particular order, then:
(1) I do think it’s possible for people of good [...]
Filed under: government/law, morality, patriotism, torture
First, from her infamous remarks at Stanford last (?) week:
… by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture.
Next up, from a Q-and-A with some elementary schoolers over the weekend:
… the president was only willing to authorize policies that were legal in order to [...]
Filed under: government/law, torture