Defending Individual Freedom by Torturing Brown People
Via NewsMax, I found this lovely pro-torture advertisement paid for by a group called the Center for Individual Freedom. Let’s take a look:
Dear Friend:
“Sen. John McCain… said Sunday he will refuse to yield on his demands that the White House agree with his proposed ban on the use of torture to extract information from suspected terrorists.”
“‘I won’t,’ he said on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ when asked whether he would compromise with the Bush administration. He is insisting on his language… ”
– Associated Press –
McCain’s comments were a slap in the face and they were directed at YOU!
Yes, John McCain’s refusal to endorse torture is a direct attack on YOU, the overweight, unemployed, Twinkee-devouring NewsMax reader!
As you know, several weeks ago, McCain snookered his Senate colleagues into approving an amendment to the defense appropriations bill, claiming that the amendment would prohibit torture against terrorists.
That bastard.
But McCain’s FLAWED amendment does more than ?prohibit torture.? It prohibits legitimate interrogation techniques — interrogation techniques that have foiled at least ten terrorist plots and have saved countless American lives.
Of course, it’s also cost the lives of several insignificant brown people, but you know what they say: you can’t make an omelette without waterboarding a few dark-skinned eggs.
Above: Lyndie England foils terrorist plots and saves countless American lives.
When we alerted you to this dangerous McCain amendment — YOU flooded Members of the Senate with your Blast Faxes — demanding that they strip it from the bill.
“Strip this amendment from the bill so we can force brown people to strip at our secret prisons. That’s democracy in action, bitches.”
And McCain heard you loud and clear — his statement above is HIS direct response to YOUR hard work and efforts!
Yes, McCain’s refusal to compromise with the White House is a direct response to the outraged, cheese-stained blast fax that YOU sent to the Senate!
YOU called McCain on the negative consequences of his amendment. And, instead of admitting that it is flawed and could put American lives in grave danger, Senator McCain drew a line in the sand and dared you to respond.
Yeah, McCain’s just a big bully who wants to force his preachy anti-torture beliefs on the rest of us. So what’re YOU gonna do about it, oh fat-ass pro-torture patriot? Are you gonna sit there and cry and masturbate and shove a whole box of Ho-Ho’s down your throat?
OK, so you were probably gonna do that anyway. But after that, you’re gonna FIGHT BACK!!!
American lives are at stake and we’ve come too far to lose this battle now.
That’s why I’m asking you one last time to make your voice heard and demand that our legislators NOT cave in to the grandstanding of John McCain!
The Conference Committee vote on this amendment is expected any day now… so please make your voice heard RIGHT AWAY!
Make your voice heard on the side of torture! It’s our generation’s civil rights movement… except it involves torturing dark-skinned people rather than freeing them…
As a side note, I have to admire the audacity of any group that can support torture and still put a picture of the Bill of Rights on their main homepage.
Newsmax put that bill of rights up to slap YOU in the face.
No, seriously. Don’t they know the Bill of Rights forbids cruel and unusual punishment? Assholes.
Well gol-lee, if you do it often enough, it isn’t ‘unusual,’ right?
Seethe, simmer, hate.
Hm. I should really change the cod-B?rub? name-tag.
Torture brown people?
AndRightlySo!
This whole course thing was put way better by fafblog the other day
Q. Does the new plan stay the course? I’m a big fan of the course.
A. Yes absolutely! If you liked what the course had to offer you’re definitely gonna like the strong elements of coursiness in the new plan.
Q. I dunno… it IS a new plan. Are you sure we haven’t switched to another course somewhere? Did we even wobble a little?
A. This course is the same course as the previous course but is now served on a bed of fresh leafy green victory along with a side of pasta salad and your choice of vegetable.
For people who think torture is a laudable government activity they sure do get up in arms about being symbolically slapped in the face by a Senator. And if they burned out any taxpayer-purchased fax machines with their fax “blasts”, doesn’t the PATRIOT act imply such is an act of terrorism?
interrogation techniques that have foiled at least ten terrorist plots
Seeing the underline under “ten terrorist plots”, I (naively) thought maybe that was a link in the original post. You know, a URL to an article, or State Dept. statement, or SOMETHING that would corroborate that number.
Ha ha. How laughably naive of me to think that. Ha. Ha.
Don’t these people know that when you pull a number out of your ass like that, the number, by long tradition, is supposed to be “57”?
Now, repeat after me: “interrogation techniques that have foiled at least 57 terrorist plots!
Well, I notice the Bill of Rights picture on their site shows a great deal of respect for it.
interrogation techniques that have foiled at least ten terrorist plots
I’m with Karl. Name one, kids. Preferably one that can be verified by someone other than the voices in your heads.
If you can’t name one, shut the hell up.
Before I sign off on this Torture Is Okay With Us plan, I want at a minimum for you guys to:
1. Show us the terrorist plot that was foiled. Actual plans, kids, with actual concrete elements. Pulling some guy’s fingernails out till he admits that he was planning to build a suitcase bomb with items he has no access to and allies he doesn’t know *does not count*. We call that “admitting any shit you like just so long as you’ll leave me the fuck alone”. I want evidence.
2. Demonstrate that said plot would not have been foiled *without* torture. Could’ve worked it out with a warrant, or by listening to our allies, or by questioning people who you’ve been told are taking flight classes but show no interest in taking off or landing? Hell, if you could’ve worked it out by phonetapping people without a warrant, that’s still an abuse of civil liberties, but is better than, you know, beating people until they *die*.
3. Show us exactly how many people were tortured, abused, or whatever other weasel-words you’re using at the moment, to get the information. Don’t just show us the guy who had the ticking-bomb info. We want to know how many other eggs you broke to make this particular omelette. Have enough respect for your citizens to tell them what you’re actually doing to keep them safe. If it’s saving their lives, why would they object? Unless, of course, it isn’t, or it’s horribly inhuman.
Which brings us to
4. Show us the torture. You’re doing it for us, we should have to see what you’re doing. We should have to actually watch this foul shit and think about the consequences and if this is worth it, balanced with everything else you’ve told us. I don’t want to see what our government is doing in our name. I can barely stand to think about it, to be honest. If the guy next door was doing any of this to his fourteen year old son, we’d call him an abuser, and the prosecutor would damned sure use words like “torture” at the trial before we locked the fucker up and threw away the key. This is immoral and inhuman. And we need to see it so that people stop pretending it’s somehow the sterile light-deprivation and truth-serum crap we see on TV shows. It is unacceptable to pretend that this is anything other than absolutely dirty, and it is unacceptable to let people regard it from a safe distance and quibble about the definition of “torture” vs “abuse” vs “humiliation”.
If it’s necessary, then you should be able to look at it clearly and say so.
If you can’t look directly at it and declare it a reasonable response, then shut the hell up about how we need this as a “tool” in our “struggle”.
Full disclosure. Show everyone everything. Then let’s have an actual fucking debate.
Whenever some Babbitt uses that “but what if there’s a ticking bomb?” pro-torture argument, I counter with “what if that ticking bomb is in an Abortion Clinic?” That usually does the trick.
Hey, now that’s an idea: Require all “enhanced interrogations” to be televised. Redact the sound, if you like, to prevent leaks of classified information. But the people clamoring for just a little bit of torture should have to watch what sorts of things go on, preferably while they’re sitting down to devour their box of Mallomars. Live feeds would be best, but certified unedited tape would be OK.
Dan- sadly, I think a lotta people would get off on that (*COUGH!* MALKIN! *COUGH!*).
Brad – I dunno, I think even Malkin would be taken aback at the reality of it. You see, that’s something that these members of the 101st fightin’ keyboardists haven’t really ever had to deal with, because no matter what horrible thing America has been alleged to, the Bush WH just wraps a shroud of plausable deniablity around it and the apologists can just close their eyes and ears up and keep clappin.
But you stick em in front of the TV, and destroy their preconcieved notions of “enhanced interrogation”, and you’ll have a real show on your hands. Reality is like hydrochloric acid to these people.
I still maintain that people like Malkin are too far down the rabbit hole to ever come back.
Will the McCain anti-torture amendment make it illegal for John McCain to dispense slaps in the face (esp. those directed AT ME!)?
Brad – That may be true, but today, I had a discussion with someone who’s brother had been killed recently and they were for the death penalty (especially in that specific case), and by the time we were done, she had changed her mind. I couldn’t believe it. I figure if someone who’s been through a loss like that can see the reasoning behind these kinds of arguments, anyone can.
Karl, that underline got me, as well. I thought perhaps they actually might link to something illustrating how the evil SCLM was covering up the good results torture is showing.
Oh well…fool me once…
Renew America columnist Chuck Baldwin has an earnest column discussing whether or not George Bush actually said “Stop throwing the Constitution in my face. It’s just a g-d- piece of paper!” when discussing the Patriot Act, as Captitol Hill Blue claimed.
While I find Capitol Hill Blue a rather dubious source, I think that in these days when we’re dealing with terrorists who could have planted an atomic bomb in New York City (a bomb which we can only find through torture), Bush probably did say it. I’m just waiting for the Secret Service to torture McCain for slapping the President in the face.
Yeah, I love how Baldwin only trusts shady sources like Capitol Hill Blue and NewsMax for his information. That’s a pretty sad way to go through life.
The Founding Fathers’ documents were a slap in the face and they were directed at YOU! Well, no … not you, that other fellow … behind YOU, the one with the hair …
Hahahahahahhahahahaha
Oh shit… the one with the hair.
Brad, I don’t care if Malkin and a bunch of the fighting keyboard brigade get off on televised torture. I think the bulk of the American populace (and that’s some bulk ::rimshot::) would be so disgusted with “enhanced interrogation” that there would be a huge move to abolish the practice. Also, no matter how the Malkins and Chazmos and Freepi try to sugarcoat it or spin it, people would have the evidence of their own eyes.
For example: It is my understanding that some of the Abu Ghraib incidents are recorded on video, video that only some members of the Senate have seen. Without public showing of that kind of video, it’s been easy for the right to spin the whole thing as a minor aberration, frat-hazing level high jinks, etc. If that stuff ever got out to the public, I bet some new heads would roll in the Pentagon. Maybe higher.
It’s mainly slightly jaundiced, overweight grey people from the smallest country in the middle east, who want us torturing Brown people.
oh man, that’s great! thanks so much for posting that!
i wrote about it, too:
http://cedwyn.blogspot.com/2005/12/freedom-torture.html
what a bunch of whackjobs!
Does it even matter if he said it? He claims that he can designate people “enemy combatants”.
As far as I can tell, this means he can unilaterally declare that American citizens have no constitutional protection.
Even if he didn’t say it, it’s sure how he feels.
And, incidentally, I don’t think he’d be dumb enough to say that, but on the other hand, I didn’t think he’d be dumb enough to do… well, pretty much every single thing he’s done as President.
Bush rocks! Bush is great! History will celebrate Bush’s accomplishments.
Good point, Dr. BLT! Like we celebrate the accomplishments of Genghis Khan, and Pol Pot, and that German guy from the 30’s.
“Good point, Dr. BLT! Like we celebrate the accomplishments of Genghis Khan, and Pol Pot, and that German guy from the 30’s.”
Bezt cumbak evah!
Seriously.
Well fuckin’ done, Major.