The modern GOP:
The Democratic-led House of Representatives voted on Thursday to outlaw harsh interrogation methods, such as simulated drowning, that the CIA has used against suspected terrorists.
On a 222-199 vote, the House approved a measure to require intelligence agents to comply with the Army Field Manual, which meets the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of war prisoners and prohibits torture.
Any guesses which party makes up the bulk of the 199 no votes?
demkat620
You got me stumped John. Our fine upstanding, lawabiding, god fearing, christian Republican party would never vote for torture.
Now, CIA sponsored swim lessons, that’s a whole different ballgame.
LITBMueller
Wow! It’s deja vu all over again, because, the McCain Amendment two years ago did the exact same thing! And what did Bush do? He signed the bill, then wrote a signing statement that said he wouldn’t follow it if he didn’t want to:
Plus, the Administration can change the Army Field Manual any time they fucking well want to…and then classify it (which they’ve done already once).
And, best of all, this legislation wouldn’t address interrogations being conducted by private contractors if it is limited to CIA interrogators.
Bravo!
Andrew
I really, really try to be skeptical when watching the Democratic debates, but listening to these folks, compared to the batshit insanity that was spouted by the R’s yesterday, has made me happy to be able to call myself lifelong Democrat. Even my Hillary-hatred has abated, somewhat.
Innocent Bystander
Chairman Mao would be envious of this Crime Syndicate’s Party discipline. Makes me wonder what the RNC has on each of their Congressional members. The quid pro quo has to be “you can do whatever you want (as long as you don’t get caught)…but you vote the way we tell you.
A long time ago, there was a Republican Party that had people of conscience and character. There was even cross-Party coalitions that managed to get legislation passed. Bush Republicans might be enjoying the frustration they are causing getting a popular agenda stuffed. But eventually this is going to catch up with them and the blowback is gonna be a bitch.
Zifnab
“Bulk of”? Show me the Dem who voted against this bill and I’ll show you a Dem who will be getting a nasty little primary challenge come ’08.
tmv
At what point do we stop calling them Republicans and just start calling them authoritarians?
This is the reason I pray that the next elections make this party absolutely irrelevant. The Democrats are frustrating, but these people are thugs.
D-Chance.
I’m surprised the Dems didn’t cave on this one, too.
But… there’s always the Senate.
Jen
Well, somebody with more time than me could get the Roll Call and see which Dems voted against it, I bet there’s some in my state, there always are.
Chris
Granted.
Nay CA-6 Woolsey, Lynn [D]
Nay CA-9 Lee, Barbara [D]
Nay CA-13 Stark, Fortney [D]
Nay CA-35 Waters, Maxine [D]
Nay GA-5 Lewis, John [D]
Nay GA-8 Marshall, James [D]
Nay GA-13 Scott, David [D]
Nay IL-7 Davis, Danny [D]
Nay NY-16 Serrano, José [D]
Nay OH-10 Kucinich, Dennis [D]
from
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2007-1160
Cindrella Ferret
The reporter must think we’re idiots.
Does that mean they voted to outlaw the backstroke? (On a side note, it really does look like all that college is paying off for me. Don’t you think?)
Chris
Hmm, must have used tabs. Lemme try that again
Nay CA-6 Woolsey, Lynn [D]
Nay CA-9 Lee, Barbara [D]
Nay CA-13 Stark, Fortney [D]
Nay CA-35 Waters, Maxine [D]
Nay GA-5 Lewis, John [D]
Nay GA-8 Marshall, James [D]
Nay GA-13 Scott, David [D]
Nay IL-7 Davis, Danny [D]
Nay NY-16 Serrano, José [D]
Nay OH-10 Kucinich, Dennis [D]
Dreggas
Ok these two voted AGAINST a bill that outlawed torture?
LiberalTarian
These guys need a slap up the head. We abide by the Geneva conventions to protect our own soldiers. Apparently, their idea of supporting the troops is to put them in unwinnable wars and endanger them should they be captured.
Chuckleheads. Gah.
Z
Kucinich voted against it?!? WTF?!
jcricket
The Patriotic Party, of course. Party of Truth, Justice and the American Way?
No? What are you getting at here John. Not sure I understand the question :-)
I think the Republicans should be renamed “The Blowback Party” – it encompasses both the torture and gay-bashing/sex-scandal aspects that make up the current bunch.
Emma Anne
Dreggas, they must have been protesting that the bill wasn’t stonger. I am spotting a couple of other lefties on that list as well.
Jen
It probably had something weird in it that he felt the need to object to on principle. He voted against SCHIP too, at least the first go-round.
Dreggas
I call it cutting off their noses to spite their face. I mean I understand people having principles and all but this sounds almost commandment like saying “Thou shalt not torture!”
srv
It’s an fiscal authorization bill for Intel. He voted against the entire bill, not your pet issue.
Sloegin
Why bother outlawing something that’s already illegal? Is the clown-in-chief threatening to withdraw from Geneva?
jcricket
Probably some weird “This bill doesn’t go far enough and sign us up for the ICC” vote?
Jen
Ah, yes, somewhere between the spineless Dems and the principled, shoot-yourselves-in-the-foot Dems exist, in legend, that rarest of species, the Pragmatic Democratic Vertebrate, who knows when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em.
Xenos
Anybody catch Dan Parino announcing that the White House “would not allow” the DOJ to appoint a US Attorney to prosecute a contempt citation against Karl Rove and Josh Bolton?
WOULD NOT ALLOW???
I think we have gone beyond impeachment territory to Declaration of Independence 2.0 territory.
Svensker
There has been some discussion on the legal blogs (Glenn Greenwald, I think, and maybe others) that voting in a law that says, “waterboarding is illegal”, means that prior to the passage of the law, waterboarding was LEGAL. So that any person who administered waterboarding (or other specifically outlawed “technique”) to prisoners before 12/07 would not be subject to prosecution. I would bet that’s what Waters and Kucinich were voting on.
My own “super-Christian” congressbastard voted against it, of course, because torture fits right in with the Sermon on the Mount.
I am ashamed that it took me until 2002 to bail on the Republican Party. Fucking fascists.
Wilfred
Is there no end to the liberal subversion of the Homeland?
This would not have happened if they’d been put through the rinse cycle. We, the world, the universe itself, are less safe tonight now that Lyglenson Lemorin is free.
AnonE.Mouse
To be fair,your “own’super-Christian’congressbastard” probably gets himself a little boner from Jesus-in-a loincloth-nailed-up-on-a-cross always looking down on him from the living room wall.To a lot of Christians,religion and torture are synonymous.Who knows what damage that kind of imprinting causes in the lizard brain that the political right call their frontal lobe?
Zifnab
Nah, he just wants to add a signing statement. I’ll say this about America. It may not be run by the most competent people. It may not be run by the most intelligent people. It may not be run by the most ethical people. But by god if its not run by the most ballsy people.
To look a reporter in the eye and say “We don’t torture! But we won’t say if we waterboard, but we will say the terrorists probably deserve it”? To veto a compromise children’s health care bill because of wasteful spending and veto a stem cell research bill because you’re pro-life? No one has more balls than GWB.
Psycheout
The feelgood vote of the Christmas season.
Earth to moonbats: terrorists are not soldiers and are not subject to the Geneva Conventions.
So this will have zero effect other than making you feel good. Why do you so desperately want America to fight the global war on terrorism with one (or both) hands tied behind her back? Why are you all so deeply invested in America’s failure?
calipygian
Here is one of the major spokesmen for the Republican Party, Michael Savage:
Michael Savage supports the troops because the Nobel Prize Committee are child molesters! It’s the Republican Chewbacca Defense!
Michael Savage: as crazy as Rush, but stupider.
Wilfred
Because that’s the only way to pull her head out of her ass.
Psycheout
The cognitive dissonace in some of you trying to extricate Kookspinach and Waters from being part of the so-called “torture party” is staggering.
Didn’t anyone also notice that the patron saint of peace, Barbara Lee, also voted with the mean, awful, nasty “torture party?”
I’ll go pop some popcorn while your heads explode.
jcricket
When you dance with the devil, the devil don’t change, the devil changes you.
Savage, Coulter, Malkin are the “Idiocracy” like results of the Republican insistence on “all red meat, all the time” as the primary strategy of the Republican party. They are, if you will, the inbred children of Falwell, Limbaugh, Phylis Schafly, etc.
When the “surging” candidate for the party is an unabashed young-earth creationist, it’s time to admit that lunatics are running the asylum. I give Republicans no hope, zero, of ever recovering nationally unless they run screaming from their current strategy.
And Republican insistence that fringe groups like the ELF or PETA are in any way representative of the Democratic party are just projection.
Zifnab
Give me a break. ELF and PETA pail in comparison to the nuttier fruitcakes on the right. Show me the PETA organizers lining up along the boarder with rifles and shotguns to patrol for people wearing fur. Show me the ELF guys who try to get journalists arrested or killed, like Malkin in her crusade against anyone in Iraq that says something she disagrees with.
We could only wish it was projection.
jcricket
My point is that even the nuttiest of the nutty on the “left” have like zero power in the Democratic party. We’re not electing people from those groups, going on their shows, promising to enact their agenda.
Republicans claim we are, because their crazies have taken over, and because they desperately, desperately need America to believe the lie that the Democrats are like the Republicans (crazy, just to the left).
If the American public ever connects the polling they themselves have answered and the actual (in general) record of the Democrats, Republicans are doomed. Americans are already Democrats, they just don’t know it. No need for the Democratic party to do much other than stick to their guns and articulate what they already (again, pretty much) stand for.
AnonE.Mouse
Kind of funny that PETA has earned a reputation as a ‘fringe’ group in a country that spends $40Billion a year on it’s pets.
Svensker
Exhibit A as to why I left the Republican Party in 2002. And Exhibit Z on why I ain’t comin’ back any time soon.
Fucking fascists.
binzinerator
Why do you pretend you support America, nation of laws not despots, when your faith in the rule of law is so weak and insecure? Why do you have so much contempt for what made America great? Why do you think a democracy can torture and remain a democracy? Why do you advocate what corrupts the promise of America and destroys any moral authority it once had?
Why are you unable to understand how torture of people suspected of terrorism makes it likely it will be used on our soldiers? Why do you not understand the difference between suspicion and conviction? Why do you not understand the legal and moral rot such practices create?
How could there be any deeper of an investment in America’s failure than that? What you advocate undermines or nullifies the legal, philosophical and moral foundations of the nation you claim to defend.
Why do you seem to have no limits on what you would be willing to do to other human beings?
Why do you not have a conscience? Why are you so frightened? Why are you so pathetic, cowardly, and sadistic?
jake
Alas, after the arrest it became clear that it was a victory in the war against knuckleheads.
If the FBI had really wanted to help tWaT, they would have hooked those idiots up with bin Laden. Large amounts of AQ funds would have been used to buy weed.
TR
The same party that’s responsible for destroying this Christmas Carol?
Sheesh. A white Christmas, indeed.
TR
My guess? Deep Thinker here gets his foreign policy worldview from Jack Bauer.
JWW
John,
The 5 W’s are the key, I don’t really care what methods are used to get them as long as true physical damage is prohibited. You don’t drown in waterboarding.
calipygian
Why stop at waterboarding? Why not cut off digits? Limbs? Cornhole ’em with plungers, Giuliani style? There was this great scene in “The Salton Sea” where a guy was interrogated by putting his junk in a special cage where it would be menaced by a hungry badger. None of these things will kill people. Why don’t we just shove copies of the Consitution down peoples throats until they tell us what they want? Maybe we can drive red-hot pokers up peoples asses, like the Syrians? Or boil people alive, like our buddies the Uzbeks? (http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2003/27873.htm)
I’m sure the Uzbeks didn’t mean to boil this guy to death:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/images/M_AVAZ3S.gif
Turned the heat up a little high, I guess.
You may be happy to live in a country that uses torture methods the Nazis, Russian Communists and Cambodian Communists used.
I’m not.
Wilfred
If it’s not torture, why not ‘board drug dealers? After all, lives are at stake, they cost taxpayers heaps of money and they’re scumbags anyway, right?
calipygian
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E03E1D7143FF936A15753C1A962958260
But there is nothing wrong with that, right JWW? Doesn’t kill people after all.
incontrolados
That’s Bill Benett’s argument.
I’ve read that some torturers use water in another way — forcing people to drink way too much of it. It’s painful as hell (and can cause death if overdone, just like waterboarding) but it leaves no obvious physical damage.
The U.S. has been training the military and police of other countries for years on torture techniques. South and Central America are older examples. The Phillipines in yet another. When the techniques were first being worked out, researchers used U.S. citizens. (And I’m not talking about some conspiracy theories — I mean experiments conducted by university and medical researchers which is well documented.)
At times I think that if the U.S. authorities actually tortured U.S. citizens, this enthusiasm for torture might fade. Then I snap and realize that the people who are so afraid of the boogy man are the same ones who would jump at the chance to torture their neighbor.
Pug
I’m surprised the Dems didn’t cave on this one, too.
But… there’s always the Senate.
In the Senate you can count on a filibuster and then a veto, though it won’t get that far.
JWW
Incontrolados,
I don’t follow Bill Benett, really have no idea who he might be. Yeah we all know that dinking water to extreme excess is not a good thing.
Torture is so broadly defined these days that even a minor inconvenience in a divorce case can be considered torture.
In a time of war, waterboarding is by far a simplistic method instilling fear and getting an answer. I said I do not condone pure physical methods. I do say, if you have the right person, I would use any method, as would you or any of these readers if my family member’s life was on the line.
cleek
if laws aren’t worth obeying in difficult times, they’re not worth obeying at all, since difficult times are the times we need them the most. but, some people just don’t want or deserve to live under a Constitution – they’d prefer, and deserve, an ad-hoc set of guidelines which can broken at any time by anyone who claims the need, or waves the bigger stick. these people should be sent to Iraq and left to fend for themselves in a country where laws are for those without guns.
incontrolados
cleek — the example I always use is Somalia — there are a great number of my fellow Texans who think laws are just suggestions or better yet, think that laws per se execute themselves without need for a judge or jury.
JWW — it doesn’t matter if you ‘follow’ him or not. I was simply stating that your notion that techniques are ok because they don’t case true physical damage is the same as Bill Bennett (sorry for previously leaving out an ‘n’), the former Sec. of Education and Drug Tsar during the glory days of Ronnie.
You would be wrong on that point. I’m not like Bill Bennett’s wife, who gleefully declared earlier this week on his radio show that waterboarding is good because it saves the children!
JWW, I live and work with people who think like you do. Can you perhaps think about the bigger picture, if just for a moment? Your stated opinion risks others’ lives in a questionable effort to possibly save others. Who do you value more? Why should everyone value the same people you do? Why should anyone trust your judgment?
jack fate
No, that’s not true. Besides, our actions are regardless. So if the United States is water-boarding people, we are violating the Geneva conventions (either the III Convention or the IV Convention, take your pick.) There’s not any gray area to be had. I realize that might get in the way of your fetishistic fantasy of “tough guy” manhood. But thems the rulez.
But whatevs, you want to celebrate torture go right ahead. Without explicitly breaking Godwin’s law, I’m just gonna say you’re in some real good company.
Chris
Sorry I’m late… still must respond:
Shut the fuck up before you give them ideas!!! They’re already waaay overboard.
Jackass, you are not a soldier and are not subject to the Geneva Conventions. So all I need do is find a guy on a Visa from a non-extraditing country and I can fuck your brain up all I please. Nice. All you have against them is they’re suspicious. I find you suspicious. Supernice.
The brain is physical. Electrons are matter.
You commit to waterboarding, you irreversibly send the amygdala into overdrive, thereby overthrowing any rational part of the brain. That is physical harm, and it affects our physical reality when they keep spouting make-believe shit all over the place.
Just because you can’t see the effects does not mean it’s not physical, and you should know better.
Silver Owl
We have 199 waterboarding volunteers plus Bush and Cheney. Waterboard them, they want it.
I recommend adding Perino so she can actually speak from experience rather be an ape mimicing other apes.
Nothing is going to change their minds except for experience. When you deal with children you have to let them experience the consequences of their own decisions. Waterboard the bastards on Pay per view, reality TV or even on Fox News (they need the ratings).
The two rules I would put in place is no safe word and the waterboarders are not do know they are waterboarding American citizens.
Let the republicans put actions to their words. No more white assholes blathering shit and blowing smoke up everyone’s asses. No more pussy acting while talking big and bad, waterboard or shut the fuck up. It is that simple.
incontrolados
Over the waterboard? Is that what you meant?
(How is one snarky when on this topic? — I’m sure I have failed)
Chris, the argument is that it doesn’t leave any physical evidence of torture. Seriously. They ignore the psychological effects of this misadventure on our own people, why should they care about the pych issues of those they condemned before any evidence of their guilt is even aired in any court of law?
Silver Owl — your suggestion will only work if they are kidnapped. Otherwise the effect is dilluted.
TenguPhule
If cheering torture is the new success, America deserves to be razed to the ground and salted so that nothing can spring forth again.
Anyone who supports torture needs to be taken out and shot.
They’re a threat to all of humanity.
incontrolados
Sources for the idea that JWW types have been in the U.S. and that torturing has long been a part of this country:
“A Question of Torture” by Alfred W. McCoy. Published in 2006.
“Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People” by John Conroy. Published in 2000.
Both are well cited.
Don’t get me wrong — the fact that my country’s government has used/taught torture for all of the time that my country’s laws have declared it illegal — doesn’t make it right. Far from it. The fact that we are finally talking about it is a good first step to stopping it. Finally. Or so I hope.
Snap.
Neil H
That’s the second time I’ve heard this myth from the pro-torture people. It’s an interesting insight into the mental workings of the torture apologist that they genuinely believe people opposed to torture really have publicly claimed that torture is anything that makes a person feel bad.
Chuck Butcher
There are two approaches:
you can remove the levers of power from these people – ballots, impeachment, recalls, indictments
you can remove these people from the levers of power – physical action, chaos
I prefer the former, I have no moral qualms about the latter.
bago
It would be nice to have a reciprocal legal enforcement division that would put all lawmakers under investigation at all times and invoke the laws they pass for the rest of us on the lawmakers first. Make them live with their laws for a year before anyone else does.
See how quick they are to allow rendition and torture when anyy one of them will be renditioned in the next year.
myiq2xu
The three worst kind of parties?
3) G.I. Party
2) Blanket Party
1) Torture Party
W.Thomas Smith Jr
Any guesses which party makes up the bulk of the 199 no votes?
The Somebody’s Paying Me Not To Vote For This party?
W.Thomas Smith Jr
TenguPhule Says:
Anyone who supports torture needs to be taken out and shot.
Shot slowly, with a really slow bullet, a bullet that leisurely approaches and ever so slowly enters the flesh, scalding hot, preferably about the lower intestines. Best if they had been whipped first.
Cuz that’s what we are about.
AnonE.Mouse
JWW,how do we determine we’re torturing “the right person”?Suspicion seems to be the bar that needs to be hurdled presently.What if we get the suspect’s name from another suspect being tortured?Would that be enough to determine we have “the right person”?
cleek
if they weren’t the right person, we wouldn’t be torturing them! duh!
jcricket
This is how the GOP works on every issue these days. Their position is so extreme and indefensible that they must describe the other side using strawmen or “reductio ad absurdium” versions of their opposing viewpoints.
If you’re against torture, you must want the Islamofascists put up in 4-star hotels in Vegas.
If you’re against tax cuts for the rich you must want a tax hike for everyone.
And so on. If Democrats ever figure out a way to basically say “STFU, morons” and have it work, they would win ever debate, because all Republicans have is the initial punch in the face.
Tax Analyst
The utter feebleness of these Torture Apologists is incredible. They simply can’t construct a logical argument that goes from Point “A” to Point “B” without stopping to torture someone first.
“getting an answer”. “An answer”, my logic-impaired friend, can just as easily mean “any old bullshit” as anything else.
“If you have the right person” is really a Mighty Big “If” when you’re talking about putting a human being through a procedure that’s intended to break down their humanity into tiny disconnected crumbs that quite possibly can’t be totally re-assembled into a reliably coherent working state.
So if you happen to do this to “the Wrong Person” how do you address your error? I know, I know…you don’t care…it makes you feel all safe and warm and fuzzy to know that someone is being tortured to protect you, even if it happens to be someone who is not actually a threat to you.
Why does the word “Asshole” keep popping into my mind this morning?
binzinerator
Mine too, TA.
Sometimes I think I’d like to see done what TenguPhule suggested, but it’s that “if” in “if you have the right person” that keeps me from actually seconding it.
Ironically, if I were a JWW clone I’d obviously have no qualms about shooting my otherself without hesitation. And it’s probably the only way I could claim with 100% certainty I had the right person.
binzinerator
We know “getting an answer” is bullshit. So it’s really all about instilling fear. That’s the reason, and that’s the only reason.
Or as Orwell said, the object of torture is torture.