The Waterboarding Debate - Or How the Neocons Don't Give a Damn About International Law

In this installment on my blog, I must ask the following question: are Bush supporters really this ignorant or that brainwashed from drinking the Red State kool-aid? I know I shouldn't be surprised by the logic (or lack thereof) seeping from the hardcore fringe right, but when it comes to the issue of defending waterboarding because a Bush crony said that it's not torture (if a Bush crony says it, then it must be considered true!), I just scratch my head in total amazement over how these fucking morons could defend and endorse such a tactic.

But, waterboarding is not torture, and I have no idea why Democrats want terrorists to be coddled, not interrogated.
-Matt Margolis

Uh, Matt, according to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, Human Right Watch, and the U.S. Department of State, it is.
From the UN Convention Against Torture:

Article 2
1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.
2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

From Human Rights Watch:

The Convention Against Torture prohibits practices that constitute the intentional infliction of “severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental.” The federal torture statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2340A, similarly prohibits acts outside the United States that are specifically intended to cause “severe physical or mental pain or suffering.”

Waterboarding is torture. It causes severe physical suffering in the form of reflexive choking, gagging, and the feeling of suffocation. It may cause severe pain in some cases. If uninterrupted, waterboarding will cause death by suffocation. It is also foreseeable that waterboarding, by producing an experience of drowning, will cause severe mental pain and suffering. The technique is a form of mock execution by suffocation with water. The process incapacitates the victim from drawing breath, and causes panic, distress, and terror of imminent death. Many victims of waterboarding suffer prolonged mental harm for years and even decades afterward.

Waterboarding, when used against people captured in the context of war, may also amount to a war crime as defined under the federal war crimes statute 18 U.S.C. § 2441, which criminalizes grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions (in international armed conflicts), and violations of Article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions (in non-international armed conflicts). Waterboarding is also an assault, and thus violates the federal assault statute, 18 U.S.C. § 113, when it occurs in the “special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States,” a jurisdictional area which includes government installations overseas. In cases involving the U.S. armed forces, waterboarding also amounts to assault, and cruelty and maltreatment under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Under the laws of the land, U.S. personnel who order or take part in waterboading are committing criminal acts—torture, assault, and war crimes—which are punishable as felony offenses.

Get that, Matt? Not only is considered torture, but it it also considered illegal under international law.......but hey, when has a little thing like the law stopped your hero Bush and his gang of thugs from getting what they want?

For a gang of so-called Christian Conservatives, they sure aren't conducting themselves in a Christian manner.