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TechnoratiAntitorture Protesters in DC Act Out Waterboarding
WASHINGTON - Protesters staged a waterboarding yesterday outside the Department of Justice, calling for a Senate committee to reject attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey because of his reluctance to define the interrogation tactic as torture.
The demonstration came shortly before Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, said he would oppose Mukasey during a Senate Judiciary Committee vote set for today on whether the retired judge should be confirmed to lead the Justice Department.
Mukasey's approval was all but assured last week when two Democrats on the panel, Charles E. Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California, said they would buck concerns about his stand on torture and support him.
Yesterday, about 25 protesters describing themselves as antiwar activists and actors responded with a demonstration of waterboarding that brought a volunteer to retching coughs and tears in less than four minutes.
"I wanted desperately to scream but I couldn't because as soon as I would - water," said Maboud Ebrahimzadeh, 26, an Iranian-American actor from Maryland. "Water would go through the mouth and through the nose."
Ebrahimzadeh struggled against his supposed interrogators as they yelled questions and forced him to lie on his back, a cloth over his face, his legs elevated. They poured two gallons of water over his face. The process was supposed to resemble the one CIA interrogators are believed to have used on terrorism detainees until a few years ago. However, Ebrahimzadeh's interrogators put a plastic cage between his face and the cloth to make sure he did not inhale too much water and, potentially, drown or asphyxiate.
At Senate confirmation hearings last month, Mukasey repeatedly refused to say whether he considers waterboarding a form of torture, as claimed by an unlikely coalition of military officials, doctors, and humans rights groups.
The Pentagon has banned its personnel from using waterboarding. The Bush administration has sidestepped questions on whether it has allowed CIA interrogators or other employees to use it against terror detainees.
In a letter to the Senate panel yesterday, 21 military and intelligence officials urged lawmakers to delay voting on Mukasey's confirmation until he clarifies his position on waterboarding.
"The most likely explanation for Mukasey's reticence is his concern that, should his conscience require him to condemn waterboarding, this could cause extreme embarrassment and even legal jeopardy for senior officials," the letter stated.
© 2007 The Boston Globe
15 Comments so far
Show AllFnooze: Exactly, let's throw Mukasey on the waterboard and ask him what he thinks!
nice country we live in...
It's not just waterboarding! Dozens of deaths under interrogation by US officials, forced disappearances, prolonged and painful "stress positions", denial of habeas corpus and procedural safeguards and many other outrages upon US and domestic law are part of a large, pervasive pattern of illegality that alienates our allies and multiplies our enemies. Unless a nominee is prepared to repudiate all of these practices and promise full, impartial investigations and vigorous prosecutions of all violators, up to and including the President if he is implicated (as he surely will be), the Senate should withhold its confirmation. It's about time they took a stand in favor of law, morality and common decency. Their constituencies should apply pressure to the Quislings Feinstein and Schumer to take a principled stand.
Let's use Argentina as our model for a new classism. Consider first that there always has been a base streak in the American character, something that wanted to put people down. It led to genocide of the American Indian. It gave rise to racism. And nowadays thousands of people like Lou Dobbs want to assert superiority over the very sort of immigrants-- especially dusky-skinned ones-- who built this country up.
This new classism, unlike these previous, inferior versions, will be based on reason and take the moral high ground that our Founders intended.
People will be judged by their attitude toward torture. Just as the Argentines passionately and relentlessly pursue former torturers, we can hold trials and Nuremburgs. At the very least we can use our media and literature to flush this new toilet class down itself.
The pro-torture people, starting with ex-president George W. Bush, can congregate to commiserate on their victimhood in such places as Smithfield, North Carolina, home of torture flights.
To educate these counter-protesting people, many of whom are Vietnam Vets, we will have to explain to them, over and over, that they themselves are the ones who incurred second class citizenship. It wasn't "moonbats" or Jane Fonda who did it. They brought it upon themselves.
Is waterboarding torture? If Mr Mukasey voluntarily underwent a waterboarding himself, he would be able to answer that. Wouldn't he!
It's not only the likes of Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Feinstein, that are typically deceitful by playing games with the American People.
What's up with the Junior Senator from Vermont? Bernie Sanders. Why isn't he making noise? He's been too quiet lately.
I hope not to hear the Daily Kos red state rationalizations here. Schumer won by 47 points in 2004 and Feinstein won by 24 points in 2006 in reliably blue states.
Clinton is Bush in women's clothes.
ABC
Anybody But Clinton
Yo soy un hombre sincero...
Nice stuff but how about printing on loose, open neck beachshirts or muscleshirts...
T-shirts are so, so, what you say... yesterday.
Lo siento.
The fact that there's any question regarding this technique just goes to prove that America as we once knew it is gone. Some of us even think that torture is "Ok under certain circumstances".
It's NEVER ok. If you call yourself an American then torture is never, EVER ok.
It is getting more and more excruciatingly painful each and every day knowing that these FASCIST NEOMORONS are still in control of our government!
IS THIS NOT IN ITSELF AN INSIDIOUS FORM OF TORTURE?!!
GOOD PROGRAM TONIGHT ON PBS FRONTLINE CONCERNING EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION...
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/rendition701/
CHECK IT OUT!
P.S...................................U.S. OUT OF CALIFORNIA!..............................bitches...
We wouldn't want to put our precious and so productive senior officials in legal jeopardy, no, that would be terrible to hold our leaders accountable for their actions.
Will Congress vote to confirm this Water Sport?
Does it occur to anyone that the same group that will not admit that waterboarding is torture-and torture is illegal; is the same group that will chase congressional pages up and down the hallway, will send teenagers sexually suggestive emails, does demonstrate a "wide stance" in a men's room, and will pay prostitutes to diaper them? The same exact group!
The Bush administration thinks waterboarding and surfing are the same thing.