R.A.Danny: what_now: Ventura famously declared: "I'll put it to you this way: You give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders."

You know, Ventura might be a bit of a kook, but damn if he can't work a soundbite.

He's a likable nutjob that I usually disagree with.

He's a god dam sexual Tyrannasaurus...just like me.

It's a specious argument but has anyone who endorses waterboarding volunteered for it and not changed their position?

This is the leader of the teabag caucus, how's that all working out for you baggers?

i bet if somebody poured some water on her nose she would change her tune.

Considering the state of her marriage, she probably can't even imagine the idea of getting wet. . .

As always, it's absolutely disgusting that we're even talking at all about this, and that both a former president and current presidential candidates are openly in favor of torturing detainees.

thomps: my assumption is that she'd take the old tactic of arguing that terrorists aren't technically subject to geneva convention protections so it's not a perfect analogy. then she'd run away and hide behind a hedge.

Which is utterly bizarre to me; we're exercising war powers, so we should treat targets authorized by war powers as prisoners of war. If we want to charge them with crimes, they fall under the jurisdiction of either our civilian courts or international courts depending on the charge. This whole blackbagging thing is absolutely disgusting.

Listening to her is torturous.

The only way the Republican position on this makes sense to me is that they must be assuming that in order to be torture, an interrogation method must explicitly be intended to cause direct bodily harm, and I suppose one could argue that water boarding, while putting people into extreme distress and potentially causing physical harm, is not directly intended to cause bodily injury, and therefore isn't torture.

Is that about right? I'm honestly curious. It seems a very, very limited definition of torture, and most likely a misread of countless treaties, not mention basic human decency, but I guess it'd be something...

It is illegal alright. It violates Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. Hell, the United States hanged Japanese soldiers for waterboarding US prisoners of war in World War II.

Now did we hang these people because waterboarding is legal? Or did we hang them because waterboarding is illegal?

You're move, Ms Bachmann.

colon_pow: i bet if somebody poured some water on her nose she would change her tune.

This begs for a Marcus Bachmann-facial joke, but I can't make the wording work.

// "Ewwww, Marcus!! You're supposed to put a towel over the face and nose first!"
// Boo! Cocky Michelle Bachmann's Unwavering Support of Torture
// "Semenboarding: The Marcus Bachmann Story" (should help our relationship with Japan, too)

We've convicted people of war crimes for waterboarding. We've penalized our own military for using it in previous wars. We explicitly banned it during the Vietnam war. There has not been one period in time in the past 100 years where we didn't view it as some form of torture until the Bush Administration re-defined it between 2001 and 2008.

It is beyond ridiculous that there is a segment of the American population that fails to realize that.

vernonFL: Terrorists aren't human beings. They are sub-human.

The same goes for sodomites, and liberals

/but I repeat myself

9/10. The comma splice and improper use of the period were nice touches, but you could have misspelled a word or two for the perfect troll.

colon_pow: i bet if somebody poured some water on her nose she would change her tune.

I'd prefer she was waterboarded.

What arguing about torture with Bachmann looks like! (new window)