Webloggin » Libs Wetting Their Pants Over New AG Nomination, Cry “Waterboarding” in This Season’s Abu Ghraib

It’s a wonder to see just how far over the top the left can go when on the cusp of losing another battle with the Bush Administration. This time the issue is waterboarding, that decidedly torturous act of simulating the act of drowning to solicit information from uncooperative terrorists. There are many forms of waterboarding according to those who claim to know something about the act and the law is not clear on whether or not what the CIA is alleged to be doing constitutes torture under the various treaties and laws that have been passed at the behest of human rights organizations. Specifics, such as whether or not the definition of torture follows international conventions or follows definitions stated under U.S. law are superfluous to those who would like to apply kitchen sink standards without even knowing what exactly is being done in classified CIA programs.

While specifics don’t mean much to bloviating MSM reporters, various op-ed contributors and lefty bloggers they do mean a heck of a lot to those who must determine whether or not the United States is breaking any laws in the treatment of detainees in offshore facilities.

Thus the bed wetting escapades over the nomination of Michael Mukasey as the new U.S. attorney general exposes grandiose political opportunism by politicians while demonstrating how that opportunism is designed to target the less informed masses that make up much of the left.

For instance, even though Michael Mukasey testified that he believes that torture is forbidden under the U.S. Constitution the left wants to play a game of gotcha with his claim that he doesn’t know the specifics of what the CIA is alleged to be doing under the umbrella of “waterboarding”. This claim is being used by the left to assert that he approves of the act even though the actual specifics are classified. The gotcha game is no different than that played by the left when opposing the nomination of Supreme Court justices by soliciting opinions on abortion knowing full and well that the nominee can’t answer the question based on hypothetical cases that are stripped down to the least common denominator; that being the left’s pre-conceived notions that are woven heavily into all day performances within the political theater.

To bolster their case the left grasps at out of context facts that by themselves seem to support their claims. But when brought into focus via contextual completion the claims fall flat. For instance, Andrew McCarthy notes that Sen. Edward Kennedy recently published and Op-Ed in the very fertile ground of the context free alarmist playground over at the Washington Post. Senator Kennedy did his best to present waterboarding within the context of World War II crimes prosecution by selectively picking facts about the prosecution of a Japanese war criminal.

The Washington Post and Sen. Edward Kennedy have pointed to a World War II era war crimes prosecution by the U.S. against a Japanese soldier who used what was described as “water torture” on an American civilian. But they’ve failed to note that this was far from the only conduct at issue; the soldier was also charged with having engaged, over a sustained period of time, in “beating using hands, fists, club; kicking; … burning using cigarettes; strapping on a stretcher head downward.” The case hardly stands for the proposition that isolated instances of waterboarding would be torture.

The Washington Post has editorial reign over what goes in their paper. Their failure to look at the facts perpetuated a lie to be construed as an opinionated fact for all to read and consume. Thus the WaPo editorial staff has taken a stance that forgoes contextual fact for political favor. Is it any wonder that newspapers are falling by the wayside?

Another tactic that is being perpetuated across the spectrum is that of the false moral equivalence diatribe. A perfect example can be seen at the lefts premiere purveyor of propaganda over at The New Republic. Front and center is an essay by historian and TNR contributor Anthony Grafton titled “Say Anything“. Timed to coincide with the nomination of the AG this essay is aimed at making an equivalence comparison to the torture tactics of 15th Century Europe and the Renaissance period to today’s tactics used by the Bush administration.

One would normally expect any comparison of 15th century barbarism to minimally touch upon the modern day terrorist tactics of beheading yet remarkably that comparison isn’t even alluded to. Nope, not here. It’s much more convenient to portray the U.S. government as the bad guy with wildly out of touch inferences that waterboarding is somehow on the same level as medieval torture chambers.

I spend most of my time in the years between 1400 and 1700. And, like him, I have found that, if you devote yourself to reading early modern sources, you see a surprising number of things that illuminate our current situation.

[~snip]

As soon as the answers seemed evasive or stubborn, the torturer tied the accused person’s arms behind his or her back. Using a pulley, he would lift the defendant, agonizingly, toward the ceiling. Then, at the podesta’s orders, the torturer would make the accused “jump” or “dance”–pulling him or her up, then releasing the rope, dislocating limbs and inflicting stunning pain. Other, complementary ways of making the Jews speak included placing onions and sulfur under their noses, which seems to have had a powerful effect, and holding hot eggs under their arms. But the pulley system, known as a strappado, was enough for most.

Huh? Are these people insane? One can disagree as to whether or not waterboarding constitutes torture. But the point that Grafton and other like him are making is lost on the realities of degrees of discomfort versus the very real physical torture and abuse that people were subject to in medieval torture chambers. There is no comparison.

Likewise, Grafton makes a strategic error in his essay. He claims that tortured “victims” will admit to anything and that is a primary basis for opposing uncomfortable interrogation techniques. Yet the comparison is once again an apples to oranges plea. The examples Grafton is using in his essay are examples of people that would admit to guilt. The CIA interrogations are not a guilt finding mission, they are a fact finding mission. They are seeking to uncover networks or terrorists and reveal plans about future terror attacks. As such the “say anything” argument is a silly claim because the information being gleaned from the terrorists should be verifiable. This isn’t the same as admitting to a crime against humanity.

At the end of the day both politicians, activists and the media know that the nomination of Michael Mukasey merely presents an opportunity to fan the flames of emotional discourse in favor of Democrats who are taking a fake moral stand on an issue that has been intentionally left to perpetuate itself through legal vagaries and half hearted stances. Sooner or later this will come back to bite them in the political behind. Let’s hope for sooner.