Objectively Pro-Torture

The CBS headline gets it right [for a change]: Republicans Stop Bill To Ban Waterboarding

(CBS/AP) Senate Republicans blocked a bill Friday that would restrict the interrogation methods the CIA can use against terrorism suspects.

The bill would require the CIA to adhere to the Army’s field manual on interrogation, which bans waterboarding, mock executions and other harsh interrogation methods.
…

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., placed a hold on the intelligence bill, preventing the Senate from voting on it while the challenge goes forward.

“I think quite frankly applying the Army field manual to the CIA would be ill-advised and would destroy a program that I think is lawful and helps the country,” Graham said in an interview.

Graham is lying. He is an attorney, a military JAG [Judge Advocate General, USAF Reserve] and a Senator. He knows that international law classifies waterboarding as torture and that treaties and US criminal statutes banning torture are part of US law. He knows that the Eighth Amendment bans cruel and unusual punishment. There is nothing “lawful” about torture. There is no real evidence that has ever been presented to any body in the US government that actually supports the claim that real intelligence has been gained by torture. Every claim of effectiveness has been made by people justifying their behavior and complicity in torture with no specifics ever provided.

In the long history of torture it is obvious that the sole purpose, beyond sadism, is to elicit confessions without regard to the truth of the confessions. Graham may not have a problem linking the government of the United States with witch hunts, political and religious persecution, and sadistic dictatorships, but real Americans do.