The Ongoing Torture Regime

I wonder if they got this idea from studying old Chinese war manuals.

Julie Ann Parrish and Kristina Marie Kallies face one count each of felony abuse after allegations that they forced a 13-year-old autistic boy's head under water after he fell asleep in class. They also stand accused of "forcing him to sit in his soiled pants for hours and making him eat his own vomit when he got sick," reports KTLA in Los Angeles.

"If the teachers thought Garrett was being lazy or falling asleep at his desk, they forcibly took my son to the kitchen sink in the room and forced his head under the water while he was screaming for his mother," Tifonie Schilling, mother of the alleged victim, told ABC News. "And if he had an accident in his pants he was made to sit in it all day. They would taunt him and say, 'You stink like a baby.'"

That's called "enhanced interrogation," and if you want to say otherwise, well, Dick Cheney thinks you're libelous. Which is false. And thus libelous. This is a revolting, indecent man. Cheney on Obama:

In short, to call enhanced interrogation a program of torture is not only to disregard the program’s legal underpinnings and safeguards. Such accusations are a libel against dedicated professionals who acted honorably and well, in our country’s name and in our country’s cause. What’s more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation in the future, in favor of half-measures, is unwise in the extreme. In the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed.

The damage Dick Cheney did to the country is immense and we will be trying to repair for decades, if we ever do at all. The US tortured. On no account except Cheney fantasy-land is torture morally permissible. In no way is it politically respectable or image-enhancing as tough guys. It's an act of profound cowardice. In no way does it yield (falsely) alleged valuable information. It is an expression of total domination.

Whatever euphemism he wants to make up in Cheney NewSpeak, the acts approved by Cheney and the president are well established as torture. Torture is a war crime according to US civil code and to international law to which the US is party and thus integrates into US civil law. This includes the Convention Against Torture, which Ronald Reagan signed. Many of the torture victims were innocent, and many of them died in the process. The latter is called murder by any reasonable standard of the word and any honest use of the English language.

This conversation is over. There is no rhetoric to hide beneath except outright lies, absurd euphemisms, or the Rovean maneuver of accusing one's objectors of the sin one is committing. Dick Cheney is now a relic of a dark past who - if we're not going to put him in prison - should leave us to figure out how to get out of the mess and moral catastrophe he left us.

Update:
OK, I had a long day. Guess I was slow on this according to the blogometer. Here's an earlier discussion.