Creepy Joe™ Lieberman couldn't abide a blow job in the oval office, and he said so from the floor of the Senate. But torture, well, that's as American as detention camps, slavery and burning witches.
Joe Lieberman stated yesterday that torture is necessary to squeeze information from reluctant prisoners. And he says that the president (does he realize who's in charge now?), should have the right to make that decision.
If a nuclear bomb is about to go off in a U.S. city, and the government has a person in custody who has vital information, he said, "You want to be able to use emergency techniques to get the information out of the person." He thinks the president should be able to, in only those extreme cases, authorize the use of waterboarding — a technique that makes a person feel as though they are drowning.
He said the record shows it has been successful and doesn't believe it constitutes torture under the Geneva Conventions.
"I think that we have to allow the president to allow the toughest measures to be used when there is an imminent threat to our country," he said. But in most cases, he said, a more standard regime of persistent and non-physical interrogation should be used.
Oh, if a nuclear bomb were about to go off. Isn't that one of those "hypotheticals" that politicians are so reluctant to discuss. Maybe he's been watching one too many episodes of "24."
He says hot coals against the skin would not be okay. (How about beatings with rubber hoses?) But making a prisoner think he, or she, is going to drown, is swell. It's just "psychological" torment. Creepy Joe™ says it leaves no permanent scars. Maybe he's never talked to a veteran about post-traumatic stress syndrome. If he had, he might not be as gung ho about sending soldiers off for extended tours to an unjust war.
It's more chickenhawk talk. And I'd wager that if one US soldier underwent waterboarding by Iraq insurgents, Creepy Joe™ would readily condemn them. But I guess now that his buddy John McCain has abandoned his principles when it comes to torture, it's okay for Creepy Joe™ to get in on the pig pile, Abu Ghraib style.
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