Waterboarding

Is torture.

Torture is illegal - against international and national law. It's a preferred torture because until an autopsy, there generally is no physical evidence of torture when it's used.

The reason President Bush's new Attorney General candidate is already compromised is because the CIA (cough/sneeze- used waterboarding) "may" have waterboarded suspects they captured.

If the AG declares to congress that he finds waterboarding against the law is that he would find that he might have to take legal action against CIA employees who are identified as using it under orders. That would put the administration and individual CIA agents in for legal action against them if the AG believes they've broken the law on two levels: 1) issuing the order, 2) carrying out an order that is illegal. The Nuremberg Trials declared that soldiers do not have to obey an illegal order.

Much as the Bush administration claims torture is helpful to flipping suspects, and anyone in the adminstration who disagrees with them is fired.

Here are the facts:

1) Torturing enemy combatants only makes them hate the US even more because they believe we're such hypocrites - claiming to be this positive, peace-loving, humane nation when we are allowed to use torture.

2) Think of how patriotic you would feel resisting torture to turn on your country. Senator (R-AZ) John McClain knows how that feeling all too well. Torture inspires a patriotic courage because it makes the enemy feel inhumane, less than human. So when you're tortured you do talk. But you lie. You buy yourself more time before you have to deal with that pain again. The time it takes them to figure out you've lied. You tell them anything in order to get them to stop. You confess. Tell them anything they want to know - in the way they want to hear it, which in most cases is not true.

3) Torturing the enemy gives them the excuse they need to torture US soldiers. Soldiers are put at extraordinary risk when they hear of the CIA or others torturing suspects. If the suspects are killed during torture, somehow the word gets out and the enemy does all it can to make the lives of US soldiers a painful, horrific hell. If you don't already know, I'm a US Air Force veteran.

4) Those outside the US claiming they know we use waterboarding give the US no credibility in its insistence that human rights be a negotiating issue.

These are just a few reasons torture only backfires, especially when it's given to people who already think we are the embodiment of Satan.

Stephanie Miller's father, William Miller who ran as Barry Goldwater's vice presidential running mate in 1964, was a prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, that put notorious Nazi's on trial for crimes against humanity. Stephanie reports her father told her he got more information out of his adversaries playing chess with them than others did torturing them to get information.

Believe me, I used to think that torture was the only way to get violent people to talk, but found out to my shock that in fact the less violence used on violent people, the more apt they are to flip and give accurate information. It just requires more ingenuity, relationship skills and understanding the enemy. If you have those elements, getting correct information can be much faster than getting bogus info, then taking a bunch of time and costing lives in the process, only to find out they lied.

Talk about propaganda - during the "cold war" between the US and Soviet Union? The Soviets were told - and they believed it - that we Americans were *cannibals.* That we would kill, cook and eat them if we won the cold war.

Imagine what the folks fighting us in the Middle East are told about us - and how their animosity only elevates every time an instance like Abu Ghraib takes place. Only in this case instead of being rumors that could be denied by the Bush administration, we actually saw photographic and heard audible evidence of the US torturing and abusing prisoners - who were not even identified as insurgents.

Fighting terrorists "over there" so we don't have to fight them "here"

I hope someone understands how preposterous this supposition is.

I'm neither paranoid nor am I privy to any special information, and I am aware that terrorists are already in our midst, just as they are in Europe, England and other nations throughout the world.

It's only common sense.

Canada's liberal immigration laws permitted many people to live there whose background in either Islamic or Middle East political extremism would prohibit them from entry into the US.

In December, 1999, an alert US customs agent spotted one of them crossing a Northwest American border with a car whose trunk was *loaded* with explosives. She and three other agents captured and arrested him. His passenger escaped.

To believe that no other terrorists have safely crossed that and other borders after 9/11 would be extremely naive.

As much as the Bush administration and far right wing Republicans plead that they need to "fight terrorists over in Iraq so they don't come here," the fact is that in Iraq there are very few non-Iraqi or Iraqi terrorists participating in that civil war and fighting the US military there. Reliable estimates run *less than* 4% of those fighting are al qaeda-related.

Terrorists don't have to be in Iraq because Iraqis fighting the civil and other war against the US there are doing the terrorists' work for them.

Which leaves the terrorists free to move throughout the world as we devote so many resources and attention to Iraq to gain access to its oil.

This war, in fact, is fodder to stimulate anti-US and anti-West emotions among people who are already convinced that Western culture is a tool of Satan.

A recent report from Iraq noted that every time Americans reconstruct a school or other building there, it is destroyed by insurgents. What had been reported by the Bush administration as a successful US drive to reconstruct a number of resources there turned out to be untrue; there continues to be extreme problems because of the ongoing destruction, a lack of clean water and electricity.

Imagine living day to day trying to make a living, educate your children and even survive, with the constant threat of explosions, destruction and bloodletting, let alone being without clean water or electricity.

The terrorists are using what is seen by many people in the world as a demonstrable act of aggression by the US into Iraq as emotional fodder to inspire recruits to work against us.

Perhaps even more significantly:

The world - and especially the terrorists - bitterly note that President Bush displays the arrogance of someone who seems to believe it's OK to destroy a nation "over there," killing more than half a million innocent children, women and men "over there;" to leave so many Iraqi victims without limbs and faces and a real future "over there," or allow the massive corruption that has "lost" tens of billions of our hard-earned US tax dollars "over there."

This while we sit in the comfort of our warm living rooms watching the latest American Idol, chat about the most recent episode of Grey's Anatomy over the water cooler at work, complain about all the homework we have to do for class tomorrow or become frustrated with the long wait in line for Spidey 3.

Meanwhile, as an Air Force veteran, I am sad to see so many of our US military and civilian forces coming home killed, wounded, maimed or harmed in some way in a war that was not carefully debated or considered before they were sent "over there" by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, according to former CIA director George Tenent.

Common sense *should* tell us that devoting so many of our resources in Iraq only makes for a great distraction for Americans as the terrorists go about their business here and in a number of nations.

This short-sightedness is one of the main reasons those who opposed invading Iraq in the first place were so angry. They saw this outcome, why didn't others?

I'll never forget the mistreatment Michael Moore received at the 2004 Academy Awards when he announced that the Bush administration lied to us about the war in Iraq. The audience booed and the media villified him. We didn't want to believe him. The democrats were too afraid to challenge the president.

We are not fighting the terrorists, folks. We're just giving them plenty of time to wait. And plan. Patiently.

Ask anyone in US military or intelligence or knowledgeable political circles: it will be a miracle if terrorists don't strike the US, and in a significant way.

Meanwhile, the British have devoted many resources to stay one step ahead of terrorists in their nation; not always successfully, but they have prevented several catastrophes. Spain and other nations have also felt the lethal wrath of terrorists' deadly brutality.

The Bush administration told us a number of reasons for invading Iraq, not the least of which was ridding the world of the demonic Saddam Hussein. He's gone. He's not only been gone for awhile, he's been killed, along with many of his associates and family.

Why aren't we out of there after Saddam's government was successfully destroyed, after he was successfully captured, after he was successfully tried, convicted and hung along with his cronies?

Because the Bush administration did not understand the outcome of its actions and is incapable of seeing the US/Iraqi war for what it is:

Political, military, financial, emotional, moral and cultural quicksand.