Mark Jaquith on April 24, 2009 at 5:11 AM

Just for your info, in waterboarding, you don’t “aspirate” water. Your mouth and nose are covered with plastic wrap and you get no water inside of you. But it is a sensation of drowning. During my military training we had it done to us. I assure you – IT SUCKS!!! And I guarantee you the three terrorists enemy combatants accused, misunderstood, freedom fighters whom we waterboarded would agree with me on how much it sucks.

As for whether it was warranted, that’s your opinion and you’re welcome to it. But be sure you tell the two or three thousand Los Angelenos (who weren’t killed in the attack that didn’t happen) know you believe Khalid Sheik Mohamads “civil rights” are more important to you than their lives, and their children’s lives.

Of course, according to the Geneva Convention he has no rights – and could be summarily shot for being a spy – but we’re better than that, right?

• Forcing someone to repeatedly aspirate water for 40 seconds so that their body tells them they are dying, invoking an uncontrollable and traumatizing panic is not torture. Drowning is fun!
• Everyone we waterboard is definitely a terrorist. Why else would we be waterboarding them? Are you suggesting that America tortu– er, does fun water-pouring stuff with innocent people? How dare you accuse our military of making a mistake!
• Accused terrorists can’t be coaxed or reasoned with. They’re animals who only respond to pain water play time.
• Every accused terrorist has information about upcoming terrorism attacks. Even the ones that we’ve had imprisoned for over seven years without charge.
• The information that the accused terrorists have always involves a ticking time bomb.
• If you are against so-called-torture, you hate terrorism victims and their families.
• Supporting torture is noble, manly, and just. And Jesus totally approves.
• It’s only torture if you’re using a sharp instrument to cut into someone.
• It’s not torture if we do it.
• We could just execute everyone at Gitmo and solve this whole moral conundrum.

Remember when he sat on a bridge after Katrina and spread all of those false stories?

Now not only do our enemies now know that we won’t do anything more than ask them politely to rat out their co-conspirators who are going to carry out the attack that the prisoner helped plan, but now they also know that the idiots running our country are so weak that we think crap like this is too much, it’s torture.

I need to puke now. Thanks for nothing, Uhhhbama

Sorry if someone already said this, but I’ve been around a few drunks in my lifetime. Shep’s got all the behaviors of everyone’s “Uncle Bob” who always drinks a little too much at the family gatherings and starts pounding his fist on Grandma’s good dining room table while dropping slurred F-bombs. I think Shep’s liquid lunches are catching up with him.

Rational Thought on April 23, 2009 at 4:42 PM

Exactly the impression I got. It was the muttering under his breath that tipped me off. I’m surprised there hasn’t been any kind of apology, or at least a statement of some sort from Fox. Dropping the F-bomb just when the kiddies are arriving home from school…Shep, sober up.

Sorry if someone already said this, but I’ve been around a few drunks in my lifetime. Shep’s got all the behaviors of everyone’s “Uncle Bob” who always drinks a little too much at the family gatherings and starts pounding his fist on Grandma’s good dining room table while dropping slurred F-bombs. I think Shep’s liquid lunches are catching up with him.

Rational Thought on April 23, 2009 at 4:42 PM

That is exactly what I was thinking. Shep looks a little buzzed. Red faced, slurring, speaking to himself…I hope this isn’t true but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a trip to Betty Ford in his future.

The irony is that the most vocal of the terrorist sympathizers live and work in the very urban areas to be targeted by them.

-Aslan’s Girl

Sheppard should move on to MSNBC or CNN. He’d be welcome with open arms, though his job wouldn’t be very secure.

…after all…the Ivory Soap people even admit to a fraction of a percent of schmutz in their product….

…somebody in Washington needs to read Horne’s “A Savage War Of Peace”. The French Fourth Republic, as healthy as Ozzy Osborne with a hangover, was brought down by their handling of the Algerian War. The Fifth Republic, after worshipful expectations of what that sphinx De Gaulle was going to to, almost went into the toilet. The Right (is there still a French “right”? was there EVER a French “right?”) held out for a continued French presence in Algeria…and what did the Left throw at them? Torture.

Now, 47 years after the war’s over (and at least two rather nasty “civil” wars in Algeria later), they’re still chasing folks down about torture the way Weisenthal went after Nazis….

…and, once again…(wait for it)…THE LEFT IS USING OUR OWN BEST INTENTIONS AGAINST US…to bring down the house, so’s they can rebuild it…in their own image…and they’ll decide what that image is at a later date…once they’ve won…and they have a better idea how much they can get away with…and, of course, after the purges….

…I don’t know what Mr. Smith thinks America is. Does he think it is an ideal? No, Mr. Smith…it’s a country. It’s not an eternally pristine concept shining like a diamond from the brow of God. It’s a country. An historical construct…constructed by human beings…who built stuff pretty soundly back in 1787, but with imperfections nonetheless. Ever read anything about that pesky “3/5ths of a person” deal codified into our Constitution? I’m sure that your native Mississippi benefitted by it prior to its being expunged, Mr. Smith. (And I say this as a Confederate partisan!) Ever read anything about the abortion that was Prohibition? Remember Margaret Sanger and eugenics? Remember Jim Crow?

America has done a number of things it should be ashamed of. (And I say this as a veteran, the husband of a veteran, the father of veterans.) Defending itself against the brainwashed members of a murderous death cult by gathering intelligence isn’t among them.

Once upon a time, a certain Secretary of War from Tennessee looked down on such doings as intelligence collection. He thought that gentlemen don’t read other gentlemen’s mail. Well…Mr. Hull…what if your being attacked by a bunch who’re less than gentlemen?

There’s a line in movie “Big Jake”, and Maureen O’Hara (may she live forever) says, in response to a need to deal with Richard Boone and a collection of villains, that they’re facing a hard and unpleasant job…and that they’ll need a hard and unpleasant man to do it. Then, the screen is filled with the face of John Wayne.

That’s what we’ve got now, and have had since 2001…a hard and unpleasant task. It’s been increasingly more unpleasant with the passing of years, going back to at least 1948, when the morons in Atlee’s cowardly administration cut the cords in the Middle East because “colonialism is wrong”, beginning an avalanche of new nations to rise, as lovable as stillborn piglets, from relative (enforced) peace to full-throttle revolving door dictatorship from Jo’burg to Jerusalem, from Algiers to Bangladesh. Colonialism may’ve been wrong, but turning tribal basket-cases, “Deformed, unfinish’d, sent before (their)time Into this breathing world, scarce half made up”, loose on the world was creating busloads of potential Richard III’s…and wasn’t he a well-adjusted, friendly and sympathetic sort of Shakespearean guy….

…so, America The Pure doesn’t do torture…with or without the “f-word”…it also doesn’t leave the lavatory without washing its hands…doesn’t belch audibly…doesn’t fart without saying “excuse me”, and never in the presence of a lady…wouldn’t think of bullying banks into accepting unwanted “bail-out” funds…and would get the vapors at the very thought of putting a chill on free speech….

…but, in the “through the looking glass” world we live in today, without the information derived from even the limited and controlled torture practiced by professionals who’d be less apt to lose their cool on the job than Mr. Smith (apparently), we may not have a country, pure or polluted, to brag and posture about.

This idiotic performance is now part of Shep’s wiki bio (which I went in vain to see whether or not he had children – since it’s difficult to imagine any parent/New Yorker who lived through 9/11 taking this position).