What's on my mind…

My country tortures people.

Spin it however you want, but when waterboarding is described to me, it sounds like torture, it smells like torture, it looks like torture…so it’s probably torture.

Waterboarding, for those who haven’t heard, is basically drowning people on dry land. The victim is immobilized, tilting downward. The interrogator pours water onto their face-blocking their air passages. The water triggers their gag reflex, causes suffocation and simulates drowning.It can cause damage to the lungs, brain damage from loss of oxygen, broken bones if the victim struggles against the straps and other long-term health problems. Psychologically, it can cause Post traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, depression…and who knows what else.

In short, waterboarding messes you up. Forever.

And despite the President stating unequivocally that the United States “does not torture people,” CIA Director Michael Hayden let Congress know that they actually did. Oops.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.  -Friedrich Nietzsche       

The most common justifications are that waterboarding isn’t torture and that it can be justified in extreme circumstances (such as after 9/11). Yet U.S. Generals deemed it illegal during the Vietnam War, we’re still at war and the threat level is yellow (elevated). 

The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live, and fear breeds repression. Too often sinister threats to the bill of rights, to freedom of the mind, are concealed under the patriotic cloak, of anti-communism.  -Adlai Stevenson       

Know who else used waterboarding?

The Spanish Inquisition. The Khmer Rouge. The Gestapo. The Kempeitai. And God knows who else.

Is that a list the United States wants to be on? And does it work well enough for the United States to lose all credibility as a result of using it?

Government officials have said that they received valuable information by waterboarding prisoners…but we’re no closer to finding bin Laden. There are still threats worldwide. There are still operatives and cells out there.

I don’t know how to solve the terrorism problem and bring peace to the world. Neither does my government. What I do know is that we cannot do it by torturing people and thus lowering ourselves to their level.

I want my government to know that, too.

I know they had good intentions…but at the end of the day, let’s face the simple truth: the Democratic Senators, officials chosen by the people to represent their best interests, hosted a slumber party in the capitol building.

It gave The Daily Show a great lead story. It gave me mental images of 100 adults having pillow fights, doing each other’s nails, watching scary movies, throwing their popcorn in the air when the monster jumps out of the bushes in that scary movie and maybe playing with the old Ouija board…but that’s about it.

*****
But I want to tell the story behind this amazing political theater production because I am a lover of context and history.

Our story begins on March 20, 2007, when H.R.1585, succinctly titled: “To authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2008 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes” was introduced in the House of Representatives.

The bill spent roughly two months in the House, being sent from subcommittee to subcommittee, having amendments added, debated, voted on, the whole deal. It was all explained to us as kids when that poor bill sang,

Now I’m stuck in committee
and I’ll sit here and wait
While a few key Congressmen discuss and debate
whether they should let me be a law…

Then tells the boy that if they don’t like him he may die…and by this point we were all quite attached to the bill, so we really hoped that wouldn’t happen.

…love that little guy.

But I digress…point is, by May 17th it passed in the House (397-27 with 8 not voting) and went to the Senate (received June 4th, in case you were wondering).

And, as the little bill told us once, “Then I go to the Senate and the whole thing starts all over again!”

So far, this is all normal.

The Hullaballoo was about cloture on amendment SA 2087“Amendment purpose: to provide for a reduction and transition of United States forces in Iraq.” Passing cloture means that debate ends and the Senate votes. In order to pass cloture, you need three-fifths of the Senate to approve, or 60 Senators (no vacancies).

The Amendment was proposed on July 11th and the cloture motion was presented on July 16th. On Tuesday the 17th, the Democrats had cots delivered to the Senate chambers, making sure it was filmed (dramatic, eh?). Then came the all-nighter.

The vote on the 18th was sooo close: 52-47 (1 not voting), but alas, no cloture. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) motioned to reconsider the vote, but that was shot down too.

So, massive media cover aside, unless someone got a great manicure or had some spirit tell them their future via Ouija board…nothing was accomplished.

It’s really a bit embarrassing.

Sources:

*Music and lyrics to “I’m just a bill” by Dave Frishberg, from “Schoolhouse Rock.”
*Picture of bill and boy originally from “Schoolhouse Rock,” but found, via google images, here.
*Clip of Daily Show copyright Comedy Central, found here.
*Used “Senate’s Iraq Debate Is More Slumber Than Party” by Dana Milbank, from Washingtonpost.com, published Thursday, July 19, 2007 as a reference.
*All information about bills and links to bills from THOMAS (Library of Congress) database.

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