Sean Hannity - Waterboarding

I'm disgusted as I sit here and watch a video of Sean Hannity trying desperately to rationalize torture, and so many things are running through my head.

First, he keeps on referring to it as "enhanced interrogation", and refuses to call it what it is...TORTURE! The United Nations Convention against torture states that torture is "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a male or female person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in, or incidental to, lawful sanctions."
Therefore Sean Hannity, lets go ahead and call it what it is, torture. You cannot tell me that being laid on your back 166 times, and almost drowning isn't both physically and mentally painful.

Second: Every time that you try and rationalize the reasons that we torture you mention that they killed 3000 Americans, and that they chopped off Daniel Pearl's head. Now Mr. Hannity, didn't your mother ever teach you that two wrongs don't make a right?! Why would we, the United States of America, a civilized democracy, want to stoop to the levels of so-called terrorists? Doesn't that make us no better than they are?! If we are going to torture innocent people (in the hopes of getting at least one person who knows something), and we are going to hold them without trial, and not give them access to legal counsel, what separates us from the very "terrorists" we are fighting??

Third: In further trying to rationalize torture, you continue to point to the evidence that we got information that allegedly saved hundreds of American lives! This is so naive! To justify breaking the law by saying "well it works!". It's elementary, it's childish, and ignorant! Just because the goal of an action is accomplished, does not give reason to justify that action! If your goal is to rob a bank and give the money to the poor, and you succeed in doing so, that doesn't mean that your reason for robbing the bank justifies robbing a bank!

Fourth: Sean Hannity, you should be ashamed of yourself! You sit there and continually try and justify taking away a persons rights! Rights are just that, rights. To say that you are taking away someone's rights is a contradiction of terms, because if you can take them away at anytime, then they were never truly rights to begin with. In which case, the United States should never have signed the UDHR or the Geneva Convention, or even became a member of the UN. It's repulsive that you would sit there and mock such a tactic as water boarding, and then flippantly say that you would agree to be water boarded for charity...as if it's some sort of game! What disrespect for our soldiers who have been tortured in the past, and for those that will surely be tortured in the future after our actions at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo.

To end, when someone breaks the law, and they are caught breaking the law (as is the case with the Bush administration), then they need to reap the consequences of breaking that law! I'm so sick and tired of conservative Republicans telling us that this is the past, and we need to let it go....ALL CRIMES HAPPEN IN THE PAST! Members of the Bush administration broke the law, and now they should be punished for it.

Torture

I'm writing this quickly from my phone, because it's all anybody has been talking about for the past few days.

Torture is wrong on so many levels. I don't care whether or not it works, I don't care If we get useful information from it, I just don't care. It's illegal.

We currently have soldiers in jail from what happened at abu graib, yet nobody that actually have the demands is being punished for it. This is ridiculous. I think it's refreshing to have a president that respects the military chain of command, and the fact that these soldiers were given orders from Dick Cheney himself! Nobody is above the law, and therfore somebody should be punished for what has happened.

I'm so confused by the number of people that argue that If torture succeeds at making our country safer, then we should continue to do so! If the united states of ameica can't find more effective ways for getting valuable information, then we as a country should be ashamed of ourselves! And for those of you that like to claim that water boarding isn't torture, remember back to WWII when we shot a man for water boarding one of our soldiers! If it's not torture then why did we kill him?? Oh, that's right....it's called a war crime!

Something has to be done here.

Oh. And one more thought. If torture is so effective, then why did we have to water board ONE man 183 times??!? It's insane!

**sorry If this contains a lot of typos, as it's my first "phone blog".

Paul Begala has it right!

I love this article...and since I didn't think that I could say it any better than this...here you go.
Found at cnn.com
By: Paul Begala


(CNN) -- Happy Patriots' Day. April 15 is the one day a year when our country asks something of us -- or at least the vast majority of us.
For those who wear a military uniform, those who serve the rest of us as policemen and firefighters and teachers and other public servants, every day is patriots' day. They work hard for our country; many risk their lives -- and some lose their lives.
But for the rest of us, the civilian majority, our government asks very little. Except for April 15. On this day, our government asks that we pay our fair share of taxes to keep our beloved country strong and safe.
Freedom isn't free. That's what the courageous World War II veterans of the American Legion taught me back in Texas Boys State decades ago. That phrase had special meaning for them. Those guys had seen buddies blown apart at Anzio or Guadalcanal.
I grew up in a different era. There was no draft, and while I have friends and family members who joined the military, most of my peers, like me, opted for the security and prosperity of the private sector.
This country has showered me with the blessings of liberty. So what do I owe my country in return? Paying my fair share of taxes, it seems, is the least I can do. Thanks to President Obama and the Democratic Congress, 95 percent of Americans will get a tax cut this year. No one -- not even the wealthiest 1 percent -- will have to pay higher income taxes until 2011.

So why are a bunch of Fox News clowns and right-wing cranks hosting "tea parties" all over the country? The Boston Tea Party, in case the clods at Fox didn't know it, protested "taxation without representation." Note the second word: without. The goofballs tossing tea bags today have representation. They voted in the election; they lost.
That a bunch of overpaid media millionaires would lead a faux-populist revolt is comical. They somehow held their populist instincts in check as George W. Bush and the Republicans cut taxes on the idle rich and put the screws to the working stiffs.
Bush's tax policies were a godsend to the Paris Hilton class, but they sent the country on the road to bankruptcy and helped ruin the economy. But now that we the people have decided to set things right, now that we've hired Obama to fix the mess conservatives created, now they're protesting?
Give me a break. Instead of tossing tea bags for the cameras, the Fox phonies ought to go to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. There they would find better, braver men who have truly sacrificed for their country. They deserve nothing but the best -- not the shameful and shoddy conditions they endured during the Bush administration. iReport.com: Share your thoughts on taxes and tea parties
You want something to protest? How 'bout protesting how little we give back to our veterans? Or how 'bout protesting that the entire budget of the National Cancer Institute (where government researchers battle a disease that will strike half of all men and a third of all women) is 0.03 percent of what we gave the bandits at American International Group alone? Oh, but veterans benefits and cancer research might cost money. It might require -- dare I say it? -- paying taxes.
If the whiners at Fox News want to advertise their selfishness, they are free to do so. But please don't dress it up as patriotism. Patriotism is putting your country ahead of yourself -- which is the precise opposite of what the tea party plutocrats are doing.