Bush, US Army Field Manual, Senate Select Committee Intelligence Report on Iraq: Material detailing torture, American style

As talked about a bit on the primary thread but to revive a specific thread on the subject:

The White House said Wednesday that the widely condemned interrogation technique known as waterboarding is legal and that President Bush could authorize the CIA to resume using the simulated-drowning method under extraordinary circumstances.

A lot of bilge in that article, but the kicker is at the end, emphasis mine:

During Tuesday's testimony, Hayden said that depriving the CIA of enhanced techniques would place America in greater danger. After the hearing, a senior U.S. intelligence official argued that waterboarding should not be considered torture because the U.S. military has subjected its own personnel to the method to prepare them for the possibility of being captured.

"Tens of thousands of American Air Force and naval airmen were waterboarded as part of their survival training," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We don't maim as part of our training. We don't mutilate. We don't sodomize. Those are things that are always bad. . . . Intellectually, there has got to be a difference between (waterboarding) and the others; otherwise we wouldn't have done it in training."

...depriving the CIA of enhanced techniques would place America in greater danger.

Depriving criminals of the opportunity to steal places them at greater risk of poverty.

the idea that anything you do in training is at all acceptable in a real prison setting is completely fucking absurd and makes me want to take said "official" quoted in the report and, uh, waterboard them, except with gasoline. as part of my training program to prove the difference between a scenario of indefinite length e.g. imprisonment with no recourse and a scenario which is only ever five days in length

fucking 100% asswipes I work for

it's exactly the same decontextualizing rationalization that got rodney king's lapd attackers off the hook -- you look at each thing, each blow, as a separate, justifiable act removed from any chain of such acts or anything else at all