REPOST: Sir Paul McCarntey...and Torture

While I am down after arm surgery and can't type, I am recycling some posts from a year ago.

This from 9 June 2010:

Greg Sargent, of the Washington Post, 4 June 2010, commenting on Sir Paul McCartney's recent visit to DC to receive an honor:

And the random deep thought of the day: Paul McCartney's crack about George W. Bush's lack of familiarity with libraries is far more controversial and worthy of discussion than Bush's glib claim that he would authorize torture again.

We certainly have become desensitized, haven't we?

Per Dan Froomkin at the Huffington Post blog:

George W. Bush's casual acknowledgment Wednesday that he had Khalid Sheikh Mohammed waterboarded -- and would do it again -- has horrified some former military and intelligence officials who argue that the former president doesn't seem to understand the gravity of what he is admitting.

Waterboarding, a form of controlled drowning, is "unequivocably torture", said retired Brigadier General David R. Irvine, a former strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner of war interrogation and military law for 18 years.

"As a nation, we have historically prosecuted it as such, going back to the time of the Spanish-American War," Irvine said. "Moreover, it cannot be demonstrated that any use of waterboarding by U.S. personnel in recent years has saved a single American life."