It’s now or NEVER on TORTURE! --- Drive a wedge into the heart of McCain!

[DeadElephant_ORG]

Folks, the grab is on to make TORTURE ok.

• This week, the White House admitted to waterboarding (controlled drowning) of terrorist suspects. It’s an ancient and barbaric technique, long understood - without any question - to be torture.

• Cheney gave a speech in which he acknowledged and defended the use of this known torture.

• A White House spokesman reserved the right to do it again! But he refused to answer whether it would be torture if Al Qaeda waterboarded US soldiers.

• While questioning our new Attorney General today, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) claimed that “99% of Americans would support” waterboarding. He emphasized that the Bush administration should “not be defensive about using” the technique.

• Ann Coulter this week comfortably acknowledged on national television that she supports torturing our prisoners. She felt no need to mince words about "waterboarding".

video of Cheney, and White House spokesman
transcript of Rep Lemar Smith
Anne Coulter: "I should feel concerned about putting a little water up a terrorists nose!?"


This is a balls-to-the-wall play to make the war crimes which they have now admitted to somehow, suddenly NOT BE CRIMES. It out-Cheneys Cheney for sheer aggressive, criminal hubris.
They are moving right now to make TORTURE NORMAL. So NOW is when we MUST OPPOSE THEM.

We’ll kill two birds with one stone. Here’s HOW:

The Clinton and Obama campaigns must pull together on this and raise HELL right now! Besides the immorality of it, the normalization of torture is a wedge issue pointed right at the heart of John McCain. Because he taking hits from Right wing media (Hannity, Rush, etc.), McCain has not yet spoken out about the fact that Bush and Cheney have violated the anti-torture law that he lead the fight to create.

A poll three months ago asked Americans whether they think waterboarding is a form of torture. More than two-thirds of respondents, 69 percent, said “yes”. So not only are we are in the right, we are in the MAJORITY. And because most moderate Republicans and Independents are morally opposed to torture – including most Christian evangelicals (after all, who would Jesus torture?) - torture is the ideal issue by which to wedge McCain and moderate Republicans away from the fanatical Right. Away from pure evil.

Torture has no part in the America that you and I love. It is the scariest possible step towards a police state. We must hold John McCain’s feat to that fire NOW. (pun intended)

YOU CAN http://digg.com/politics/NOW_or_never_on_TORTURE_Put_a_wedge_into_McCain_s_heart">DIGG THIS STORY HERE

Jeff Goldsmith
www.DeadElephant.ORG
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[w13rd0]

1. agree completely...

...we have to force McCain to come out condemning Bush. Make him do one of two things:

1) further drive a wedge between himself and the GOP base

or

2) basically say that it was ok that he was held in prison and tortured

[annabanana]

Excellent post! This is an issue that McCain claims the high ground on,

having been a victim. He can't do that and NOT come out strong against the morally reprehensible Mukasey and his do-nothing Justice department!

I most sincerely urge all Obama AND Clinton supporters to pass this notion up the food chain!!

[dkf]

2. Geez the guy has totally come out against torture.

You want to make us look like the bad guys?

I saw the MSNBC thing on his life story and it was brutal. I felt like crying when he was croaking out his message to his wife.

Bringing up Torture and McCain will do us no favors.

[GoldieAZ49]

4. McCain has condemned waterboarding publicly, in debates, in the senate

everywhere and every time he speaks. You are right, pushing this just makes him look all the better to moderates on both sides

he is a war hero, suffered torture himself, pushing this makes him look like a strong POTUS in the middle of a war

[DeadElephant_ORG]

6. He cannot win with moderates ALONE - he HAS to have a Republican base

McCain had to speak to the same conservative audience that Cheney defended torture to. Cheney, in effect, DARED the country to arrest him! If McCain speaks up now, the President and Vice President are both guilty of war crimes. And, yes, if he speaks up, it would increase his appeal to moderates - deservedly, by the way. But it would also make it absolutely impossible for the Far Right to support McCain in the general election. Without the Far Right, John McCain is going NOWHERE. The Democrats are fired up, and would swamp him.

This is McCain's checkmate.

[jimshoes]

3. Don Cheneleone is calling in all favors to

give waterboarding the velvet glove treatment. They are screwed if the people care to pursue waterboarding torture as a war crime and they don't want that. They are on record as having done the vile deed several times now.

[TexasObserver]

5. Didn't Mitt Romney look like he had been waterboarded?

He gave that speech like he knew if he didn't, there was a rendition plane waiting to whisk him off to Syria.

[DeadElephant_ORG]

7. Wake up tomorrow in an America in which torture is forever legal.

That would be the cost of doing nothing!