Bush Vetos Torture Bill

President Bush said Saturday he vetoed legislation that would ban the CIA from using harsh interrogation methods such as waterboarding to break suspected terrorists because it would end practices that have prevented attacks.

Let's just get this straight right out of the gate: Waterboarding is torture. It is not a "harsh interrogation practice", it is torture.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Bush often warns against ignoring the advice of U.S. commanders on the ground in Iraq. Yet the president has rejected the Army Field Manual, which recognizes that harsh interrogation tactics elicit unreliable information, said Reid, D-Nev.

So we're going to torture people in order to obtain information that may or may not be reliable, yet Bush still wants to make statements like this:

"This is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe," the president said.

Sorry, sir, but I don't believe that demolishing our moral authority in the world is going to do much to keep Americans safe. It certainly wouldn't keep any captured troops of ours safe when we can't denounce any torture practices that those who have captured them might use to obtain information due to our own use of such tactics. If we authorize the use of torture tactics in order to obtain information, how do we have the moral authority to make sure other countries do the same? And if we don't have that authority, how can we make sure that our troops won't be tortured as well? In that sense, I don't see how we can claim that we're keeping Americans safe, unless we don't count our troops as Americans that need protection, which wouldn't surprise me.

But the administration has refused to rule definitively on whether it is torture. Bush has said many times that his administration does not torture.

The White House says waterboarding remains among the interrogation methods potentially available to the CIA.

"Because the danger remains, we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists," Bush said.

So apparently Bush won't torture you unless he feels like he needs to. Awesome. I feel so much better now. Here's the link to the full article.

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Go there and do it.

Yay FreeRice.com!

On Compromise. . .

So many times in a pro-choicer's life, they will be told by pro-lifers that they need to compromise. While the first question that comes up, of course, is "WTF do you think The Prevention Act is?", there's something else that always comes to mind for me as well.

When pro-lifers say "compromise", what they really mean is "give in". There's really no way for pro-choicers to compromise with pro-lifers unless pro-lifers finally buy a clue and realize that prevention is the only way to preserve fetal life and women's rights, and thus is the only compromise that's viable (well, to any pro-lifers who aren't only interested in punishing women for unauthorized sex, how few there are). However, prevention is a pro-choice goal, so that would just mean that compromising would mean that pro-lifers would become pro-choice.

So when pro-lifers say compromise, always know that, like many other things, that's not really what they mean.

I was recently told that I needed to compromise by a quasi-choicer. I was told that I only care about the women, and that I need to consider the fetus.

I don't think I understand this mentality. I consider the fetus. I consider it medical waste if the woman doesn't want it inside her, because what's inside her is hers. Her uterus is hers no matter what's residing in it. If this is true, then the only thing that I'm being asked to compromise is the human rights of women.

That's a compromise that I'm unwilling to make. I'm not sorry for that, either.

Oh, speaking of compromise and double-binds, here's a great post by Amanda over at Pandagon about the ERA and how conservatives may react to it.

It's spring break and I'm being a lazy blogger. Cut me some slack.