OBama Wins Wisconsin!

Former Navy airman describes ‘water torture.’

Today in the Washington Post, Richard E. Mezo, who served in the Navy for six years, describes his experience being waterboarded:

Last week, much to my dismay, government officials testified before Congress that the United States has used the interrogation technique known as waterboarding and would like to hold out the option of using it in the future. As someone who has experienced waterboarding, albeit in a controlled setting, I know that the act is indeed torture. I was waterboarded during my training to become a Navy flight crew member. […]

Waterboarding has, unfortunately, become a household word. Back then, we didn’t call it waterboarding — we called it “water torture.” We recognized it as something the United States would never do, whatever the provocation. … Waterboarding is torture, and torture is clearly a crime against humanity.

Former Justice Department official Daniel Levin, who was voluntarily waterboarded in 2004, came to similar conclusions about the procedure. 

OBAMA WINS IOWA!

Huckabee: ‘If Anything,’ We Treat Inmates At Guantanamo Bay ‘Too Nice’

During a campaign stop in Iowa today, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee commented on the conditions at the military detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, saying that “the inmates there were getting a whole lot better treatment” than “prisoners in Arkansas.” “I hope our guys don’t see this,” added Huckabee. “They’ll all want to be transferred to Guanatanmo.”“If anything, it’s too nice,” said Huckabee:

“The inmates there were getting a whole lot better treatment than my prisoners in Arkansas. In fact, we left saying, ‘I hope our guys don’t see this. They’ll all want to be transferred to Guanatanmo.’ If anything, it’s too nice.”

Huckabee has said Guantanamo is more a “symbolic issue” than anything else since the detainees are treated better than prisoners in the US.

Huckabee, who recently came out in favor of closing Guantanamo, has made similar comparisons in the past.

In June, Huckabee said on CNN’s Late Edition that “most of our prisoners would love to be in a facility more like Guantanamo.” At the time, he said we couldn’t close the facility because hypothetically, “if we let somebody out” they could “come and fly an airliner into one of our skyscrapers.”

Huckabee may have seen “nice” conditions when he visited Guantanamo. But FBI agents who worked at the facility have reported that detainees were subjected to harsh conditions, including “the use of growling dogs” to “intimidate detainees,” at least as recently as 2004:

Detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were shackled to the floor in fetal positions for more than 24 hours at a time, left without food and water, and allowed to defecate on themselves, an FBI agent who said he witnessed such abuse reported in a memo to supervisors.

A recently released operations manual for the prison, dated March 28, 2003, “indicates that some prisoners were hidden from Red Cross representatives.” Presumably, such “no-access” detainees would have been hidden from visitors like Huckabee as well.

Five worst mistakes by presidential candidates

Tom Bevan, executive editor of the political website RealClearPolitics, lists today what he believes have been the five worst mistakes made by the presidential candidates this year.(He thinks, for example, Hillary Clinton should have skipped the Iowa caucuses altogether, and that Mitt Romney’s speech tomorrow about his Mormon faith should have been made months ago – and certainly not now.)

Romney’s wife Ann talked about the speech here this morning.

I would add to that list Mike Huckabee’s raised hand during a debate in May when the Republican candidates were asked if they believed in creationism. If he lands on a presidential ticket (either as the nominee or as Vice-President) it will cause him big problems nationally.

And Fred Thompson’s decision to campaign with all the energy and zest of a sloth bear (for a man already perceived as lazy and unambitious) has been almost perverse.

But one group of people who have clearly decided to stop making mistakes are some of America’s political pundits. The race has become so volatile and unpredictable that there has been a collective decision to predict…nothing.

Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House Speaker, says today the Republican and Democrats races are “amazingly wide open”. The Republican battle is “in turmoil”.

Mort Kondracke, executive editor of ther Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, writes: “I used to say that if you put a gun to my head and demanded to know who’d be the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, my answer would be: “Shoot.” Now, I’m almost ready to say the same about the Democratic nominee and the next president, too.”

Dan Bartlett, meanwhile, President Bush’s former White House counsellor, says when asked who will win the Republican nomination: “I don’t know.” He also does not think Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic nomination, but that if she does, she will turn the Republican vote out.

Chris Shays CT-04 Should resign…

 and go to work for Blackwater. I posted this video on my other site water-boarding and it makes me ill to watch it.