WATERBOARDING, THE WRONGFULNESS OF IT?

Water-boarding has occupied our national discourse for quite some time now, that not a day passes without varying groups of people pivoting one way or the other on whether it is torture or not? While some called the spade for what it is, torture; others are prevaricating and conflicted, calling it a wonderful, picnic experience?

Icheoku says, why is the issue of water-boarding being torture or not even making such great headlines? It is because America said they do not torture people; and what a paradox, it would be, if eventually water-boarding constituted torture? What a diminishment of what America stands for, in event water-boarding qualified as torture; thereby making her contemptible in the eyes of the world, which would then regard her as a lying SOB! Petty dictators also, who use such instrument of terror to subjugate and maintain their iron-clad fist-hold over their subjugated subjects, will henceforth be guffawing and beating their chest in victory that they have always been right; that torture works and America now agrees with them? Further, America would have lost its moral authorities to lean on other countries of the world to do better and improve on their human-rights reforms.

Late Saddam Hussein was the most recent example of a dictator who torture sustained in office for over three decades? If America took him out and it was later found out that it too, practices the same torture for which Saddam Hussein was tried, condemned and hung, then that will be a moral equivocation of the highest order? A paradigm of hypocrisy it will amount to, may be? This is what Dick Cheney and his family and their very few remaining cronies/aligns are desperately trying, so very hard, to avoid; hence they are going to the ends of the earth, inventing and manufacturing myriad of fictitious, mirage of their own facts to distort what was? They are fully aware of the consequences of their illegality, hence are fighting a full-throttle battle to divert attention of the probing searchlights? If it is established that water-boarding is torture, then the next step is to find out who authorised it; this is where Dick Cheney and cohorts would be implicated, hence the struggle to mislead the public on what is water-boarding? Any such admission or conclusion that water-boarding is torture or that Dick Cheney instigated or authorised it, will make America be seen in the moulds of Khmer Rouge, Pol Potts and Saddam Husseins of this world which the American public will fight by pushing that the authorising principals be prosecuted and punished? This is the crux of all the prevarications on the definition and implication of water-boarding. So Icheoku now asks, did radio-jock Erich "Mancow" Muller, by going under the water, supplied the crucial evidence needed to prosecute and punish the perpetrators of torturous water-boarding? Did his brave act supply the elusive clarity or missing-link or answer to the question, did America torture people by water-boarding?

Were America a murderous country run by a petty-dictator, then any form of torture including water-boarding will be ok? But the constitution says no, and here is the gravamen of this discussion. Our standards dictates that we can do better because we are better! The argument is not necessarily the efficacy of a cruel and unusual cohesive method of leading someone to believe that he is under an immediate risk of being drowned? No such works, otherwise ask Saddam Hussein how he was able to put a lid under the near intractable Iraq for over three decades? Putting the fear of God of an irreparable bodily harm or even death in someone always works; otherwise there will be no surviving dictator any where in the world? So the issue here is that we did not and should not descend so low as to compete in the same mud-pit with all those dictators, world-over?

Icheoku says, it would have been a cruel irony and a misnomer of a double-speak, for anyone to say that America does not torture people when facts on the ground would otherwise suggests differently; with an evident water-boarding? With due respect to the audacity of radio shock-jock, Erich Mancow Miller, following through with his promised experimentation to disprove that water-boarding is torture; Icheoku commends his six seconds bravery! Unlike the boastful Sean Hannity who chickened out even before the faucet could be turned on, Mancow went under the knife and was man enough to later admit that his previous dispositions were unfounded, exaggerated and buffoonery. Just six seconds under running water, Mancow threw in the towel, agreeing before national audience, that water-boarding is not only torture but torture in the absolute term! Simply put, Mancow decreed that water-boarding is drowning! Such an admission, coming from a sworn enemy of President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party; and a bible clutching white-boy loudmouth has diminished Dick Cheney in the eyes of the American public. His acknowledgement has now laid to waste the rants of recent weeks by Dick Cheney and daughters, that water boarding is not torture? They tried as hard as they may but in vain, to defend an indefensible and immoral conduct of torture by water-boarding, which was possibly instigated and approved by the Dick Cheney's angle of the Bush administration?

Ordinarily, Icheoku would this matter rested with Mancow's personal televised experience; but that the President Barack Obama and his Democratic party administration should be firm and resolute with carrying through with the closing of Guantanamo prison as scheduled. They should probably investigate the extent of culpability of officials of the last administration in soiling the image of America, by approving and ordering torture of water-boarding? Only a conclusive investigation into this pot of mess, will satisfy both the rule of law, the American people and other reasonable peoples of this world. Just like the outing of the CIA operative, Valerie Plaine was investigated and punished, so should all other atrocities of the Bush/Cheney administration be conclusively laid to rest too, including the lingering water-boarding.

Now that Mancow has survived being water-boarded for six seconds, Icheoku calls on the remaining loudmouths deniers of water-boarding being torture, to now submit themselves to the pleasant experience of a picnic; being placed under a streaming water fall? Starting with Sean Hannity of Fox Network, who is the most eligible candidate for water-boarding, having voluntarily offered himself to be water-boarded to disprove that it is torture? Then to be followed by the former vice president Dick Cheney for possibly instigating the method and defending it, provided his difilbrator-implants inside his heart will accommodate such a wonderful pleasurable experience? Then next in the list should be mega-loudmouth, Rush Limbaugh whose show for the past two years running has been solely fixated on President Barack Obama; while at the same time calling on MSNBC to stop making him the object of their television productions? Once these three human-beings have been placed under the faucet, in accordance with their gospel of water-boarding not being torture, Icheoku will approve and order that every human being including women, children and adult be summarily subjected to this heavenly bliss? However, should they decline and turn tails, then let the world know that vice president Dick Cheney instigated one of the worst forms of man's inhuman treatment of another man and should be held accountable. Let the world also know that Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh are simple blow-hots, who have no guts to go under the torrent!Icheoku therefore declare both of them, sissy girlie-men! Torture is an abhorred means of interrogation of anyone under United States custody; and anyone guilty of approving it is roundly condemned and should be punished.

Water boarding as it is currently described involves strapping a person to an inclined board, with his feet raised and his head lowered. The interrogators bind the person's arms and legs so he can't move at all, and they cover his face. In some descriptions, the person is gagged, and some sort of cloth covers his nose and mouth; in others, his face is wrapped in cellophane. The interrogator then repeatedly pours water onto the person's face. Depending on the exact setup, the water may or may not actually get into the person's mouth and nose; but the physical experience of being underneath a wave of water seems to be secondary to the psychological experience. The person's mind believes he is drowning, and his gag reflex kicks in as if he were choking on all that water falling on his face.

In conclusion therefore, Icheoku says, unlike in the killing of another person which could sometimes be excused by justification, torture by water-boarding does not have any known exceptions or qualifiers? It is either we do or we do not torture people, period! So it is illogical to argue that torture by water-boarding yielded some results, since its efficacy was never in doubt in the first place? What America has been harping on and which is persistently being echoed by President Barack Obama is that America does not torture people, period! Therefore it does not matter whether or not some actionable intelligence was obtained by subjecting some human -beings under a torrent of running water? Except and until valid exceptions are made and recognised, it is the law that America does not torture people; and since water-boarding is torture, we should not have water-boarded anybody in the first place. Icheoku says Dick Cheney and his kitchen apologists are merely grand-standing with their saying that water-boarding is not torture. This can be riped apart by President Barack Obama agreeing to an independent counsel-type investigation, to unravel what actually went down during that infamous Bush-Cheney regime. This will surely put the air out of their tires, stop them cold in their tracks as well as shut them up as they will then be spending their energy putting up their defence, instead of their pitiful faces plastering our televisions, denying the obvious? Do they think that we all dummies or what? Icheoku strongly believes that their present hoofing and puffing is merely a subterfuge to starve off any possible serious inquiry into the infamous water-boarding torture and who authorized it?