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Posts Tagged ‘Christiane Amanpour’
January 21st, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Water Boarding vs. Water Torture

It’s not often that a member of the MSM like CNN’s Christiane Amanpour gets told on her own show that she lied to her viewers.  During an appearance by former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen, Amanpour was confronted with remarks she made comparing water torture techniques used by the Khmer Rouge to the CIA’s use of water boarding.  Thiessen – like the Bush Administration, CIA, and legal scholars like John Yoo – distinguished the two on the following criteria.

First, of all the people submitted to water torture (submerged into a bucket of water while handcuffed to the sides) in S-21 by the Khmer Rouge, only seven people survived, while 14,000 died.  No one died as a result of CIA water boarding (simulated drowning).  Second, the point of water torture is to eventually kill the victim.  By contrast, the point of water boarding is to create a psychological state so panic-ridden that people will think they are about to die.  But at no time are subjects actually at risk of death.  That doesn’t mean it’s a comfortable experience.  It does, however, mean that equating tactics designed to kill with those intended to break a person’s will is a dangerously misleading formula.

Along with John Yoo’s gentle smackdown of Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, the Thiessen interview is another indication that the MSM can’t be bothered to get informed about the distinctions that save lives and reputations.

H/T: Human Events