waterboarding waterboarding is torture. everyone knows that. so obama releases the details on just how evil the bush administration was. or at least that's the standard spin. i'm thinking, wait a minute. some interrogation techniques in general and torture in specific are banned for two reasons. one, they're sadistic. two, they generate a lot of false positives. for example. admit your friends are witches or we'll throw you on a fire and burn you alive to maximize your suffering. what do you do? you rat out your friends. even if they aren't witches. cause it's what the inquisitors want. and you definitely don't want to be bbq. anywho, the allegation is the bush administration wanted to establish a link between saddam and bin laden. so they used harsh interrogation techniques. the interesting part is, no evidence of any such link was found. hrm. there's a few possibilities here. one, the interrogators suck as torturers. two, the interrogators somehow ethically used the torture technique. or three, waterboarding isn't torture. at least, not as i've defined it above. and not when used sparingly. using it 183 times on a single individual strikes off deep into sadism land. hell, 18 times beggars the imagination. a rational person would have to conclude either they're resistant to this form of harsh interrogation or they just plain don't have the information you're looking for. sheehs. heh. in case you've missed the astounding significance of this post, let me explicitly spell it out for you. obama's policy of openness has eroded some of my hate of the bush adminstration. secrecy in government bad.  ¶ 8:00 AM