The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan (September 29, 2006)

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29 Sep 2006 07:14 pm

Conservatives For Torture

David Horowitz's online magazine publishes the following:

Waterboardingis fleeting in duration with the actual discomfort lasting seldom more than a couple of minutes. And since a man can be safely deprived of oxygen for at least twice as long, there is almost no risk of long-term harm. The possibility of injury is further reduced by the fact that the procedure calls for no direct physical contact between the subject and his interrogators. Not even as much as pushing or chest slapping is required at any time, making waterboarding one of the safest and least confrontational among interrogation methods. Involving the lowest risk of long-term harm and the least amount of cumulative discomfort, it is also the most humane.

The Khmer Rouge as humane interrogators. This is the abyss in which conservatism now finds itself. One reason I became a conservative was because as a teenager in the 1970s, conservatives seemed the only people to grasp the true evil of the Sovet Union. At the core of its evil was its deployment of torture to break free people's souls and to obliterate their liberty by the brute force of the state. Now conservatives are the ones justifying torture - by the United States. They have become what they once fought. Unchecked power does that to you.

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