All Over Once Again Redundantly, Except . . . 0
Dick Polman recounts the history of American waterboarding, which dates back to the Moro uprising in the Phillipines over 100 years ago (it was called the “water cure” back then when I was a young ‘un).
Once again, there was a Republican president.
This one, though, wasn’t having any of it (emphasis added):
But Theodore Roosevelt, the new president, didn’t buy those arguments. He didn’t try to manufacture any legal justifications. He didn’t bless the errant behavior by claiming that it was all conducted at the behest of his all-powerful executive authority. Instead, he kicked butt in a cable sent to the U.S. military authorities in the Philippines. The text can be found on page 100 of “Theodore Rex,” the second volume of the TR biography written by Edmund Morris. The key passage:
The president desires to know in the fullest and most circumstantial manner all the facts…for the very reason that the president intends to back up the Army in the heartiest fashion in every lawful and legitimate method of doing its work; he also intends to see that the most vigorous care is exercised to detect and prevent any cruelty or brutality and that men who are guilty thereof are punished. Great as the provocation has been in dealing with foes who habitually resort to treachery, murder and torture against our men, nothing can justify or will be held to justify the use of torture or inhuman conduct of any kind on the part of the American military.
