More On the Pro-Torture Newsmax:
Last night, the Rude Pundit pointed the way to conservative "news" site Newsmax (motto: "We're first with the bugfuck insane shit Fox'll be talkin' about next week") and its odious editorial saying that "torture worked" with John McCain when the now-Senator was then a POW being beaten several times a day by the North Vietnamese. Say the gleeful Newsmaxers, "And - as McCain has publicly admitted at least twice - the torture worked!" (And, really, the stupid fuckers use the exclamation point, like they came torrents at the climax of an editorial circle jerk when they figured out this "revelation" of McCain's alleged hypocrisy for calling for an end to U.S. torture policies.)

Problem is, of course, here's what worked: his captors got McCain to sign a statement that, as McCain recalls, "was in their language, and spoke about black crimes, and other generalities." McCain's original statement was rewritten by his "stupid" captors, and even that, he says, "was unacceptable to them." So, like, not only did McCain not reveal anything that, say, helped the North Vietnamese, but it was worthless to the very people torturing him. How, again, does this prove "the torture worked"?

Ahh, there is one way it might have worked: It'd be interesting to find out how the North Vietnamese used McCain's signed statement, because perhaps all that torture, while not giving them anything militarily strategic, did give them a piece of useful propaganda. And, at the end of the day, ain't that all the Bush administration has gotten from its victims?

Here's an e-mail the Rude Pundit received today: "During the Vietnam War, myself and thousands of other servicemen were put through Survival Evasion Resistance & Escape training (SERE). One element of this was a 24 hour stay in a mock POW camp, where we were subjected to coercive techniques in order to give us a taste of the kind of treatment we could expect at the hands of godless communists if we were captured. This included being hooded, subjected to physical assault, shut up in tiny boxes, hyperthermia and, of course, the waterboard.

"You can hold out on the waterboard...for about as long as your breath holds out. Then, cued by the lack of oxygen, the body's autonomic nervous system goes into panic. This is quite different from mind panic, which can be consciously controlled with practice. Body panic is beyond the control of your mind. What the mind is doing is frantically spinning, trying to think of ANYTHING that could be said to make it stop....just for a moment, for a full breath.

"Porter Goss might not 'know' if waterboarding is torture, but thousands of veterans can personally testify that it is exactly that."

So, again, it needs to be said: If you believe that the U.S. has the right to do what it does (whether you wanna call it "torture" or not) to its captives, then you, and Newsmax, believe that Iraqi insurgents, legitimized by the Arab League memorandum, can deprive any captured American soldiers of sleep, that they can be hooded and stripped nude, have cold water thrown on them as they kneel on concrete, beat them, use doctors to discover their exploitable weaknesses, and place their heads under water until they're gagging. If we can do it, then they can do it, no? If you support the Bush adminstration's policies, you support the torture of American soldiers, purely and simply.

The Newsmax "writers" are starved, crazed vipers in a pit that's had a frothing mad warthog tossed in it. They can't slither fast enough to kill it and dine on its salty blood.

Quick Note On Bush's Strategy and Speech:
Apparently, all that's needed for "Victory in Iraq" is a shiny cover on the same old shit.