Excerpt:
On Jan. 31st, Joshua Tabor, an Army Sergeant and Iraq war veteran, was arrested in Yelm, WA after allegedly water boarding his 4-year-old daughter for failing to properly recite the alphabet.
The police apparently had to coax the terrified girl out of the bathroom. She was covered with bruises. “It was hot! The water was hot!” the girl told police, according to the incident report. “I told him I would say my letters then! My heart shirt got wet.”
Tabor explained to police that after her dunk in the water, “She said her letters after that.”
That “ends-justifies-the-means” argument for using torture has been heard before. In an obvious reference to water boarding Al Qaida suspects, former Vice President Dick Cheney was asked in October 2006 whether “a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?” Cheney responded like Cheney: “Well, it’s a no-brainer for me.” His daughter, Liz Cheney, defended that practice saying “this was an important program, it saved American lives.”
If the Bush administration had not authorized water boarding, would Tabor have come up with that one on his own? One may think, “Well, it’s not fair to blame the torture of a 4-year-old girl on the former vice president. Cheney was trying to save lives.” The truth may be that the legacy of torture goes far beyond that. It may be the kind of news we will come to expect if, as a society, the United States determines that torture is an acceptable method of securing information and inducing obedience.
At the center of today’s propaganda promoting the torture state are former Vice President Dick Cheney, his family and many of his friends, working through an organization called Keeping America Safe that is run by his daughter Liz Cheney.
Read more here: http://www.examiner.com/x-38220-Orlando-Independent-Examiner~y2010m2d10-Waterboarding-4yearolds-The-Cheney-familys-legacy-of-torture