Think Progress Should Really Stop Torture Cheerleading

The Center for American Progress is among my all time favorite organisations, and their blog Think progress is pretty much daily required reading for these days for me - or anyone following progressive politics.

But they seriously need to lay off the torture cheerleading.

"Wait," you say, "Think Progres has consistently opposed torture and they are even leading the charge for impeachment of Stephen Bybee, author of memos approving the torture programs."

Sure. And well done to them for that. But frankly, they are surrendering the moral high ground in their current campaign to make sure right wing cable news pundit Sean Hannity gets waterboarded.

Yes, there's an enormous difference between Hannity volunteering to get waterboarded as a publicity stunt and detainees being waterboarded against their will. But it's still unseemly to cheer on the prospect of someone enduring horrific suffering as if it's a parlour game (it's horrific on Hannity's part too, but like with terrorists I don't expect anything batter from him - it's my own side I'm hoping will behave better).

Also, this childish egging on from Think Progress seems to concede Hannity's main point -suggesting that it would matter in the slightest if Hannity submitted himself for the forced drowning procedure. It wouldn't. Waterboarding is still torture, even if some people do it voluntarily just as rape is still rape even if folks sometimes have sex voluntarily.

Why big this up, creating the unseemly suggestion that liberals would watch right wing jerks undergo torturous techniques with some kind of pleasure. Yuck. Please, grow up guys.