Donald Trump is setting the wheels in motion to bring back torture.
Let's watch this little snippet here from CNN.
President Donald Trump telling ABC News earlier today that torture absolutely works and that the U.S. should, quote:
"Fight fire with fire against terrorists."
I have spoken as recently as 24 hours ago with people of the highest level of intelligence, and I asked them the question:
"Does it work?"
"Does torture work?"
And the answer was: "Yes."
"Absolute." I want to everything to do everything within the bounds of what you're allowed to do legally.
But do I feel it works? Absolutely I feel it works.
You say you want to do it within the bounds of that which is legal, but torture is illegal.
Full Stop. It's illegal. It's illegal under international law. It's illegal under U.S. law.
It's illegal according to the constitution which protects from unreasonable, uh- excuse me-
I was going to say unreasonable search and seizure.
It protects from cruel and unusual punishment.
That is CRUEL and unusual punishment.
It's illegal. It's illegal. It's illegal. It's illegal. It's illegal. It's illegal. PERIOD.
So: "AH! It works! It works! And I support it, BUT: You know, I got to stay within, uh, the-the law, but it works!
I think it works. Absolutely it works.
This is bad, man. So understand, Trump said repeatedly on the campaign trail:
"Yeah, I'm gonna torture. Yeah, I'm gonna bring back waterboarding. I'm gonna bring back worse than waterboarding."
He said I'm going to bring back torture, quote: "Even if it doesn't work."
He said that at one point. So, and by the way, hilarious that this is the guy who also said during the campaign:
"I'm the law and order candidate. Law and order. I believe in law and order."
"Unless it's ultimate law, international law, human rights, in which case I'm gonna violate them like nobody's business."
"And we're allowed to torture because we're the good guys by definition even when we do bad things and brazenly break the law."
So law and order my ass checks.
You're not a law and order candidate. But he said it repeatedly and I went:
"Oh no." See, that was one of the times when I thought:
"Oh, now the media should do wall-to-wall coverage for a week straight about how this is outside the realm of what's acceptable."
"And you're basically eliminated from being President of the United States."
You make that such a big scandal that he has no chance.
I mean I would break out the torture report and say:
"President- not President Elect- Candidate Trump supports torture and this is what we did and we learned this from the recent torture report."
We did anal rape torture. Anal feeding torture. Sleep deprivation.
We did waterboarding. We did mock burials. We did physical violence.
We did hypothermia torture. We throw cold water on them and leave them in a cold cell.
They admit that at least 20% of the people we torture were totally innocent of any wrong doing.
Innocent people died. One of them died from the hypothermia torture I just mentioned.
So this is what we did. These are war crimes.
And in a system where the laws are actually upheld, anybody who participated in this would be brought up on trial and found guilty.
And President Elect Trump wants to drag us back to that barbarism.
Well, again, at the time it would Candidate Trump.
Candidate Trump wants us to do X, Y, and Z.
So that should have been it. That should have been the end of his campaign.
That should have been the end of his campaign when he said: "Take out their families."
Because you just advocated for murdering civilians.
Which is terrorism. "I want to kill civilians on purpose."
"For political reasons."
Okay, well then you're a terrorist. That's the definition terrorism. That should have been the end of his campaign, but no.
So he said that. Now there was a brief flicker of hope because when he was thinking of General Mattis for a postion in his administration,
which he did end up picking General Mattis, but I remember there was a bunch of articles where Trump spoke to the media and said:
"Well Mattis actually made a good case against torture."
Because Mattis told him: "Look, I've been in these rooms. I get more with a case of beer and a conversation then I do with torture."
Like, you'll get more information if you undermine the ideology of the person.
And show them: "Hey, we're not so bad. Here's a beer. Let's kick back and watch some TV or something."
You build trust with them. And then you can actually get information.
He says that's more effective than torture.
So Trump apparently heard that argument and of all the arguments about torture and went: "Oh. That one actually makes the most sense against torture."
So there was there was a flicker of hope that, "oh maybe he kinda changes his mind here."
And I remember covering this story. No, it's not true.
It's not true. Because the way he said it here, "I absolutely believe torture works."
That means his minds hasn't changed. That means he's probably going to be move in that direction.
And on top of all of that, CIA black sites too. There was a bunch of articles about this the other day.
He's moving to reverse the ban on CIA black sites. So in other words:
Let's have other countries do torture for us, do dirty work for us and hold people, no trial, no due process, no habius corpus, extra-judicially, no human rights...
And... it is what it is, we don't care. Guilty enough. So one of our allies catches you and we don't like you? Guilty enough.
So going back to regressing to a worse time. It's not like it was hunky dory under Obama.
Obama was a disaster. 90% of the people he killed with drones didn't do anything.
So it was bad under Obama, this situation, the militarism, the violating of the constitution. It looks like it's going to be even worse under Trump.
And this is the first time, I think ever, we have a President who openly says: "Yeah, torture works. It's probably a good idea."
Because understand that even under the Neo-Cons, the vicious, blood-thirsty, Darth Vader Neo-Cons: Dick Cheney, George Bush...
Even they were intelligent enough to understand, "Hey we can't go out that and flat-out say we support torture."
Because the precedent that sets on the world stage is beyond damaging.
I mean it is crushing because what you're doing is you're broadcasting from the world's sole super power that all bet's are off.
So now things that are clearly against the law, the top, like, five things that this would be, you know:
"This would be a violation of human rights. You can't kill innocent people. You can't- you know, go down the list.
On that list is torture. You can't torture people. But this is the world's sole super power saying all bets are off.
We're on the side of torture. We're okay with torture. And that means you green light it to everybody else.
So all of the enemy nations that you already dislike, you're giving them the moral authority to say:
"What do you mean? What do you mean? They said they torture. So now we're going to torture too. What're you talking about?"
At least Bush and Cheney had the wherewithal to go: "No, no, no. It's not torture. It's, uh, It's, uh, enhanced interrogation or something."
"Mm-hm. That's right. Mm-hm."
People look at that and they go: "Huh? But... maybe there is a distinction."
Now rational people look at that and go: "That's bull shit."
There's some plausible deniability there and enough people will go, "eh."
With Trump, he's like: "No. Fuck that. Take the mask off."
Now some people would say that's more honest. But it's more honest in barbarity and savagery.
It's more honest in being wrong. So you set a precedent that others then can follow.
Where at least with Bush and Cheney it was: "Now you can't torture! And we're not torturing, see? It's enhanced interrogation.
Trumps like, "No we can torture." So then you can't say: "You can't torture. You can't torture."
So it's bad, man. We're regressing. Magna Carta is being unraveled in front of our faces from fucking 1215.
Geneva conventions, international law...
[Sighs] This is bad... It's bad...
I mean, I don't know what else to say about it, but it's bad...