Monday, April 20, 2009

Christopher Buckey On Torture At (Water)Boarding School



Christopher Buckley, author of "Losing Mum and Pup," is, like his late father William Buckley, a bit of a libertarian. Though he voted for Obama in 2008 -- angering Conservatives -- Buckley is "right"ing himself, using TheDailyBeast to assert his strong-on-defense bona fides regarding the torture debate. From TheDailyBeast:

"It is, yes, good that we're not torturing anymore, but let's not get sanctimonious about how awful it was watching 3,000 Americans die at the hands of fanatics who would happily detonate a nuclear bomb.

"I’m glad that President Obama is not going to prosecute the CIA interrogators for torture. As national intelligence director Dennis Blair wisely commented in a written statement, “Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing. But we will absolutely defend those who relied on these memos.” The memos, that is, issued by the Justice Department in the days following 9/11, authorizing harsh interrogation techniques.

"These techniques, we learn, included 'Sleep deprivation,' 'Nudity,' 'Dietary Manipulation,' 'Abdominal Slap,' 'Attention Grasp,' 'Waterboarding,' 'Water Dousing,' 'Confinement With Insects,' and 'Walling.' This last one is when the interrogator 'quickly and firmly pushes the individual into the wall … The head and neck are supported with a rolled hood or towel … to help prevent whiplash.'

"I think I remember that one, from boarding school—only the senior boys left out the rolled hoods and towels."


Buckley, something of an Eastern Establishment "tough guy" -- or what passes for one among Yale alums -- once told Elle (?!) of a particularly traumatic incident at the exclusive, 550 acre Portsmouth Abbey School:

"At the senior prom for my Catholic boarding school, I was feeling manly, so I shaved, even though I didn’t need to. Being inexperienced, I managed to slice a quarter-inch gash into my lower chin a half hour before I picked up my date. This was, you know, a major wound, but there was no time to go to the emergency room and have it stitched up. I spent my senior prom dripping blood on my date."


Nobody knows the trouble he's seen ... Buckley was also a speechwriter for that prototypically tough guy American President George Herbert Walker Bush.

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