Cliff May, after writing a blog post in support of waterboarding suspected terrorists on the grounds that their religion won't allow them to cooperate, tries to argue that he's not pro-torture:
Every opponent I've debated on has taken this tactic — labeling me as “pro-torture,” refusing to grapple with definitions, and refusing to consider whether there may be methods of interrogation that are unpleasant but fall short of torture.
This is especially important because we now know that Islamists believe their religion forbids them to cooperate with infidels — until they have reached the limit of their ability to endure the hardships the infidel is inflicting on them.* In other words: Imagine an al-Qaeda member who would like to give his interrogators information, who does not want continue fighting, who would prefer not to see more innocent people slaughtered. He would need his interrogators to press him hard so he can feel that he has met his religious obligations — only then could he cooperate.
Once again, the individual whom May draws his disgusting rationalization from, Abu Zubayda, gave up all of the useful information he had before he was tortured. Second, waterboarding has always been torture, it was torture when the Spanish used it during the Inquisition, it was torture when the Khmer Rouge used it, and it was torture when Yukio Asano used it. You can take all the pains you want to "emphasize" you oppose torture but if you're doing it while making argument for the use of tactics that have for centuries been identified as torture, you support torture. May can rationalize all he wants, but he is making an argument here that is both (A) objectively pro-torture and (B) just plain bigoted. As the experience with Zubayda shows, there's nothing mystical about Muslim resistance to traditional interrogation that justifies torturing them.
Meanwhile, May lacking a sense of irony, labels his position "pro-facts."
-- A. Serwer
