Ted Kennedy: Expert on Drowning

RUSH: ‘Protesters staged a waterboarding yesterday outside the Justice Department, calling for a Senate committee to reject attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey because of his reluctance to define the tactic as torture. The demonstration came shortly before Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said he would oppose Mukasey.’ It doesn’t matter because Schumer is going to support him. So is Dianne Feinstein. So he’s assured of passage here, at least getting out of committee. Schumer even wrote a piece in the New York Times today, said (summarized), ‘Look, we Democrats are going to handle this another way. We’re going to come up with a federal law on waterboarding, and then it won’t make any difference what the attorney general says.’ Here is Senator Kennedy, after the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance Mukasey to the floor. Here is Ted Kennedy — unbelievably, graphically — describing death by drowning.

KENNEDY: My concerns began with Judge Mukasey’s answers to our questions about waterboarding. Waterboarding is a barbaric practice in which water is poured down the mouth and nose of a detainee, to simulate drowning. It’s an ancient technique of tyrants. The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in, and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to an almost instant plea to bring the treatment to a halt. If it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia. When done right, it is controlled death.

RUSH: It’s like saying every airplane landing is a ‘controlled crash.’ Senator Kennedy has become the expert now on death by drowning. Is this not rich? Senator Kennedy describing waterboarding! I think I have been told by numerous military experts that many of our military’s trainees, military people, undergo waterboarding training in case it happens to them. It’s described intricately by Vince Flynn in a couple of his novels. It works every time it’s tried. Ask Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. He was waterboarded into giving up all of the details, every last one of them, about the 9/11 event that he masterminded.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Michael in Oakland, Maryland, it’s great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Dittos, Rush.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I was going to talk to you about waterboarding.

RUSH: Oh, yeah. Senator Kennedy gave us a description of that recently. Was he accurate? Was he right about it?

CALLER: Well, he should be after Chappaquiddick.

RUSH: I thought, you know, here’s a guy that, if anybody should know about drowning, it would be Senator Kennedy.

CALLER: Well, I did 26 years in the military.

RUSH: What branch?

CALLER: Army and Marine Corps.

RUSH: Both?

CALLER: I was in the Marine Corps in Vietnam, and I went back to school after I got out and then joined the Army.

RUSH: Now, wait a minute. That doesn’t sound good. You can’t say it that way.

CALLER: What I did is I went in the Marine Corps. I got out. I wanted to get a higher education —

RUSH: Yeah, see, you left the Marine Corps, then you went to school, then you joined the Army. (laughing)

CALLER: Right, and I ended up in Special Forces and was going to go right back to Vietnam, then they had the de-escalation and I went to Alaska instead.

RUSH: We’re closing the loop on a number of people today.

CALLER: Yeah. But I wanted to tell you, the reason why you aren’t hearing more about this from authoritarian people is that when you get out of the military — and let’s say in my case I was a document custodian for top secret — you have to do a disclosure of ten years where you’re subject to, if you release any of that information, being prosecuted. That’s one reason why military people don’t tell you what they want because they jeopardize their retirement and everything else.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: Okay. It’s done, though, and what’s happening is not necessarily the military. The military might follow people, in other words, that they’re with government people like Abu Ghraib —

RUSH: Michael? Michael? I hate to interrupt you here, but I’ve only got a minute here and I thought you were going to talk about waterboarding.

CALLER: I will.

RUSH: Okay.

CALLER: It is done, and I did go to a guerrilla warfare school, and while you’re in that — if you’re in a leadership characteristic state — they tell you about it. They show you how it’s done. If you want to volunteer, you can volunteer, but you know and you can opt out any time.

RUSH: So they demonstrate it to you. Is it part of the training or is it just a demo?

CALLER: It’s a demo. You don’t have to do it. You can be a volunteer to be a demo.

RUSH: Okay.

CALLER: But not everybody has to go through it.

RUSH: But they show you how to do it?

CALLER: They show certain people that are in leadership positions that are going on classified or specialized assignments.

RUSH: You know, I think we’re missing the whole point of all this anyway. We get focused on the details of waterboarding. Who the hell are we talking about here? We’re talking about the type of lowlifes that behead people and plot things like 9/11, and not just in this country, but around the world. They are still doing it. It’s time we stopped beating ourselves up. We are good people, folks. We are a fine nation. It’s time we stopped beating ourselves up over the steps we take to protect ourselves.