Bush, Hypocrisy, and Torture

by Tex Norman⁽⁷⁸⁾

I suggest that hypocrisy is common to us all, at least from time to time. Hypocrisy can creep in when we follow trends, instead of our own moral center.

The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity. ~Andre Gide

I suggest that George Bush is a hypocrite, at least in the area of waterboarding. It turns out that in 1983 a Texas Sheriff, James Parker, and three of his deputies were arrested for torturing prisoners to gain confessions. What sort of torture were they charged with carrying out? It went like this: they handcuff prisoners to chairs, placed towels over their faces, and to pour water on the cloth causing the prisoners to struggle for air. This controlled suffocation, this slow motion drowning was used to get prisoners to confess to crimes they were suspected of committing. It sounds a lot like waterboarding.

How did the sheriff and his deputies get caught? Well, they had the bad luck of arresting an undercover FBI agent, and they subjected this FBI agent to this water torture as well as some other illegal enhanced interrogation techniques.

When this seated waterboarding came to light the sheriff was arrested. During the trial, in exchange for reduced sentences, the deputies testified against the sheriff. The deputies stated that they would park on U.S. Hwy 59 and watch for drivers who appeared to be long-haired hippies, or people who had Huston radio station K-101 bumper stickers on their cars. K-101 was considered a druggie hippie radio station at the time.

Later the ACLU filed a law suite against San Jacinto County on behalf of three Kentucky residents and a Baytown man who were also subjected to waterboarding. The county was ordered to pay each of these plaintiffs $40,000 per year until each person named had received $1,500,000. This long-running corruption scheme was the subject of a book and movie, Terror on I-59.

The most interesting part of this is that Sheriff Parker had to serve all 10 years of his sentence, and the Governor of Texas did nothing to pardon, commute, set aside, or reduce Sheriff Parkers sentence. I say this is interesting because the Governor stated that he felt that Sheriff Parker was guilty of a crime, and he had no inclination to cut the guy the slightest bit of slack. And who was that Governor who wanted this torturing Sheriff to serve every single day of his sentence? It was Governor George W. Bush.

Not only is it hypocritical for Bush to punish someone for waterboarding, and then claim that waterboarding is legal, moral, and NOT torture, but it is equally hypocritical if the rest of us allow the torture offically condoned by agents of the United States to go unpunished now.

Article submitted Saturday, April 25, 2009 & read 1512 times.

Tex Norman is a social worker, currently working at the Oklahoma DHS Abuse and Neglect hotline. He interviews people reporting abuse and/or neglect of children and vulnerable adults and writes a narrative. The narratives (and demographics) are used to initiate investigations of the allegations. He says it is like writing 8 to 10 stories a day. In August 2012, he will have been married to Kathie for 40 years. He has a son Ryan who earned a PhD from Princeton and he is now a scientist doing research in molecular biology. Tex spends his free time working as an artist and writer. He has one art site, and a blog that might be of interest: http://tex-norman.artistwebsites.com/ and http://collagepoetrybytex.blogspot.com/

Please log in to leave your comments.
No comments yet.

0-0-1-0-0-ADSO

Most Recent