The Dog knows that we, as a nation, have a world of problems, the auto industry in collapse, a war that we are on the verge of losing in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, the perfidy of the midnight regulations that the criminal Bush administration is pushing. With all of this plus a holiday season happening around us it is easy to miss something so earth shacking as Vice President Cheney’s admission of complicity in War Crimes. There is outrage fatigue and very natural desire to want to turn the page with a new administration. Sadly this would be one of the worst things that we could do as a people.

Below is a description of waterboarding that the Dog wrote back in July. For those that have been in torture situations please be warned that it is graphic and could possibly be triggering. For the rest of us, please read the whole thing through, even though it is horrible. This is what the Executive Branch ordered in our name, this is what the VP is saying is no big deal.

Your feet are shackled, and so are your wrists. When you were lead into the room you saw that it did not have the usual table, this room had a board, and a drain in the floor. You are blindfolded by the guards and roughly forced to lie on the wet wooden board. Even though you are shackled they tie you down to the board with three ropes, one across your chest, one across your waist and one across your legs. You are now completely unable to move, your head is below the level of your feet making the blood rush to your head.

You can hear them moving around and hear a hose running, filling a bucket of water. Your heart begins to race as your mouth is forced open and a wet rag is stuffed inside. There is enough clothe that it fills your mouth, and prevents your teeth from meeting, even at the back of your mouth. You feel a person sitting next you on the board, and they put their hands on your stomach, just above your diaphragm and push down, keeping you from taking a deep breath through your nose. You sense someone else standing above your head, and then the water starts to pour over your face. Not a little, but a torrent of water, it is running up your nose, and you can not breath! Your gag reflex kicks in, but the rag in your mouth does not let you gag.

Your body begins to convulse, convinced in the most primitive of reflexes to try to do anything to get more air! You thrash but the ropes and shackles have you completely immobilized. You feel the water hitting your face, as the person on the bench presses down on your diaphragm, forcing what little air you have out, not in. You are now sure that you are going to die, that you are going to drown, not an abstract, but for real, and right now. Your chest burns with the need for more air, your eyes tear under the blindfold as you struggle to get one more breath.

You are no longer a rational human, you are now just a survival machine, ready to beg anyone, do anything to make the pain stop and get just one more breath. The water stops falling on you. You suck air in through your nose and try to suck it in through you mouth. Both bring more water along with the small amount of air you can get. You hear the hose running again and know that this is not over, it is just starting. Your heart is going like a trip hammer, and you are in a state of terror, like nothing you have ever experienced or thought of. You know if and when they ask you something, you will do or say anything, anything to prevent them from doing it again. Then the hands push on your stomach, and the water starts falling again.

You struggle, trying to hold your breath, but the gag reflex kicks in again, and again you become more animal than man as you struggle for breath your body wracked with pain and convulsively struggling to get free to breath.

That is what we are talking about when we say the phrase “water board”. It is heinous in the extreme that any human would treat another that way, but it is what we have done in the name of national security. Is there any of us that can say that they would not say or do anything to make that kind of torture stop? I certainly can not.

While we have many pressing problems in this country, the investigation, indictment, trail and, perhaps, punishment of those that ordered and those that carried out such acts must be one of the top ones. As long as we do not say in the most forceful manner possible that this is never, ever acceptable for our nation, then we are in grave risk of some other fools thinking that they are allowed to order and carry out these acts.

How can any of us actually say with pride that we are Americans as long as the stain of this torture goes unanswered? If we let the exigency of the moment keep us from remembering that the criminal Bush administration tortured in our names, for no rational reason, then we will be something less. The Dog is not blind to the fact that there are times where you have to wait for justice. It is particularly sad that torture is one of the most common. However that does not mean that we can or should forget. Men in the service of our country, paid by our taxes and armed with spurious legal justification did this, and until we punish them, we are all too some degree tainted by it.

While the new administration gets its footing we will most likely have to wait, but waiting is in no way the same as forgetting. If you believe that we should not torture, keep talking about it. Make it clear to everyone you know and every politician that the kind of bald faced assertion of the right to torture is not acceptable and there is a very real need for us to punish those that do so.

The floor is yours.