Thank you, Lawrence O'Donell!! Thank you! Well done!

[Skidmore]

He just delivered a scathing response to Liz Cheney's delusional natterings on MSNBC. Gotta go stir my sauce. Someone else can fill in the details.

[firedupdem]

1. He is kicking ass! He's calling them out for their lies! n/t

[polichick]

2. He has been terrific lately - on all the shows he appears on!

[ErinBerin84]

3. that was great. Kudoes, Lawrence!

He debunked the bozo "it stopped a terror attack in LA" claim, said that there must be something in the water at the Cheney house, etc.

[K Gardner]

4. I caught the last of the Cheney interview then saw LD. WTF? MSNBC let her on for TWO segments with

NO rebuttal? As either Lawrence or Jonathan said, "It's going to take the rest of the day to rebutt what she said."

Why is Cheney sending his DAUGHTER out to lie? This gets more bizarre every day.

[babylonsister]

5. But Norah 'didn't know' Lawrence might want to partake. Yea, right. nt

[Skidmore]

7. O'Donnell is the rebuttal.

The batshit crazy insane BS she spewed is what the nation needs to see. This is the DAUGHTER (and a policy maker) of the former VP saying these things. They represented US to the world. The question needs to change to "is that what you would have us cover up and go back to?"

I thought I was pissed before, I'm beyond furious now. I can't even type fast enough.

[flpoljunkie]

6. This is the article O'Donnell was reading from written by a man who went thru the SERE program.

Cancel Water-Boarding 101

The military should close its torture school. I know because I graduated from it.
By David J. Morris

Posted Wednesday, April 22, 2009, at 12:20 PM ET

The release of a newly declassified congressional report on Tuesday suggested that some of the brutal interrogation techniques used during the Bush administration were developed in the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (or SERE) military training program, which was designed to teach American soldiers how to resist interrogation. In January, David J. Morris detailed his own experiences with SERE. The article is reprinted below.

On his first day in office, President Obama kept his most important campaign promise and began the process of closing Guantanamo. But this eliminates only the most visible part of the U.S. torture bureaucracy. In order to ensure that the atrocities of Guantanamo aren't visited upon the world by future administrations, Obama must also eviscerate the structures that enabled and supported torture. At the top of a long list is the U.S. military's secretive torture school, known as SERE, which stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape.

Founded in the aftermath of the Korean War to train U.S. servicemen to withstand enemy interrogation, the school was central to the development of the notorious "enhanced interrogation techniques" at Guantanamo. It was the SERE program that sent instructors and staff psychologists to Guantanamo shortly after 9/11 and provided the technical expertise on tactics like water-boarding. As Jane Mayer put it in her study of U.S. torture policy, The Dark Side, "SERE is a repository of the world's knowledge about torture, the military equivalent, in a sense, of the lethal specimens of obsolete plagues kept in the deep-freeze laboratories of the Centers for Disease Control."

I served in the Marine Corps in the 1990s, and I attended SERE as a young lieutenant in November 1995. I have since been to Iraq three times (as a reporter), and I can attest that the school isn't relevant to the threats American soldiers face abroad. It resembles more of an elaborate hazing ritual than actual training.

While I was in the school, I lived like an animal. I was hooded, beaten, starved, stripped naked, and hosed down in the December air until I became hypothermic. At one point, I couldn't speak because I was shivering so hard. Thrown into a 3-by-3-foot cage with only a rusted coffee can to piss into, I was told that the worst had yet to come. I was violently interrogated three times. When I forgot my prisoner number, I was strapped to a gurney and made to watch as a fellow prisoner was water-boarded a foot away from me. I will never forget the sound of that young sailor choking, seemingly near death, paying for my mistake. I remember only the sound because, try as I might, I couldn't force myself to look at his face. I was next. But for some reason, the guards just dropped the hose on my chest, the water soaking my uniform.
I was incarcerated at SERE for only a few days, but my mind quickly disintegrated. I became convinced that I was being held in an actual prisoner of war camp. Training had stopped, from my point of view. We had crossed over into some murky shadow land where the regulations no longer applied. I was sure that my captors, who wore Warsaw Pact-style uniforms and spoke with thick Slavic accents, would go all the way if the need arose.

more...

http://www.slate.com/id/2216709/

[Skidmore]

9. Please go find my thread on torturing our own.

Help me out.

[flpoljunkie]

24. This thread?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=8366524

Question: Why are we torturing our own service people?

I keep hearing that these methods are not torture because we use them on our own troops as part of training. How does subjecting our troops to TORTURE make them better? How does subjecting them to abuse beforehand make them better able to withstand more abuse? Traumatizing someone injures them psychically. If, as ordinary citizens, any one of us were to commit these acts against anyone else, we would be imprisoned. If any of these actions were to be committed against anyone of us, we would be followed for a period of time by psychiatrists, therapists, or physicians? Why is it okay for our government to subject our troops to abuse?

[DoBotherMe]

17. John Kerry went through SERE

the episode is in "Tour of Duty," a great book. Dana ; )

[vaberella]

8. Agreed. n/t

[DrToast]

10. Is that some sort of euphemism?

Gotta go stir my sauce.

:P

[Skidmore]

13. No, I'm trying to cook downstairs and

post on this subject upstairs. I'm gonna burn dinner if I'm not careful.

[monmouth]

18. Wow, I'm smelling that great stuff all the way in Florida. Lotsa garlic...Love it....n/t

[Skidmore]

21. Gotta keep the vampires at bay somehow.

:)

[flpoljunkie]

25. Yes. SERE stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape.

[ShortnFiery]

11. Lawrence O'Donnell has been awesome lately. :-) nt.

[DesertFlower]

12. he was great. nt

[riverwalker]

14. Liz Cheney made my skin crawl

Literally. What a repulsive lying reptile, she even has his same sadistic grin. Dick and his spawn must really be scared shitless of what is about to go down.

[AtomicKitten]

15. FFS. How can people defend torture? Have they no shame?

Lawrence O did a great job knocking that shit back!

[SeaLyons]

16. Lawrence has been very strong in his rebuttals with these idiots...

he's been good all week. Go Lawrence!!

[alsame]

19. He should have his own show on MSNBC - replace Mrs. Greenspan

with Lawrence so there could be some truth telling during the daytime hours.

[Skidmore]

20. Better yet, get him on in place of one of the gazillion Hardball broadcasts in

late afternoon.

[butterfly77]

22. Got the tape...

[Avalux]

23. "She won't let anyone share the frame".

O'Donnell was pissed he didn't get on the air "10 minutes sooner" so he could counter Liz Cheney's "blantant lies".

Just like her father, Liz Cheney will only do interviews if she's allowed to rant without opposition. She said that because the "interrogations methods" were used on our own service members, they're not torture and they're OK. And again, just like her father, said Obama's releasing of the memos would give our enemies insight into what we do and make the country less safe.

That whole entire family is fucked up.