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Republicans: The Party That Thinks Torture is No Big Deal |
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What is it with the Republicans and torture? They like to joke about it, they create euphemisms to describe it, they deny it goes on, even in the face of undisputed evidence.
Congressman Darrell Issa made the latest bizarre comment on the matter, claiming today that “we treat our hospital patients worse than Al Qaeda [detainees].” First, not all of the detainees we have held at Guantanamo and elsewhere are actually Al Qaeda members–we have released hundreds who were not, after holding them for years without charges.Â
Second, I don’t know what hospital Issa goes to, but he is either badly misinformed about how we treat detainees or else he is being deliberately misleading. As Think Progress points out, detainees have been subjected to waterboarding, severe sleep deprivation, forced nudity, sexual humiliation, and threats with military dogs. In addition, hundreds of detainees have died in U.S. custody, and at least 25 were declared homicides. We don’t treat hospital patients like that–if we did, it would be a crime (as much of the treatment mention here is).
