This is going to be my last attempt to joust with Sullivan on McCain, since his advocacy on this issue is tinged with hysteria and relies so heavily on evasion and spin.
To this query yesterday (which he says makes me an unreasonable person), he responded only about cold rooms and only a cold room scenario that is extreme. I asked if lapel shaking, belly slapping, and cold rooms are torture or cruelty and under what circumstances. He gives one circumstance. I guess we’re supposed to conclude from that all cold rooms are therefore torture, no matter what the circumstance?
What a joke. What about lapel shaking? Belly slapping (which is known to create an acute stinging sensation in the belly area and a loud “slapping” sound that increases the terror of this technique)? He won’t say. Sullivan is afraid to admit that the McCain approach will effectively ban all coercive techniques, even ones that most reasonable people wouldn’t consider torture or cruel. So he evades and spins…