George W. Bush Live From Facebook

tekgoblin writes "Facebook has just announced that George W. Bush is going to be present November 29th to answer questions about his new book, Decision Points. The discussion will happen on Facebook Live at 2PM PST."

Re:I hope it's moderated

[intheshelter]

Only in a complete state of denial could you argue that Bush didn't deserve those slogans. He was a shitty President and did more to harm our country than any terrorist ever could. There's loony folks on both sides, but if someone is ripping on Bush then I wouldn't automatically dump them in that category. Maybe if we'd heeded some of those criticisms our country wouldn't be endlessly mired in war, financially ruined, and globally scorned by people around the world who are not infected with Tea Pary logic.

Re:I hope it's moderated

[ConceptJunkie]

Everybody who is disliked by anybody gets compared to Hitler. Get over it.

Re:I hope it's moderated

[imogthe]

I beg your pardon? Waterboarding is not torture? I'm sorry, but by any definition you care to mention being exposed to "simulated drowning" is torture. If you read up on the practice you'll find that it's slightly more serious than someone splashing a bit of water on you. For extra points go read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding [wikipedia.org] and become enlightened. Yes, it doesn't involve cutting people's hands off, breaking legs, setting fire to their eyeballs or anything of a more graphical nature. However, calling it "not torture" is ignorant at best.

Re:I hope it's moderated

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"During the Spanish-American War, a U.S. soldier, Major Edwin Glenn, was suspended from command for one month and fined $50 for using "the water cure." In his review, the Army judge advocate said the charges constituted "resort to torture with a view to extort a confession." He recommended disapproval because "the United States cannot afford to sanction the addition of torture." Yet President Theodore Roosevelt defended the practice. "The enlisted men began to use the old Filipino method: the water cure," he wrote in a 1902 letter. "Nobody was seriously damaged." A Punishable Offense In the war crimes tribunals that followed Japan's defeat in World War II, the issue of waterboarding was sometimes raised. In 1947, the U.S. charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for waterboarding a U.S. civilian. Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. "All of these trials elicited compelling descriptions of water torture from its victims, and resulted in severe punishment for its perpetrators," writes Evan Wallach in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law. On Jan. 21, 1968, The Washington Post ran a front-page photo of a U.S. soldier supervising the waterboarding of a captured North Vietnamese soldier. The caption said the technique induced "a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk." The picture led to an Army investigation and, two months later, the court martial of the soldier. Cases of waterboarding have occurred on U.S. soil, as well. In 1983, Texas Sheriff James Parker was charged, along with three of his deputies, for handcuffing prisoners to chairs, placing towels over their faces, and pouring water on the cloth until they gave what the officers considered to be confessions. The sheriff and his deputies were all convicted and sentenced to four years in prison." From here [npr.org].

As for it being torture or not, there are a couple of convenient [youtube.com] tests [vanityfair.com](The first is Erich "Mancow" Mueller, talk radio host, attempting to refute critics of waterboarding, the second is Christopher Hitchens writing about his experience with trying it).

There are certainly even nastier ways of hurting people(which, in part, is why waterboarding is so popular, none of that pesky physical evidence) but it is apparently way less fun than it sounds, especially if it can be repeated over and over, in combination with sleep deprivation, isolation, and the like...

Re:Cue Bush Derangement Syndrome

[teamhasnoi]

Please, enlighten me. You said, "I've never heard anyone wish physical harm on him. I've never heard of people in the media fantasizing on the airwaves about his assassination or any of the many other reprehensible things that were directed towards Bush, and seemingly accepted as perfectly reasonable by people I would think are above all that."

I said, and I paraphrase, "WTF, dood. It's everywhere. Open remaining eye, and take spoon out of cup."

Re:Cue Bush Derangement Syndrome

[Anonymous Coward]

As strongly as people feel about President Obama, and there is as much _strong_ feelings against him as there ever were for President Bush, I've never heard anyone wish physical harm on him.

You're either blind and deaf, or lying. While calling you a liar is much more satisfying, I don't know you from Adam, so I'll just assume you just don't know any better and note that the number of death threats Obama received has been 400% more than Bush; there have been active calls for imprecatory prayer against him, and I have seen more than one billboard say 'do it to him before he does it to us.' Somehow, I don't think 'do it to him before he does it to us' means 'give him universal health care.' And what are we to make of signs with Obama's family quoting a certain verse in Psalms that goes 'And may his children be orphans and may his wife be a widow?'

Yeah. Real classy. And not at ALL wishing physical harm on him. Nope.

So, which was it? Blind and deaf, or lying?

P.S. Just because liberals are no longer putting up with your shit and calling you out when you're being an asshat doesn't mean they're intolerant. It just means they're no longer putting up with your shit.