Ted Cruz Offers The Most Baffling Definition of Torture Ever

[GoLeft TV]

Now that Rand Paul has dropped out of the Republican race, it looks like all of the Republican candidates support some degree of torture. But Ted Cruz takes the cake when it comes to defining torture as we saw in last week’s Republican debate.

Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

[63splitwindow]

1. It was a CYA on his part...

for having joined McCain in banning water boarding in the face of the fact that the obvious pandering position for the support of the RW base is to support torture of those they define as the "bad guys".... that would include everyone they consider a "liberal" by the way, and that is EVEYONE not in their little RW treehouse.

[lovemydog]

2. My definition would include listening to that phony.

[Helen Borg]

3. It's a tortured definition of torture...

[zebonaut]

4. You get your hips "enhanced". Torture is Torture

[Major Nikon]

5. Ted Cruz told several blatant lies

First, the "legal definition of torture" is contained in 18 U.S. Code § 2340 and doesn't come within a cab ride of what Cruz is claiming. There's also the UN Convention Against Torture, which the US ratified. Waterboarding clearly is covered by both "legal" definitions.

What Cruz is obviously referencing is the widely discredited John Yoo opinion memo which came out of the Bush administration. The problem is that because the Obama administration refused to prosecute anyone from the previous administration for torture. So by Cruz's warped logic, since nobody went to jail, it must be legal. Unfortunately the Obama administration bears at least some of the blame for letting them get away with it. If nobody goes to jail, then it's not really that much of a stretch to claim it's legal.