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The Daily Dish - 2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan

A US Soldier Waterboards His Own Child

By The Daily Dish
Feb 8 2010, 10:21 AM ET

The British Daily Mail - a populist right-wing paper - reports:



A soldier waterboarded his four-year-old daughter because she was unable to recite her alphabet. Joshua Tabor admitted to police he had used the CIA torture technique because he was so angry. As his daughter 'squirmed' to get away, Tabor said he submerged her face three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline. Tabor, 27, who had won custody of his daughter only four weeks earlier, admitted choosing the punishment because the girl was terrified of water...

[T]he terrified girl was found hiding in a closet, with bruising on her back and scratch marks on her neck and throat. Asked how she got the bruises, the girl is said to have replied: 'Daddy did it.'

Horrifying. No doubt Marc Thiessen will object that since she wasn't strapped to an actual board and only dunked three or four times, rather than 183, and her father wasn't in the CIA, she wasn't really "waterboarded" as the professionals do it.  But do you notice how a foreign newspaper uses plain English to describe torturing victims by use of near-drowning: the "CIA torture technique."

No US paper has yet to report the story. Why am I not surprised?

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