Following are two quotes from Rudy Giuliani during a debate in which he supported waterboarding and other forms of torturing prisoners:
“They talk about sleep deprivation. I mean, on that theory, I’m getting tortured running for president of the United States. That’s just plain silly.”
“If I didn’t use intensive questioning, there would be a lot of Mafia guys running around New York right now.”
Mr. Giuliani often believes talking tough is equivalent to being tough. He will say anything in order to get a vote and his failure to demonstrate the slightest aspect of self reflection is a fundamental flaw in his character. Sleep deprivation is a method used in totalitarian nations to break the will of opponents. To even suggest lack of sleep during a campaign is equivalent to what prisoners endure day after day indicates the speaker lacks any grasp of what it means to be an American who supports constitutional rights for all– even opponents. Rudy Giuliani is flippant, cute, arrogant, and demeaning of others in his quest for power. He never listened to a word from Senator John McCain, who endured years of torture, about what torture does both to one’s soul and to the soul of the torturer. A society which would elect this creature as its president is a society which has lost faith in the values of living in a democratic humane world. Orson Swindle, who was tortured in Vietnam, described how he once was deprived of sleep for twenty days and finally broke and wrote a lying letter to escape further torture. Mr. Giuliani differs from Mr. Swindle in that he lies without being tortured, and his lies and deceit and lack of human compassion go on endlessly. Do you want this man as your president? Do you want a man with such insensitivity to uphold as a model for children?
P.S. This man who boasts of being brave somehow found a way to get draft deferments that allowed him to escape fighting in Vietnam. Perhaps, if he had endured one-tenth the pain that McCain experienced, it might have led to a human able to grasp with complex issues through the lens of religion and morality. Mr. Giuliani, you are no John McCain!
