Apparently there are such things.
And I’m not referring to anything done by the Inquisition (which I hope people will grant was worse than Bush and Rumsfeld).
I refer to the comments of a Philadelphia judge in characterizing a defendant’s crimes:
“She was basically tortured,” said Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge James M. DeLeon, summarizing the half-hour testimony of Ian Hood, a deputy city medical examiner. “She was tortured much worse than waterboarding.”
Interesting word choice, and apparently it reflects the current moral consensus (led by arch-moralist Stephen King and many others) that waterboarding is the worst form of torture imaginable. Read Instapunk’s post for perspective.
What was done to this woman in question was so awful that when I read the piece, I found myself surprised that the judge would even think to mention waterboarding in comparison:
Her head had been covered with plastic and a pillowcase, and a scarf had been tied around her neck. She was also wearing latex gloves with bleach-like fluid inside. All of this had been done, police have contended, to mask the victim’s identity.
The goateed defendant, wearing a long-sleeved white T-shirt, sat upright, with a look of intense interest. At one point, he craned his neck as if to see a picture that Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Selber showed the judge.
Hood said the injuries to Jackson from head to foot had been inflicted over several days, with a minimum of three separate episodes of abuse. Hood listed “blunt trauma” as the cause of death, though he said there was no single death blow. Her death was caused by an accumulation of bruises, lacerations and fractures, he said.
Jackson had been Johnson’s live-in girlfriend for two years. Police have said that Johnson had found a new girlfriend on a telephone chat line and wanted to get Jackson out of the way.
“It’s one of the most gruesome, horrific cases I’ve seen,” Selber said.
I don’t doubt that it is. What amazes me is to see waterboarding (which has never killed anyone) becoming the new standard by which evil is measured.
I probably should have pointed out in my Inquisition post that burning people alive is worse than waterboarding.
(Wouldn’t want people to get the wrong idea.)