Neocon Law Professor Claims Waterboarding is Not Torture, Is Scorned

Professor Addicott visited the school a few months back. He is something of a Neocon apologist (money quote from his visit: "I give the Bush administration a B+ in its handling of the war on terror.") and needless to say I did not appreciate his views. The topic of the discussion was "Ethics & the War on Terror." The other two panelists (professors from my school) made some attempt to tie together professional ethics and the GWOT, but Addicott was in full cheerleader mode. I don't think he had much to say about ethics at all, aside from (and I paraphrase only slightly) "They want to kill us all and we can't let that happen." After the talk I had an argument with him about Christianity (money quote: "You can't be a Christian and a pacifist."). He seems to have a strange theology that doesn't fit in well with evangelical or mainline thought as I understand it, but that is an entirely different topic.

Professor Addicott recently wrote an article for Jurist explaining that waterboarding is not torture. It is a great read. Here's a link. The comments beneath are also worth checking out. For his efforts, he was referred to as a "Distinguished Professor of Law" by Professor Tamanaha over at Balkinization. Given the rest of the post, I suspect sarcasm might have been at play. Here's a link to that. The comments following that post are even more worth reading, since Professor Tamanaha likes to join in.