Chris Shays: Torture at Abu Ghraib? There was no torture at Abu Ghraib

Oh man, this man has really gone off the deep end now.

The assclown of the 4th Congressional District, Republican Chris Shays, is now...get this folks...claiming that there was no torture done at Abu Ghraib. He made this insane comment at a Congressional debate at Congregation B'nai Israel on Wednesday night.

Think I'm kidding? Well watch People-Powered media in action.

Shays: Then the next question is, well what has the US done? Well it has been accused of doing torture. That's what it's been accused of. Now I've seen what happened in Abu Ghraib, and Abu Ghraib was not torture, it was outrageous, outrageous involvement of National Guard troops from Maryland who were involved in a sex ring and they took pictures of soldiers who were naked. And they did other things that were just outrageous. But it wasn't torture.

It's difficult though how the dialogue in the rest of the world about that when you have news media all around the world saying we're torturing people. The bottom line for me is this. We follow the Geneva Convention period. That's what we do.

Matthew Gertz of MLN posted that the Stamford Advocate ripped Shays apart over this utterly idiotic comment.

Amnesty International officials and Shays' challengers in the 4th District said it was absurd for the Republican incumbent to call the acts at the Iraqi prison anything but torture.

"This is outrageous for a sitting congressman who was shown pictures (of Abu Ghraib) that were not even available to the public because they were supposed to be more provocative," said Joshua Rubenstein, Northeast regional director for Amnesty International. "The photographs did not only depict humiliating and degrading treatment of prisoners. They showed prisoners who were killed."

[...]

Shays defended his comments yesterday, saying he doesn't doubt that there has been torture at other prisons, but not at Abu Ghraib.

"I saw probably 600 pictures of really gross, perverted stuff," Shays said. "The bottom line was it was sex. . . . It wasn't primarily about torture."

Shays defined torture as anything that could cause mental or physical pain or sleep depravation.

Asked about pictures showing mistreatment of detainees mentioned by Amnesty International, Shays said he did not see those images and "we also don't know where those could have been from."

You know what to do.