Cartoon for February 21

Bush Administration officials refuse to confirm or deny that they torture prisoners of war (or, as they call them, “detainees”). The reason for this vagueness, they explain, is national security: If they confirm that they torture, future victims could prepare themselves against it. If they deny it, no one will be sufficiently terrified of us.

This cartoon is a riff on the parenting book “What to Expect When You’re Expecting.”

Cartoon for February 18

The government wants to use “evidence” collected during waterboarding to execute Guantánamo POWs.

Since waterboarding sometimes kills, this prompts a strange yet obvious question: Can evidence gathered through waterboarding be used to retroactively convict a detainee murdered through waterboarding?

Cartoon for February 16

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says torture—specifically slapping suspects during interrogations–is, or ought to be, legal. This is justified, he explains, as part of the Meme That Won’t Die: the absurd, totally impossible, “ticking bomb” scenario popularized by the TV series “24.”

Cartoon for February 14

In perhaps the most bizarre attempt to exploit the weird GOP’s Cult of Reagan to date, John McCain claims he was “inspired by [then California governor] Ronald Reagan” in 1967, while he was rotting in a Hanoi shithole.