PHOENIX, June 28 - Speaking early this morning to an estrogen-challenged audience of the Valley's movers and shakers at the men's grill room of the Phoenix Country Club, Republican candidate for Congress Richard Grayson decried the use of torture in harsh interrogation techniques of American detainees and called for the abolishment of waterboarding, sexual humiliation, electric shock, extreme sleep deprivation, and "that worst torture of all, forced watching of Dick Cheney speeches."
Grayson, running as a state-certified write-in candidate in the September 2 Fourth Congressional District GOP primary against Don Karg, noted that Thursday was the 21st anniversary of the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and that the Nobel Prize-winning organization Physicians for Human Rights recently released a report, called “Broken Laws, Broken Lives,” detailing abuses of detainees in at facilities in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
"For the sake of decency," Grayson said, "we must end this madness. It shocks the conscience to subject our fellow human beings to listen to Dick Cheney speak for hours on end." Grayson noted that in one instance, a prisoner was also forced to listen to an audiotape of one of Lynne Cheney's books for children. "That is beyond the pale," he said. "I get pale just thinking about it."
The speech, piped in by intercom to those segregated in the Phoenix Country Club's separate-but-equal women's grill room, was received enthusiastically by the crowd.
Following Grayson's talk, the candidate walked up N. 7th Street from Thomas Road to Camelback, where, continuing the campaign's theme of torture, he ordered the Grand Slam breakfast at Gay Denny's.
