A cobbled together Palin word salad? Yes. With a twisted type of logic behind it.
Both water boarding and death panels are not only repugnant but crimes against humanity. Both quotations,"waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists" and " the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would create a "death panel" of bureaucrats who would decide whether Americans—such as her elderly parents or children with Down syndrome—were "worthy of medical care". These are lies Palin tells to attract attention, and are not her original ideas. We know she got the death panel idea from Betsy McCaughey. Follow me over the fold for where she may have gotten the idea for Freedom baptizing terrorists.
To me Palin is amoral: she would use an argument against baptizing (calling out a terrorist's religion), she would turn it to her own purposes to sanctify a war crime, and make a war crime seem patriotic. Sarah Palin knows how to wrap herself in a flag and carry a cross. Here is where she may have gotten the Freedom Baptism idea:
Quoting an American scholar, Ambassador Khan said that terrorism was a “societal”, not a “genetic” disease. Those using the term Islamic terrorism, he said were doing a disservice to humanity, by sowing the seeds of hatred, swelling the ranks of fanatics, and preparing the ground the killing of innocent men and women. He said that suicide bombers did not belong to Islam. Quoting research, he said that most of suicide bombers or assassins in the past were non-Muslims.
“Timothy McVeigh was not a Christian terrorist. Blessed by a pastor, Serbian paramilitary police killed Bosnian prisoners, an act captured on a videotape. They were terrorists; not Orthodox Christian terrorists. Have you ever heard of Jewish, Hindu, or Bhuddhist terrorism? Terrorism is a crime against humanity. You do not baptise it”, he said.
Link: Pakistan deplores attempts to equate terrorism with Islam (2005)
I don't think she has an original idea in her head, but she certainly knows a researcher with good eye for a potential sound bite.
Read more: DKos diary:Sarah Palin thinks we should "baptize" terrorists by waterboarding them