That’s how radio talk show host and law professor Hugh Hewitt has been describing Senator McCain for years.
Tuesday, Senator Feinstein finally saw the release of her Majority Views “Torture” Report. Absent from the 5 year investigation is any participation from Republicans who sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee. They perceived the Feinstein investigation as a partisan exercise. So what we’re left with, absent the Minority Views Report, is a non-bipartisan (re: partisan), $40 million investigation tinted and tainted by a Democrat’s worldview lens in interpreting the information they used to draw up the Report.
Senator Feinstein spoke yesterday on the Senate floor for an hour defending her tortured Report. She was joined by Senator McCain:
Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a former GOP presidential nominee and prisoner of war who was tortured in North Vietnam, rose to Feinstein’s defense Tuesday in opposition to his own party, citing “personal knowledge of torture’s inefficacy.”
McCain said the report’s release reminds the country that “we are always American, different, and better than those who would destroy us.”
As a former Vietnam POW, who experienced brutal treatment and real torture at the hands of his captives, McCain’s words carry weight and influence with most mainstream Americans:
In a nearly 15-minute speech from the Senate floor, McCain offered what is arguably the most robust defense so far of the report’s release, referencing his own experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and rebuking his Republican colleagues by endorsing the study’s findings.
~~~ most poignantly, McCain spoke of his own five-and-a-half-year captivity in Vietnam to argue that torture fails to yield credible information.
“I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence. I know that victims of torture will offer intentionally misleading information if they think their captors will believe it. I know they will say whatever they think their torturers want them to say if they believe it will stop their suffering.”
I’m sorry, but with all due respect to the great American, lousy senator, and terrible Republican, Senator McCain reveals his lack of understanding in the role EITs played in CIA interrogations. “Torture”, if you will, was not applied in order to illicit law enforcement confessions or extract information. Questions were not asked during an enhanced interrogation session that the CIA did not already know the answers to. EITs were meant to bring about a state of cooperation, after which the real mining for intelligence information would begin during debriefing.
McCain added (emphatically) that “the use of torture compromises that which most distinguishes us from our enemies, our belief that all people, even captured enemies, possess basic human rights.”
Basic human rights? OK. Signatory or not to the GCs, everyone has basic rights. What captured terrorists don’t deserve, however, is the kind of protections afforded to lawful, uniformed soldiers. Why not? Because to grant terrorists POW status is to undermine part of the purpose of the GCs, which is to protect innocent civilians.
The GCs give maximum protection to non-combatants- innocent civilians. The next level of protection is afforded to fighters who obey the laws of war. The least amount of protection is given to those fighters who do not obey the rules. The GCs operates on an incentive system. Giving terrorists the same privileges as that of lawful soldiers removes the incentive not to blend in with an innocent civilian populace, putting civilians at greater risk of being harmed.
I had written previously on McCain’s hallowed status as a Vietnam POW, when he used it as an aegis in delivering a 2011 op-ed, criticizing EITs as amounting to “torture”. Back then, I wrote:
John McCain is intimately familiar with torture, having endured it at the hands of his Vietnamese captors during his years as a POW.
But he was never waterboarded. Not by the Spanish Inquisition. Not by the Japanese military. Not by the restrictive nature of the program as run by our CIA. And to be clear, he was tortured not to extract information that might save lives; he was tortured out of cruelty for torture’s sake; and he was tortured to elicit a false confession for propaganda purposes. EITs are not used to obtain either confessions or information.
Nor was McCain ever an interrogator. Not in the FBI. Not in the military. Not in the CIA.
Yet McCain, like “Matthew Alexander” (Anthony Camarino), commands “authority” and respect on the topic matter because of their respective experiences.
The CIA interrogators involved in the program that used EITs on 30 out of 100 high value detainees that came into their hands (the other 2/3rds having received standard interrogation practices) are not at liberty to write books nor defend themselves from slander and distortions in the media; nor are they free to counter Alexander’s testimony that comes buttressed with credible experience as a successful military interrogator.
Since the release of the Feinstein Report, I now know the number to be 119 HVDs. Apparently, the number of detainees who experienced EITs is more than 30, as well.
In Marc Thiessen’s book, Courting Disaster, the former Bush speech writer does a great job at trying to rectify the misperceptions and distortions regarding the nature of the CIA program that has been so relentlessly villified.
In one chapter (read pages 158-164), Thiessen also includes the opinions of 3 distinguished former Vietnam POWs to counteract the opinion of John McCain.
George Everett Day, Leo Thorsness, Jeremiah Denton are highly decorated war veterans and former POWs who experienced terrible torture at the hands of their captors. They scoff at the notion that what the CIA subjected their detainees to, up to and including waterboarding, even remotely amounts to their definition of torture.
I think Republicans and those who feel the CIA acted in good faith, and who acted honorably to defend our country, and who perceive the Majority Views Report as a politically partisan investigation, should still take the information within the Report seriously. We on the right do ourselves a disservice to dismiss outright the findings in the Feinstein Report. Stories like this one are sad. Of course, mistakes are made, as in all wars. And we should own up to them, where they occur. I have a difficult time, however, believing that we owe ourselves and the world any kind of apology, however, for the overall CIA program. As Noah Rothman points out:
There are aspects of the Senate Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s (SPSCI) report on the CIA’s Bush-era enhanced interrogation techniques and their efficacy that are unequivocally disturbing. The report alleges wrongful deaths at the hands of CIA operators, the detention and mistreatment of innocent people, and elaborate physical punishments inflicted on terror suspects resulting in lasting ailments.
Some of these practices and certainly the allegation that the CIA intentionally misled those responsible for its oversight are deeply disturbing. War, however, is hell, and America was and remains engaged in a war in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks on New York City and Washington D.C. in which nearly 3,000 innocent civilians were killed.
It is a war that took the lives of 169 Americans, Swedes, Danes, Britons, Indonesians and Australians when Jemaah Islamiyah attacked a tourist attraction in Bali in 2002. It is a war that spread to Spain in March of 2004 when al-Qaeda operatives killed 191 and wounded 1,800 more when they detonated a series of explosives onboard a Madrid commuter train. In 2005, the war engulfed London when a terror attack on buses and subway cars killed 52 civilians and wounded 700 more. It was a war that involved tens of thousands of Western soldiers fighting on battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq. Thousands of those troops gave their lives in the effort to ensure that those who would execute similar attacks on Western targets never had the opportunity to leave that volatile region.
Noting the realities above is not designed to either excuse or explain the excesses in which the CIA is accused of engaging, but merely to provide some of the context which has been lost in all the moral posturing over the SPSCI’s report. It is possible to be both outraged over the claim that the nation’s intelligence agency abused the public trust and damaged America’s standing abroad while simultaneously acknowledging the importance and complexities of their mission.
In another previous post, I copied something Marc Thiessen wrote in his book, Courting Disaster:
In the opening prologue to Kill or Capture, Alexander talks about how legendary WWII-era interrogators stuck to American values and principles, never resorting to torture. Well, guess what? The very best American interrogators- including Alexander, Soufan, and those directly involved in the CIA enhanced interrogation program- also uphold American values and principles; and also do not believe in the effectiveness of torture.
Incidentally, according to Eisenhower and the German POWs by Stephen Ambrose and Gunter Bishhof, as many as 56,000 German POWs- about 1% of the total numbers captured by war’s end- may have died while in U.S. custody. Contrast this with the .125% in today’s GWoT: Human Rights First reported in a 2006 study that since August of 2002, 100 detainees held by the CIA and the U.S. military had died while in captivity (According to military records, 34 of these are suspected or confirmed homicides). According to Department of Defense figures, by 2006, over 80,000 have been held under U.S. custody in the War on Terror.
Why do I bring this up? Because I feel that in today’s world we make mountains out of mole hills. That any transgression that comes to light is given so much media attention that it becomes disproportionate to the overall context. Everything becomes hyperbolic.
I am hoping to find the time to go through the actual reports- both the majority and minority views.
A former fetus, the “wordsmith from nantucket” was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1968. Adopted at birth, wordsmith grew up a military brat. He achieved his B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (graduating in the top 97% of his class), where he also competed rings for the UCLA mens gymnastics team. The events of 9/11 woke him from his political slumber and malaise. Currently a personal trainer and gymnastics coach.
The wordsmith has never been to Nantucket.
Torture report: 10 examples of the horror in the CIA’s prisons
Wait….that’s it?! That’s the top 10 worst of the worst examples of CIA horrors and torture?!
@Wordsmith:
I’d like to know what happened with the guy that died of hypothermia. I feel zero sympathy for the guy, but no prisoner should die due to neglect.
Otherwise, not much there.
Didn’t we used to execute spies and even execute traitors?
When those hijackers came into this country they were spies and enemy combatants.
Had they not killed themselves, they’d have been deserving of a death sentence.
From 9-11-01 onward the call has been sent out, sometimes more loudly than other times, that good Muslims should fight and kill those infidels of earth, most especially those in Israel and in the USA.
The GC demands both sides wear uniforms or an entirely different set of standards apply.
These jihadis do NOT wear uniforms.
I feel sorry for what John McCain went through.
But it had no relation to what we had done to get facts from captured jihadis.
The last 6 jihadi terrorists Obama just released from GITMO (a week ago) to Uruguay are already FREE!
Yes, Obama knew this would happen.
He sent them there SO they could be freed within DAYS and back to jihad in weeks.
If these jihadis had any sense of optics they would hold off a major attack on the US until Obama is gone.
But both Obama and these terrorists are stuck-on-stupid when it comes to optics.
Jomini, The Art of War, war is conducted on the circumstance of the conflict. Knowing the idiots like feinstin, and McCain what would you expect.
Grow Up.
Any wonder how many of McCain’s support staff got arrested at the last national convention. None, thanks to McCain all charges on all of his staff were dropped. Wonder what it cost the US taxpayer for the booze and the hookers?
@Nanny:
Nor do they wear any identifiable patch, consequently, according to the language of the GC, terrorists are NOT covered by GC dictates.
@Nanny:
Nor do they wear any identifiable patch, consequently, according to the language of the GC, terrorists are NOT covered by GC dictates.
As do I, but according to McCain’s own admission, when he was tortured, he gave the North Vietnamese information that he should not have given them.
This report is nothing more than the left wing’s parting shot at George W. Bush. $40 million spent to smear the people who dedicated their lives into making us safe after the worst attack on Americans in our history. And during a time of war.
And what were Feinstein, and her minions thinking? When radical Islamists can find grievance in anything, and everything, that Americans do, when they have put out the false meme, aided by group like CAIR, that it is the occupation of Muslim soil they are fighting against, when we are still in a state of war against radical Islam, when American aid workers and reporters are having their heads lopped off, do they really think this will not encourage ISIS, Al Qaeda and other radical groups to ramp up the terror against Americans? If they are that naïve, they need to be removed from office post haste.
Dr j the USA if not bound by Geneva’s protections of non uniformed guerrilla/partisans ( put there by the USA)
Was certainly bound by the Anti Torture Treaty championed and signed by St Ronald Reagan
His signature was a solemn promise that we would never torture human beings and that we would prosecute anyone who did
The senate based their report on the documents that the CIA reluctantly turned over
You also seem to be ignoring the homicide charge
All countries justify torture the same way it saves lives it is needed for national security
The people being tortured are in fact sub human
In fact it can not be justified
Your 2nd guessing of what actually occurred is contradicted by what the FBI reported they witnessed in Thailand
It is also contradicted by what the senate saw in the CIAs own reports
You were way out of line on Benghazi on
Memendez and the underage hookers and you are on this one too
It’s like you a rightwing parrot of what you here/see with little regard for reality
Nanny the GC also says unihorm a must be identifiable from 100m
The GC has different provisions for partisan fighters than from state armies
Try reading them especially the 4th GC
From British historian, Andrew Roberts:
“A slight air of unreality has permeated the debate over “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the war against terror, with historians embarrassedly studying their toecaps over the issue. For the truth is that there has not been a war in history in which torture has not been employed in some form or another, and sometimes to excellent effect. When troops need information about enemy capabilities and intentions—and they usually need it fast—moral and ethical conventions (especially the one signed in Geneva in 1929) have repeatedly been ignored in the bid to save lives. In the conflict generally regarded today as the most ethical in history, World War II, enhanced interrogation techniques were regularly used by the Allies, and senior politicians knew it perfectly well, just as we now discover that Nancy Pelosi did in the early stages of the war against terror. The very success of the D-Day landings themselves can largely be put down to the enhanced interrogation techniques that were visited upon several of the 19 Nazi agents who were infiltrated into Great Britain and “turned” by the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) between 1939 and 1945. Operation Fortitude—the deception plan that fooled the Germans into stationing 450,000 Wehrmacht troops 130 miles north of the Normandy beaches—entirely depended upon German intelligence (the Abwehr) believing that the real attack was going to take place at the Pas de Calais instead. The reason that Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, was utterly convinced of this, was because every single one of his 19 agents, who he did not know had been turned, told him so. If anyone believes that SIS persuaded each of these 19 hard-bitten Nazi spies to fall in with Operation Fortitude by merely offering them tea, biscuits, and lectures in democracy, they’re being profoundly naïve. An SIS secret house located in Ham Common near Richmond on the outskirts of London was the location where the will of those agents was broken, using advanced interrogation techniques that reportedly started with sleep deprivation but went on to gross mental and physical abuse. The result? Many thousands of Allied servicemens’ lives were saved because the German 15th Army stayed well away from beaches such as Omaha, Utah, and Sword. And another 100,000 others were stationed in Norway for another attack that never came.”
http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/84563
What kind of maniacs, during a time of war, release sensitive intel about how we fight that war? And for all those squeamish left winger who say that we have a right to know what our government is doing, do you really think that FDR, and Truman, felt that way when we were conducting military operations in World War II?
Perhaps we do need more transparency about what our government (i.e. Obama) is doing in the name of the American people. The Obama Administration should then provide non-redacted documents to Congress on the issues of Benghazi, the IRS persecuting conservative groups, the IRS providing private tax payer information to the White House, the facilitation of weapons to Syria via Libya, the arming of Syrian rebels that have connections to Al Qaeda, lots of stuff that the Administration has been less than transparent on.
Dianne Feinstein should be removed from the Intel Committee in January. She has clearly misused taxpayer dollars as well as putting those who stand the wall in grave danger.
Sen McCain was the son and the grandson of U S Navy Admirals.
This was known to the North Vietnamese. This influenced their treatment of him.
He is in no position to speak about the CIA with reference to their goal of protecting the United States.
Sen McCain is protecting his own ass. He likes being in office. His polls show him that his current stance will win him votes. Protecting US is so non-PC. You have to get out front of those who wish to destroy us.
His handlers have assured him that we are protected; they are wrong, but they are the handlers he has chosen.
He has been a disappointment since his first day in the Senate.
Almost as consistently wrong as VP Biden, but only because he has not been in office as long.
Arizona should retire him.
@John:
So provide us with the clause in the 4th GC that gives credibility, or legitimacy, to any terrorist organization.
I do not agree that you are a hero because you were captured in Vietnam. In fact if you got captured you just might not be a hero at all. (before you comment I support the military 100 percent – if we had let them lose we could have won that war in about 6 months. Tired of IDIOTS in DC letting our guys get killed with stupid rules of engagement).
ANYWAY he is one of the biggest RINOS in DC and I wish he would just move over to the democrats or even better just go home. And take his IDIOT daughter with him.
Diane Fienstein needs to be charged with murder if any of our people are killed because of this report being released.
When is someone in DC going to JAIL for hurting the country and our people ????
I question the “great American” part. John McCain is one of few actual examples of “white privilege.” Had his father and grandfather not been admirals McCain:
* Never would have been admitted to the Naval Academy
* Would have been expelled had he been admitted by mistake
* Never would have been accepted to flight school given his academy grades
* Would have been given desk duty after crashing his second plane
@retire05:
Actually MuckStain is ‘living’ proof that torture WORKS!
@clint:
As I said above!
@bc3b:
Thanks for all the reinforcement guys!
The legal definition of torture, under U.S. code
What was done was not simply immoral. It was also unlawful. The fact that the Bush White House’s legal counsel cooked up a bogus rationalization and slapped a less offensive term on the practices they were authorizing doesn’t change that fact.
John McCain is the GOP’s voice of conscience on this matter. They should be listening to him, rather than insulting him.
Sorry boys but if I ran the CIA and it saved US lives I would allow agents to skin these little goat buggers alive so I am not offended at all about waterboarding, sleep deprivation, etc.
Ozero on the other hand thinks (who knows what the lying POS thinks, really), well he says that torture is really bad but he is ok with killing suspected (and any nearby bystanders or family) terrorists with drone missiles by the thousands. Sounds a little worse than waterboarding to me.
Waterboard Bad – drone killings good. Ivy league Liberal Group Think……
As an aside it appears these terrorists want to go back to the 7th century and live in the “stone age”. I suggest that we help them get back to the stone age.
@Greg:
Exactly how do unlawful alien combatants fall under US Code? Is there something from SCOTUS that points to this? Otherwise, this is merely you’re opinion.
John McCain has lost his perspective on many things. His “maverick” nick name was awarded to him by liberals to make him think he was more thoughtful instead of following his set of values. He needs to retire and allow a younger, energetic person replace him.
@Aqua: Actually when you look at Greg’s definition of torture, it is very subjective. No where does it define “excessive”.
@Aqua, #17:
I think a more to-the-point question might be What was the basis for their exclusion?
18 U.S. Code § 2340 (1) broadly defines the crime which a custodian might be guilty of as “an act upon another person within his custody or physical control.” No qualifying status that limits applicability of the law is placed upon the person who is held captive.
18 U.S. Code § 2340A (a) and (b), on the other hand, clearly states who can be guilty of the crime and where the statute applies. It specifically applies “outside the United States”. It applies to “any offender who is a national of the United States”, and to “any offender present in the United States, irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged offender.”
Pretty sure US law does not apply to our army fighting in another country. The army has it’s own rules of course.
Since these people are terrorists and do not officially have a country they are NOT covered by the Geneva Convention concerning enemy combatants.
The the status of the people in custody is not relevant to the law. The law forbidding torture isn’t directed at them. It’s directed toward the people who are holding them.
Any American national who authorized or participated in the program, whether inside or outside the United States, would be covered by the statute.
@Greg: So you’re above ‘torturing’ someone? Lets say your 3 year old child was kidnapped and buried alive with a 12 hr air supply and the only one that knew where he was is his kidnapper. You wouldn’t ‘torture’ that person if you had to, to get the information that would save your child? When they are waterboading these jihadi’s they are doing it to save ‘someone’s child’, just because it may not be your child doesn’t mean the child is not worth saving. Would I drip some water on someone’s head to get the info? I wouldn’t hesitate. Annnnndddd I suspect you wouldn’t either. So get off your pretensive high horse and admit the truth.
That’s not the situation that existed. There was no “ticking bomb.” Posing such hypothetical scenarios to defend having set up a program that was in clear violation of the law in the first place wouldn’t cut it in any court.
@Redteam: I saw your post in my email and came back to advise you that you were wasting your time with a troll — but he beat me too it and proved again that my advice would have been correct!
Here is an idea – If we quit calling these people “terrorists” and instead call them “fetuses” or “unborn children” the progressives on the left will drop this controversy over torture immediately.
You know it is true….. how sick and insane is that ???
@Greg: LOL, so it’s all a matter of law huh? All torture is likely ‘against’ the law. But you try to pretend that no one, especially you, would ever, under any circumstances resort to torturing anyone. I gave you the scenario. Would you or would you not? If you’re going to put yourselves into others shoes and judge them, then put yourself into your shoes and judge yourself. Would you torture someone to save your child, or not?
@Greg:
Really? on 9/11/01, you are on the top floor of the WTC in New York, the building is burning below you. Is there a ticking time bomb for hundreds of people or not? Don’t you think the US government should do ‘whatever is necessary’ to prevent that time bomb from occurring again? Give us an honest answer. I know that’s asking a lot, but…..
@Budvarakbar: Thanks Bud, and yes I know Greg is a troll, but it’s interesting to see how much of a hypocrit he is. See how he avoided answering a question that any civilized human could answer honestly in 10 seconds.
@clint: So true Clint, see Greg’s answer for how a hypocrit tries to avoid answering a question honestly? I guess aborting a fetus by drilling a hole in their head and sucking their brains out is not ‘really’ torture. After all a liberal fetus should expect it, right?
@Greg: Greggie Greggie Greggie, I understand you hate Bush and will forever blame him for everything!! Then again you support Obamacare even though President Obola lied to America telling them they could keep their insurance and/or doctor “period”. This is why Republicans won the Senate and the House in historic fashion, Of course this made it a fact that over 5 million folks LOST their coverage and had to go to the one size fits all Obolacare!! It cost them more and gave them coverage they did NOT need!! Then your boy claims this failure as a success because they signed up. Your blame Bush mantra is a laugher and over!! This Senate DEMOCRAT report is clearly bogus when the chief of the CIA declares the intelligence helped get Bin Laden!! Do you have proof the CIA doesn’t?? Thought so!! I can’t wait for your whining once Republicans take control and move Slimy Harry out of his power and force President Obola to give up being an Emperor!! 68% of Americans polled want Obolacare rejected!! Sadly the worst is yet to come when the group plans are forced to implement!! My bet is the Supreme Court will realize the same thing Gruber did when he crafted this turd and will declare it Unconstitutional!! Then America will begin to attack healthcare in the correct fashion vs. an unwanted plan shoved down the Americans throat!!
Greg sure did shut up in a hurry. Nothing to say.
@Redteam: Well said Redteam. Even when Greggie posts his comments he really has nothing to say. If you ask him to prove his position he will fail to do so. I’m certain he Is very bitter because he is on the wrong side of the majority of Americans and his messiah Obola has failed!!
Read the statutes. They’re written in plain English. What they state is, in fact, the law. The Bush administration broke it, more certainly and unambiguously than any alleged violation committed by the Obama administration. If the people responsible were prosecuted in a U.S. court of law and judged entirely on the basis of established facts, it’s likely they would be found guilty.
The highly questionable assertion, Yes, but it worked, would not be admissible as a defense. There are no legal exceptions excusing violation of this particular law. The best that could be hoped for is that the assertion might be believed and taken into consideration with regard to sentencing. This will never happen, however. The most that will ever come of it is what has just happened. The public has been made aware of the results of a formal investigation. It was difficult even to accomplish that much.
Those are the bare facts, which no one really wants to deal with. I don’ t know what else there is to say. Other than that Bill Clinton was persecuted and prosecuted as the result of a transgression that was—compared with authorizing an illegal interrogation program that led to the methodical torture and the actual death of prisoners—ludicrously trivial.
@Greg:
I love it that the Democrats have opened this can of worms. Perhaps the next Administration will put out a report on how Obama unconstitutionally assassinated American citizens using drones as well as killing non-combatants, women and children, by the use of drones. Obviously, Obama thinks if he puts you on his “kill” list, although you are entitled to the full protection of the Constitution, he can drone your ass if he wants without the due process all American citizens are guaranteed.
@Greg:
Comedy is not your forte’, Greg. How much does it torture the relatives of the innocent people killed in drone attacks authorized by Obozo?
The EIT used by the USA have NEVER been judged as illegal by anyone. All the legal minds in the country were of a consensus that waterboarding is not illegal. It does no physical harm to a prisoner. If it were your family that were the target of one of Obozo’s drone attacks but you knew that just giving up some information would prevent that, would you give up that information? You never did say if you would torture someone to save the life of your 3 year old child. Want to answer it, mr. ethical.
@Redteam, #36:
No attempt at humor was being made.
Nor do I see how repeatedly putting helpless captives who are totally at our mercy to physical and mental torment over prolonged periods is the moral equivalent of accidentally killing innocent people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when a military strike takes place. Is anybody bothering to think through how limited our ability to defend our nation from terrorism would become if we ruled out all responses where some possibility of unintentional casualties existed? Warfare in almost any form would become impossible—an ideal outcome, provided we could get everyone to agree to the same rules. Maybe we should talk to ISIS about it.
It is illegal because it produces the effects described in the law prohibiting it. That we weren’t burning people with red hot pokers or dislocating their joints on a rack isn’t the point. That we were using methods that leave no physical traces—except, apparently, for the occasional dead body chained to a floor or ceiling—isn’t the point. What we did would most certainly be judged as illegal, if the matter ever came before an unbiased court.
That question will continue to go unanswered, because it has absolutely nothing to do with the legality of torture or setting up a program that relies on it. A parent threatened with the death of their child might be provoked to execute a dozen total strangers with pistol shots to the back of the head. What would that prove about anything? Such hypothetical scenarios have nothing to do with what happened. There was no ticking bomb.
@Greg:
That’s what I meant about comedy. You think when a drone is sent in to kill people that some of them are ‘accidentally’ killed? Isn’t the intent to kill whoever is within the blast range?
the ability to get intelligence from those that have the knowledge to give us that intelligence? I’m sure that’s what you really intended to say, right?
oh, okay so are you for us starting to chop off heads, or for them to stop doing so? Do you consider chopping off someone’s head to be torture, or worse, or less?
Do you really think there is such a thing? How would head chopping fare in that court? If you closely read that definition of torture, head chopping would not qualify as torture because it certainly doesn’t offer prolonged pain or threat of pain. It certainly doesn’t offer the threat of imminent death. It does cause instantaneous death, but that is not a ‘threat of imminent death’. So apparently keeping somone awake is worse than chopping off their head. So are you in favor of just going ahead and chopping off their head without giving them the opportunity to offer something of value instead? Liberals have a strange interpretation of good and bad. Dripping water on head, bad; chopping head off, much better.
Again, your comedy fails you. In this country we have a military and police to do our dirty work for us. Killing people is something most persons prefer to not do themselves, so we recruit and hire those that don’t mind doing so. Your refusal to put yourself into a situation that thousands have actually been put into speaks to how wrong you are. If you don’t think those thousands of persons in the upper floors of the world trade center were put into situations of the feeling of imminent death (one of your definitions of torture) then you are just not using your noodle. If you do admit that, yes as a parent, I would do whatever I had to do to save the life of my child, then you are admitting that there really are situations where ‘torture’ is warranted. Just because you want to claim the high ground is no reason to openly lie. I’d hate to be your wife or child reading a statement by you that you would not do whatever is necessary to save their life.
So I’ll admit you’re not funny, that’s why you should stay away from comedy.
What some people are staying away from is the fact that the Bush administration set up and pursued an illegal program involving the methodical torture of captives, that people are known to have died while being subjected to it, and that many GOP politicians and their supporters have no problem with that.
@Greg:
Several problems with your statement. Nothing has be ‘declared illegal’ about any program the Bush Admin set up. There has been absolutely no proof of any ‘torture’ of any individual under the Bush Admin. No one has died, I defy you to name anyone that died from ‘torture’. What has been done is something that was necessary to prevent the needless torture of US citizens via terrorists acts such as burning down the World Trade Centers. You want to see torture, watch a person standing on the 100th floor of a building when it is burning upward from the 88th floor and you know it is only a matter of time until your imminent death by a torturer.
Wonder why you ignored the question about chopping off heads. Surely you don’t consider that torture, right. It places no one in the threat of imminent danger. It might kill them, but that not a ‘threat’.
I suspect you have created a standard that you are not willing to say you would live up to.
@Greg: Greg, talk about staying away from facts!! You stay away from the fact that what was done likely saved American lives and if you want to blame Bush for that I don’t doubt you will. Fact is you are in the minority of Americans, fact is the CIA believes the intel gained was useful, fact is the Democrat Senate report never interviewed any involved, fact is this cost over $50 million for a incomplete an erroneous report, fact is it was released on the date it was for pure political reasons, and fact is when you run out of your distorted logic you ALWAYS resort to blaming Bush. I do Blame Bush for saving thousands of lives because of his leadership during an incredible and unprecedented time in American history. If you want to blame someone blame Slick for getting a hummer in the Whitehouse and NOT giving the order to take out Bin Laden before 9/11 occurred!! Blame Slick for the systematic reduction of our on the ground intel!! Blame President Obola for ordering the murder of American citizens without due process!! Then you would be accurate!! Do not rewrite history to fit you warped liberal ideal!!
@Common+Sense, #41:
Says who? So say the people who set up the illegal program and who participated in it. What would anyone expect them to say at this point?
What they haven’t done is provide any specific details indicating how any American lives were saved by their actions. I guess we’ll just have to take their word for that.
Why does it matter? Because we’ve got this character, stating he has no problem with what happened and that he would do it again in a minute.
@Greg: Greggie, please indicate to me what law was broken at the time!! Remember I need proof!! Next prove to me that valuable intel was NOT gathered based on the interrogation techniques applied!! Remember the Director the CIA indicated that valuable intel was gotten!! I support Cheney’s position that at the time he would have done it again!! Tell me which CIA official did Feinstein interview for this report to reach the conclusion she did!! I need proof and without it I am calling you a liar again!! Still waiting for you to provide proof that Romney cheated on his taxes as you supported Slimy Harry’s accusation on the floor of the Senate!! Once again you and your liberal wachos are trying to rewrite history to meet you ideology and to hell with the truth!!
We could save everyone a lot of time if we just BLOCKED GREG.
Just like Ozero wants to block all conservatives with his net neutrality laws he wants passed.
BECAUSE you cannot flip a LIBERAL, it is a MENTAL ILLNESS.
I am an Engineer and you can present them with the cold hard facts and their EYES JUST GLAZE OVER.
I believe Ronald Reagan said it pretty well when he said “so much of what they know is just not true”.
On another note since Ozero likes to trash the LAWS why do you think he is leaving the WH in Jan 2016 ???
I can imagine some crisis perhaps over some cop killing a black THUG and LEADERS arouse the RABBLE and RIOTS become widespread and Ozero is FORCED to declare Martial Law.
Remember “a CRISIS is a terrible thing to waste” and “you can do things you never knew were possible”…..
Can you name ONE THING HE HAS DONE THAT YOU CAN SAY WAS GOOD FOR America.
@clint:
That goes for the whole dam demo-COMMUNIST party and the RINO enablers! You are making the classic American political mistake of falling for the idea that it is just ‘one’ guy doing all this sh–t >>>—- it is in fact a large INTERNATIONALIST cabal – that has to destroy the US Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution — esp the US Constitution!
@clint:
He’d just change his screen name and log in on computers with different IP’s
@Greg:
If the sitiuation needs it, I sure hope we’re lucky enough to have someone like him to take care of business. Greg would do the same, you’d just lie about it, as is customary of Libs.
@Budvarakbar:
Greg is not smart enough to realize that everyone is playing with him. He thinks we take him seriously, while we’re all laughing when we’re stringing him along.
@Redteam: Depends on his level within the left wing moronacracy!
Well (bud) I don’t think it is just one guy causing problems. Looks like we go to the left fast under dems and go to the left a little slower under RINOS. I don’t know but if the world is anything like my neighborhood, rich people get together and talk about how to make a buck and run things. Probably have some clubs like say the Trilateral Commission, I don’t know maybe some others have a Bilderburger Group and maybe even a Club of Rome that do the same thing.
I argue amongst my friends that we cannot fix this by voting……
We have entered into a dangerous time.