Michael Barone, Washington Examiner:
It is an article of faith among the Madame Defarges that the interrogation techniques they consider torture didn’t produce useful information. All along, Obama tried to pay homage to this dogma. The text of Adm. Blair’s letter released to the public carefully omitted his admission that “high value information came from interrogations in which the methods were used.†Just normal editing, said his spokesman. Yeah, sure. Nor has Obama showed any sign of agreeing to Dick Cheney’s demand that the full results of the interrogations should be released. That might embarrass the Madame Defarges.
Whence cometh the fury of these people? I think it arises less from revulsion at interrogation techniques — who thinks that captured al Qaeda leaders should be treated politely and will then tell the whole truth? — than it does from a desire to see George W. Bush and Bush administration officials publicly humiliated and repudiated. Just as Madame Defarge relished watching the condemned walk from the tumbrel to the guillotine, our contemporary Defarges want to see the people they hate condemned and destroyed.
It doesn’t seem to matter to our Madame Defarges that it’s not clear that Bush officials violated any criminal law. One of the core principles of our law is that criminal statutes must be construed strictly against the government. If the government wants to deprive someone of his liberty for doing something, it should be very specific about what that something is. This distinguishes our system from authoritarian and totalitarian regimes that demand, like Alice’s Red Queen, “verdict first, trial later.â€
It also doesn’t occur to the Madame Defarges of our times that revolutions like hers tend to devour their own. Robespierre followed Marie Antoinette to the guillotine not so many months later. Today we see Pelosi trying to explain how she was present at confidential briefings where the enhanced interrogation methods were described and did nothing to stop them from being applied. If there is going to be a “truth commission†— a title that is redolent of Stalinist purges — shouldn’t she be one of the first to testify?
As for Barack Obama, asked in September 2007 if we should “beat out of†an al Qaeda higher-up details of an impending attack, he said “there are going to be all sorts of hypotheticals, an emergency situation, and I will make that judgment at that time.†So “torture†just might be OK under the right circumstances.
In the meantime, Obama’s appeasement of the Madame Defarges carries a political price. Pollster Scott Rasmussen reports that 58 percent of Americans believe his release of the CIA memos endangers national security. Show trials of Bush administration officials could raise that number. Appeasing the Madame Defarges may cost more than it is worth.
I’ve already argued what I believe is the impetus behind this selective and, it turns out, politically expedient, release of the so-called “torture memos,” so I won’t rehash the argument.
Still, I remain convinced that the arrogance it takes to call for the heads of Republicans without even giving a second thought to the mainstream press underscoring your own complicity in what you are now arguing is both immoral and criminal, speaks to just how politically motivated our activist media has become — and just how much of a disservice they are doing to both to truth and to the idea of an objective press acting as a check on the powerful.
Oddly enough, the Obama administration provided New Yorkers with a reminder what all that enhanced interrogation kerfuffle was about, today. Obama himself wasn’t pleased, it is said.
Oh, pshaw. They love “The Truth!” They check “The Powerful!”
Turns out those are their little nicknames for Teh One’s asscheeks. No guesses on what they call his genitals.
This is not about torture. But I suspect most of you will like it.
I disagree with some of the things Bush did as President, waterboarding being one of them. So Bush was wrong–stop doing it and see how things turn out. But to continue to wail about this is not helpful or productive. But let me engage in a little thought experiment.
Imagine if John McCain won. And President McCain did every single thing President Barack Obama did in his first 100 days. Do you think for a second he would have gotten the same reaction from that arbitrator of all that is good and pure, Andrew Sullivan?
Don’t want to use Sullivan, subsitute your own pundit from the left. I am absolutely sure the reaction of the MSM and the liberal blogosphere would be negative about a President McCain.
Unfair? I don’t know…
No points for stating the obvious, but I’m pretty sure I’d be negative about a President McCain. My distaste for TEH ONE only barely exceeds my distaste for Maverick.
You disagree, or Bush was wrong? They’re not the same thing. My local mall, which had an attack thwarted says “Bush was right.”
As do I.
I have no issues with waterboarding. It’s the Alfred Hitchcock of torture: you THINK you’re gonna die, but it’s just a mind game to be played in between the prayers and fattening meals. We’re crafty that way, us Westerners. Western Torture is designed to leave the “victim” alive at the end of the process, so we can do it again. But only if we have to. We’re not like those other guys, no matter how much we want the secret ingredient to your aunt’s falafel.
What other guys? You know, the ones with the plastic shredders and glass pipettes for the urethra? You’ve heard of them, right? That’s a whole ‘nother level of torture and it’s miles above and beyond anything we’ve EVER done. To be honest, if the guy is alive at the end, well, too bad for them. There’s another round guaranteed to be a coming until the poor sap expires at the end.
In our hands, death is a terrible misfortune. In their hands, death is sweet salvation.
Too bad SanFranNan hasn’t a clue as to which is which. This could be fun to watch.
Pelosi: Cluck cluck cluck cluck cluck BACAW!
Pelosi Constituent: Nan always delivers.
So, like, Madame Defarges is coolbeans after all?
In other news, the most media-savvy POTUS in the history of time decides to update its photo of Air Force One by the Statue of Liberty.
In the age of PhotoShop.
HilarityPants-wetting panic ensues.dicentra, what do you suppose the carbon footprint was of that photo?
I was listening to NPR’s On The Media yesterday, and heard this segment. There is a reference to Orwell’s Politics and the English Language. The context will make your head spin.
shouldn’t the s&m crowd be a little nervous about this “torture” debate?
Transcript of the segment.
dicentra, what do you suppose the carbon footprint was of that photo?
What do I care? I’m a full-throated supporter of pumping CO2 into the atmosphere.
It’s good for my little fleurs.
Hewitt just interviewed Steve Schmidt or whoever was the campaign manager for McCain.
Wasn’t impressed, not a bit. Duud didn’t think that Couric and Gibson were unfair with their interviews, described the Couric interview as a disaster, and failed to recognize that he was the a moron who let the press have the final cut.
Barcky cares more about a staged photo-op than he does the image of a 747 flying towards lower Manhattan with a fighter jet escort. Shocka.
I wonder what TOTUS will have to say about that, and how long before someone gets thrown under the back of the bus.
These clowns are destroying one of the things that made America unique at its’ founding: we transfer power peacefully.
that’s when i switched levin. steve schmidt: get off the phone you big dope!
next on hugh meghan speaks
levin
files foia with cia for memos on congressional briefing on enhanced interrogation.
I think the point that “the three terrorists who were waterboarded were advised ahead of time that they would not die from the procedure” has been completely left out of the discussion.
http://veteranstoday.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6072
If you know in advance that you are not going to die, how in hell is that torture?
hey O! the sheihks know how to torture
Q:If you know in advance that you are not going to die, how in hell is that torture?
Because it must sucks worse than talking.
Q:If you know in advance that you are not going to die, how in hell is that torture?
Because it must sucks worse than talking.
I do not want to get into the whole discussion about whether or not waterboarding was fine, or whether or not McCain sucks or not, my point is the left is disingenuous. I disagreed about waterboarding and taking off the gloves, but I sure as hell do not want to see show trials over it to appease Andrew Sullivan.
Obama spends insanely and it is okay–because it is all Bush’s fault. The double standard is insane.
It is my firm contention that the “Madame Defarges” do not consider waterboarding to be torture. Calling it and other things like panties on the head, belly slaps, etc. torture is a political theater device to position their political enemies as defending, so called, torture.
Their pursuit of power guides all. It is their only moral principle. If it would gain them the power they seek they would not hesitate to celebrate using Saddam’s wood chipper technique on anyone.
Their use of the word “torture” is just another in a long line of lies, twists, and distortions of meaning. It means nothing but is only a means to an end.
Steve Schmidt is in no danger of being relevant again. Having media whore Meghan’s coward daddy on your resume has to feel a lot analogous to castration I would imagine.
“My local mall, which had an attack thwarted says “Bush was right.—
They were targeting malls too? The bastards.
Isn’t it fabulous how Obama has reconciled with our enemies and put fear into the hearts of Americans? Does any image illustrate so neatly the wrongheadedness of the Obama administration than Americans scrambling in terror from Air Force One?
“It is my firm contention that the “Madame Defarges†do not consider waterboarding to be torture. Calling it and other things like panties on the head, belly slaps, etc. torture is a political theater device to position their political enemies as defending, so called, torture. ”
There’s something known as “Bush’s policy of torture.”
https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=14443
and what about islam and its will to power?
meya, I’m not sure how your link follows. Please explain.
meya
Waterboarding and sleep deprivation are not torture.
Now that’s out of the way, it must be all fire nice to feel your purity that you would rather thousands of innocent people die in Los Angeles than have the hem of your lily white garmet soiled by anything distasteful as making the masterminds of such murder uncomfortable.
I mean, is it simply that you could find a string of words from Jeff that went, “Bush’s policy of torture”?
Full context of meya’s quote:
meya, I’m not sure how your link follows.
Simple. She is a serial liar.
blowhard, sorry, OT here, but louchette left a comment directed at you in The Late Great thread.
“Waterboarding and sleep deprivation are not torture.”
We don’t have to argue that. We can just refer to “bush’s policy of torture,” and discuss whether it works, like at the link.
We don’t have to argue that.
Quite correct.
We don’t have to argue it because it is a lie and you are a liar.
Or we could discuss Bush’s policy of torture avoidance or non-torture too, couldn’t we?
i like clinton’s rendition program. dems win
So, after it’s been pointed out that you pulled a line out of context, you’re just going to double down on it, meya? How can I do anything but simply agree with SBP, then?
Thanks, sdferr, I missed that.
i like panty waist proggs like O!
Courtesy Treacher: outstanding one-liner.
link, please. other than your sui sponte crap.
i like arab torture. it has a hummus taste don’t you know.
nice dim witted. ax a question to 44 commentators .
This is the best you got? I’ll take my vitamins and call it a day.
I got toothpaste on my shirt.
“So, after it’s been pointed out that you pulled a line out of context”
I gave you the link to the context so you could look up that there was something known as “bush’s policy of torture.”
I like to refer to it as Bush’s policy of preventing further terrorist attacks.
My understanding from reading Mr. Drudge is that there are numerous instances of the people what are stricken with the swine flu and, in many varied places is where this is occurring. Developing…
Irony, metaphor, tricksey, tricksey, whoosh, above head and pay grade.
I realize this makes me a monster, but I’m truly happy that KSM was waterboarded. It is my hope that later we strap him to a chair and run electricity through his body until he is dead.
So, you linked here, where Jeff was using “Bush’s policy of torture” as a media contrivance, to show what exactly? What, the WaPo and NYTimes servers are down and you can’t link to them? Because they actually meant it.
I gave you the link to the context so you could look up that there was something known as “bush’s policy of torture.â€
You are a liar, meya.
That is all.
>>As for Barack Obama, asked in September 2007 if we should “beat out of†an al Qaeda higher-up details of an impending attack, he said “there are going to be all sorts of hypotheticals, an emergency situation, and I will make that judgment at that time.†So “torture†just might be OK under the right circumstances.<<
Only have to go back to last Sept where, during the Dem debate, Bo and HC both showed they were okay with “torture”. Sure, they dressed it up in political mumbo jumbo, but it was clearly in there.
I mean, we could ask Jeff what he meant, but, let’s face it. We both know what he meant.
Uh, that should probably be “when”, not “where”.
meya knows quite well what Jeff meant, blowhard.
She is a serial liar. Every word out of her lying liehole is a lie, including “and” and “the”.
As said, it’s not torture if you can picture someone going on a game show and doing it for money.
You must remember when engaging meya that she has absolutely no sense of irony whatsoever. If Jeff said Bush had a policy of torture, then by God he meant just that.
Yeah, SBP, you’re right. Perhaps Meya could lie more convincingly, because I find lies aimed at dumb people to be confusing.
What, the sky is purple? Then I wonder, is this statement allegorical? Performance art? I forget, it’s just a simple lie, nothing more complex.
So, we have two theories. Meya is dumb, she’s not lying, she’s just confused. Or, meya is dumb, she’s lying poorly.
They both sound plausible. Probably varies from comment to comment.
I wonder if this poor bastard would consider water boarding torture?
Or, meya is dumb, she’s lying poorly.
Why do you think I call her Stupid Fascist Antisemitic Girl (SFAG for short)?
She’s also got a few other mental health issues, I suspect.
Does she really think her incompetent lies will gain her anything on this site?
I mean, I’m sure that kind of stuff really wows ’em down at her local IndyMedia clubhouse, but here?
I think that the fact that meya merely engagaes you speaks volumes, dudes.
Antisemitic as well? Great. Lovely subset of humanity, trolls.
That wasn’t an engagement. It wasn’t even a first date. Bumping elbows in an elevator, possibly.
Lovely, lovely, lovely. Minor 24 spoiler alert.
Garafolo is complaining about Things Not Being Very Legal And I’m Not Comfortable With It and Bauer rips her a new one. IF YOUR NEED TO COMPLAIN IS GREATER THAN YOUR CONCERN FOR THE PEOPLE WHOSE LIVES ARE IN DANGER YOU CAN LEAVE THE BUILDING
Chloe was involved. It was the best moment of the season.
I think you are a drunken moron, cynn.
So, there’s that.
How are those smokes tasting? Still like Barky’s ass?
Seen any of that free money that you thought he was going to steal from “rich people” and give to you?
‘Cause from what I can see the only groups that have gotten mucho dinero are banks and car companies.
And your kids get to pay for it all, cynn.
I must have missed that one. Gotta link?
jack where’s the bullet
that’s funny Garafolo made to look like a lib idiot on national tv
cynn
meya doesn’t “engage” … you might like to google the word.
Oh, yeah, blowhard. She was going on about “those people” a while back, then tried to backpedal and claim that of course she meant only Zionist Israelis, not all Jews.
But the mask had already slipped.
If there was some historical precedent for saying that Waterboarding is not torture then I’d be fine with that. However, anything I have ever read about it indicates that it has always been defined as torture, and that Americans were punished for using it during the Phillipine Insurrection, Japanese were hanged for it after World War Two, Pol Pot used it, McCain considers it torture, and virtually everyone else, too.
OK, so it’s torture, we shouldn’t have used it, we shouldn’t have done it, we’re sorry, we won’t do it again, end of story. That’s the way it should be handled. Pace Sullivan I don’t see any _necessity_ in pursuing this in a legal/criminal manner in the USA, ALTHOUGH the idea of seeing Pelosi in the dock with Cheney does make me smile.
So I am going to let it go, especially since it is clear that these various “enhanced” techniques, which sound like Abu Ghraib to me, and which I find disgusting and demeaning for both victim and perp, are HISTORY.
However the willingness of the soi disant conservative movement to defend this kind of stupid self-indulgent interrogating BS is a complete turnoff. A complete turnoff, and morally bankrupt.
You know, that right there is just bullshit.
It isn’t torture. It’s part of SERE training, I believe. As for the morality of it, this has been discussed at length here before. I believe the easiest stance to take is that it’s always wrong, morally. Me, I’d waterboard a fucking nun if I truly believed doing so would save 3000 of my fellow citizens. Steve would stand over the wreckage with his clean hands and clap himself on the back for having the moral courage not to stop the carnage when he had the opportunity.
And yes, meya is being disingenuous. Either that or stupid.
Steve, the procedure called “waterboarding” that the Japanese used is not the same procedure by the same name that the CIA used. I don’t know the specific differences (GOOGLE IT!), but the Japanese would go so far as to kill the victim. And they used salt water. Other stuff like that.
Also, the Japanese tortured their enemies to express their utter contempt for soldiers who were cowardly enough to allow themselves to be captured. They were also indulging in sadism. That last item, sadism, is one of the extremely important elements that distinguishes us from actual torturers. We’re not getting off on it: we’re trying to save lives.
In the moral hierarchy that I live by, it is not moral to allow many innocent people to be destroyed (those who die and those who live through the horror) just so that you can engage in moral preening by being against harsh interrogation techniques.
If you can’t distinguish between harsh interrogation techniques and actual torture (with or without sadism), then you should probably take your moral compass in for adjustment.
It’s called the lesser of two evils. And NO, that doesn’t mean that it’s still evil. If you manage to distinguish between the lesser of two evils, you’ve done the right thing. Period.
It’s like telling a bald-faced lie to the SS about the Jews hiding in your neighbor’s attic. Lying is usually wrong, but in the hierarchy of morality, it’s even more wrong to rat out the Jews and send them to their deaths.
NUANCE, Steve. And here you thought conservatives saw the world in black and white.
The thing missed which I was trying to emphasize in #27 is that the Left is using the “word” torture simply to glom onto the picture that comes to mind when that word is used. The rack, iron maiden, thumbscrew, whipping, beatings, bamboo shoots under the fingernails, cutting off fingers, all the images from movies and books.
Severe physical pain, permanent disability, death, and all done to solicit a false confession from the tortured, their loved one or worse, simply for the amusement of the torturers.
That impression is what they are aiming at and it is false. It is a bit of political theater. A lie ginned up to gain and keep power. Nothing unusual for the lower form of politician except this time they are playing the game with the lives of all they are supposed to be protecting. Word games that risk everyone’s life.
They, Democrats, the ones in power, care not one whit about torture, real torture, the kind that word conjures up. They would do it in a New York minute to anyone if it would save or increase their power. That is the only guiding light of their existence.
America, the Constitution, Liberty, Freedom, Life, none of that touches them, only their and their Party’s power. Those horrible things we do call torture are always done by those whose lives are devoted to the love and acquisition of power.
People like that are now running this nation. Contemplate that as they hoist this nation onto the “Tree of Woe”.
The resemblance between waterboarding and the “water treatment” employed by the Japanese begins and ends with the use of water.
In the water treatment, the water is forced into the stomach of the victim until it is painfully distended. Fortunate victims had it end there–others were then beaten about the abdomen. In some cases the stomach would rupture.
Strongly recommend you first find out what “it” is before you accept what you read.
I’d waterboard your ass 285-times just because I’m an asshole.
Doesn’t make it right.
Nor does it prove it’d save 3000 lives.
And for $10 extra I’d put another 285 snot-clearing waterboards on your hand-cuffed ass.
That’s the beauty of Capitalism!
I’d strongly recommend you do some time as a POW before you open up your hind legs and speak.
Quite possibly what John McCain thought but didn’t say: “Fuck off, pussy.”
And that would be torture, because you are an asshole.
Which you will never understand because you are a stupid asshole.
YIPYIPYIPYIPYIP!!!!!
YIP!
YIPYIPYIPYIPYIPYIPYIPYIPYIPYIP!!!!!
“It isn’t torture. It’s part of SERE training, I believe.”
I here thought SERE training was training on how to survive interrogation by bad guys.
I here thought SERE training was training on how to survive interrogation by bad guys.
Well, since you can’t teach folks how to survive a beheading……..
I’m guessing your massive head wound was somewhat less than a beheading meya.
The problem here is the defining of water boarding as torture, period, and then clamping that designation to the idealized concept of “We are America and we don’t torture.”
From there the debate degenerates.
I’ll skip past the whole “torture or not” ado as that has been beaten to death. Instead I’d like to take a look at the idealized portion of the defining of the debate and invite others to see the trap.
One of the problem with an “idealized” concept is that it’s pretty much closed ended. For many on the left the political opportunity to throw around a flaming word like TORTURE!! is just too tempting and easy. They choose to ignore the history of what I prefer to call “aggressive interrogations” through both Dem and Rep administrations and the effectiveness of same. There were numerous “renditions” during Clinton’s administration with nary a peep from the congress critters of either side so what’s changed now? How did we, suddenly, get a new lease on morality and find our inner Xanadu?
Well, George McChimpy Hitler Blood for Oil, of course.
But political opportunism aside, the argument has become mired in fallacies. If someone wishes to make an argument that “torture is wrong all of the time because we are America and we don’t torture” then they have to acknowledge that A) Water boarding is just plain torture; B) It’s wrong to utilize it regardless of the circumstances and the resulting consequences.
And there’s the rub. Once one has locked oneself into this rhetorical cage than attepmting to make an argument that “oh, by the way, it doesn’t work anyway” is both irrelevant and a trap. Once one has defined the terms one should be, if one has any honor and intellectual honesty, prepared to face whatever consequences accrue from one’s self styled high moral ground. If one has staked out the land of the holy, one should not be looking for additional acreage.
Instead we have many of the same moralist Everest peakers bleating about negative results as an evidentiary device despite clear evidence that water boarding worked in at least one and possibly other circumstances to prevent attacks and save American lives.
That argument should be irrelevant under the rhetorical construct of the anti-torture crowd. In other words, if they had a lick of intellectual honesty, they should be willing to accept whatever collateral damage results as the price to be paid for moral and cultural certainty and supremacy. Instead we get all kinds of simpering little tomes about torture not being “effective” or “lack of real world results.”
As if they knew better.
I’d like to see these same people be willing to stand up and state the obvious: If they believe that “torture” is “always wrong” for “America” then they should be willing to say clearly and unapologetically that American lives are less important than idealized morality, narrowly defined. There are a few I’ve seen make this argument (hell, there are more than a few who have talke3d about 3000 lives on 9/11 not being that big a deal) but the vast majority of the commentary I’ve seen plays the “effectiveness” card like a soothing balm over an inconvenient burn.
If not then the argument is less about idealism and more about opportunistic partisan bashing of BushHitler and the ReThuglicans or, maybe, just another opportunity to burnish leftist creds by bashing Amerikkka. In so many ways, it would be par for the course for the screeching moralists rather than a high handed moral stance worthy of polite applause in leftist circles.
I here thought SERE training was training on how to survive interrogation by bad guys
Interrogation isn’t synonymous with torture, liebot.
Naomi Wolf almost makes sense on torture, till she follows her master Soros’ directions and calls for show trials of Bush and Cheney. Still, worth reading.
I don’t believe you about the Naomi.
Why would anyone voluntarily read anything written by Naomi Wolf? Oh that’s right, we are talking about torture.
I do believe the moral preening about torture is a tacit bit of horsetrading on issues as well.
I suppose someone could ask O! if shoving KSM’s head into a birth canal, and then sucking his brains out is in fact torture, or just a really, really late-term exercise of Mama Sheikh Mohammed’s “human rights to self determination and are you going to pay to raise KSM all over again?, if not shut up fundie godbag.”
The so-called “Torture Debate” we’re having in America allows the Arab leaque, OPEC, the Congressional Black Caucus, Barney Frank and the NYT to keep the focus where they want it, on Bush’s “illegal invasion” of Iraq.
And, as Obama defines down torture he disarms his country unilaterally in the middle of a war, making himself terrorism’s agent in an armistice with his own country. Neat, huh?
It is truly confusing: What ever could drive Obama’s administration, certain media-org’s and foreign state’s law-enforcers like Spain’s Attorney General to broker for Islamic terrorists? More pointedly, why would Obama’s administration treat Bush’s Operation Iraqi Freedom as if it was inhumane and illegal, and in need of Nuremburg-like justice?
As I recall from their press conferences, criminalizing OIF in the court of public opinion was Al-Qaida’s, Dominique De Villepin’s, and the Muslim Brotherhood’s priority. Why would Obama carryt their water for them?
Someone, I presume someone at CIA, destroyed video tape of some number of these interrogation sessions. Are those persons involved in that destruction going to be hauled before a court for destruction of evidence of a crime under the current reading?