Easy Answer from the Left — as long as it doesn’t kill anyone I care about, the price is never too high.

That’s pretty much what it boils down to. They figure the odds are good it won’t be them.

TrueNorth on April 22, 2009 at 5:03 PM

I agree with everything you said except that Obama is a “narcisist-in-chief.” I like Obama, just not a lot of his supporters. Too many of them are rabid. That being said, with all due respect, a lot of his “not supporters” are a little too rabid. I also think the notion is laughable that these Bush administration officials should be prosecuted for doing what they thought was right. All out laughable. I agree; it was a mistake, but an illegal mistake? I don’t think so. It’s the same thing with the wiretapping. Whoever posted about Clinton approving torture was right; you want to prosecute people for approving torture, then have a go. You’ll find a long line of ‘em at the end of your left-wing rainbow.

Yep, day #2 now and still no answer. Guess they don’t have one.

Conservative_SAHM on April 22, 2009 at 10:50 AM

I asked one straight up tonight. The crickets are still chirping in my neck of the woods.

But, hey, maybe they could show their captives looped video of the Code Pink babes. That could break anybody!

Halli Casser-Jayne
author, A YEAR IN MY PAJAMAS WITH PRESIDENT OBAMA, The Politics of Strange Bedfellows

Constantine on April 22, 2009 at 3:17 PM

Introducing getalife’s new comedy partner. Be sure to check out her inane “blog”.

Also encouraging is this post today from the Boston Globe’s token conservative Jeff Jacoby who concedes, as do I, that the interrogations may well have saved lives…but is still opposed to them.

By the way: I am not criticizing George Bush and Dick Cheney. I think the aggressive interrogations were a mistake, not a crime. In the atmosphere that prevailed after 9/11, especially after the anthrax attacks, it was entirely understandable that the president would authorize extraordinary measures. Obama should not have released the memos and I think he is mainly doing it for the pleasure of embarrassing the previous administration.

As is clear from the contents of the memos, George Bush tried to cope with an extremely dangerous situation using extraordinary measures while still maintaining the traditional American respect for human rights and common decency. I have no quarrel with George Bush. I prefer him any day to the narcissist-in-chief who is running the country now. In fact, I believe you got stuck with Obama at least in part because of public distaste for the “aggressive interrogation” policy. Still think it was worth it?

My main complaint is directed at the gung-ho advocates of torture who do not seem to realize there is a moral quandary that has to be addressed. It seems that some people posting here do not even know that their country has a reputation for respecting human rights, and that they should be proud of it. This is not Leftism. It is honor, patriotism and traditional values.

Both sides need to quit pretending on this issue. Mock executions fit the definition of torture, and they also saved a lot of American lives. If we can admit to reality, then we can have an honest debate…

Reminds me of the abortion issue – 30 years from now people will still be yelling about the wisdom/ethics of this issue

This probably did more to cripple our intelligence agencies then all the budget cuts to them in the 1990’s did. There is nothing now he is going to be able to do in the future while he is in office to fix it. Then is the question of will it recover even with a change of administration because they will still have to wonder if the next President might change his mind.

getalife on April 22, 2009 at 11:14 AM

What exactly are you saying is BS?

I read the article and it claims that there was pressure from Cheney and Rumsfield to torture high level detainees because:

“The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there.”

I lived in NY during that period, so, I’m well aware of the fact that people were worried that another attack was coming. KSM claimed more attacks were coming. Are you saying that it’s BS that the waterboarding was able to get actionable intel out of KSM that helped the U.S. stop further terrorist attacks?

Or are you claiming that the torture was in order to force evidence of a false connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda (which, according to this article, was already stated as not being the main reason for the torture)?

Assuming the unnamed sources quoted in this article are telling the truth (given that the article points out that other interrogation officers remembered being pressured to get intel but said they were not pressured to provide evidence of an Iraq/AQ link, that is questionable) it seems that this article could be used as evidence that torture actually does work.

Many people claim that torture doesn’t work because people being tortured will give false info in order to end the torture. Now, we have a situation where the people doing the torturing were supposedly looking for specific information about a connection between Iraq and AQ. Instead, what they got was actionable intel about an attack on LA and no false confessions about the connection they were supposedly looking for.

If torture = actionable intel with no false info, it seems like a winning tactic to me.

BS:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66622.html

getalife on April 22, 2009 at 11:14 AM

It certainly is. When all else fails the left revives yet another of their distorted version of events and smears it around for the umpteenth time.

popularpeoplesfront on April 22, 2009 at 11:55 AM

Was 9/11 brought on because of the USA using harsh techniques or because we used techniques that weren’t harsh enough?

History has repeatedly shown that societies that condone torture eventually see far greater human rights violations against their own people (from foreign enemies as well as domestic).

The fact that the US Government waterboarded a man over 180 times in one month will create blowback. Our troops and our nation is in greater danger because of this, just as this brought more violence from our enraged enemies.