|
Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on May 3, 2009 15:04:57 GMT
Torture? No. Except . . . I could not agree more. Charles Krauthammer is a voice of reason in the intellectual wasteland that is our mainstream media.
By Charles Krauthammer Friday, May 1, 2009, Washington Post Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent's life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy. Even John McCain, the most admirable and estimable torture opponent, says openly that in such circumstances, "You do what you have to do." And then take the responsibility.
Some people, however, believe you never torture. Ever. They are akin to conscientious objectors who will never fight in any war under any circumstances, and for whom we correctly show respect by exempting them from war duty. But we would never make one of them Centcom commander. Private principles are fine, but you don't entrust such a person with the military decisions upon which hinges the safety of the nation. It is similarly imprudent to have a person who would abjure torture in all circumstances making national security decisions upon which depends the protection of 300 million countrymen.
The second exception to the no-torture rule is the extraction of information from a high-value enemy in possession of high-value information likely to save lives. This case lacks the black-and-white clarity of the ticking time bomb scenario. We know less about the length of the fuse or the nature of the next attack. But we do know the danger is great. (One of the "torture memos" noted that the CIA had warned that terrorist "chatter" had reached pre-9/11 levels.) We know we must act but have no idea where or how -- and we can't know that until we have information. Catch-22.
Under those circumstances, you do what you have to do. And that includes waterboarding. (To call some of the other "enhanced interrogation" techniques -- face slap, sleep interruption, a caterpillar in a small space -- torture is to empty the word of any meaning.)
Did it work? The current evidence is fairly compelling. George Tenet said that the "enhanced interrogation" program alone yielded more information than everything gotten from "the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency put together."
Michael Hayden, CIA director after waterboarding had been discontinued, writes (with former attorney general Michael Mukasey) that "as late as 2006 . . . fully half of the government's knowledge about the structure and activities of al-Qaeda came from those interrogations." Even Dennis Blair, Obama's director of national intelligence, concurs that these interrogations yielded "high value information." So much for the lazy, mindless assertion that torture never works.
Could we not, as the president repeatedly asserted in his Wednesday news conference, have obtained the information by less morally poisonous means? Perhaps if we'd spoken softly and sincerely to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, we could equally have obtained "high-value information."
There are two problems with the "good cop" technique. KSM, the mastermind of 9/11 who knew more about more plots than anyone else, did not seem very inclined to respond to polite inquiries about future plans. The man who boasted of personally beheading Daniel Pearl with a butcher knife answered questions about plots with "soon you will know" -- meaning, when you count the bodies in the morgue and find horribly disfigured burn victims in hospitals, you will know then what we are planning now.
The other problem is one of timing. The good cop routine can take weeks or months or years. We didn't have that luxury in the aftermath of 9/11 when waterboarding, for example, was in use. We'd been caught totally blind. We knew there were more plots out there, and we knew almost nothing about them. We needed to find out fast. We found out a lot.
"We have people walking around in this country that are alive today because this process happened," asserts Blair's predecessor, Mike McConnell. Of course, the morality of torture hinges on whether at the time the information was important enough, the danger great enough and our blindness about the enemy's plans severe enough to justify an exception to the moral injunction against torture.
Judging by Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress who were informed at the time, the answer seems to be yes. In December 2007, after a report in The Post that she had knowledge of these procedures and did not object, she admitted that she'd been "briefed on interrogation techniques the administration was considering using in the future."
Today Pelosi protests "we were not -- I repeat -- were not told that waterboarding or any other of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used." She imagines that this distinction between past and present, Clintonian in its parsing, is exonerating.
On the contrary. It is self-indicting. If you are told about torture that has already occurred, you might justify silence on the grounds that what's done is done and you are simply being used in a post-facto exercise to cover the CIA's rear end. The time to protest torture, if you really are as outraged as you now pretend to be, is when the CIA tells you what it is planning to do "in the future."
But Pelosi did nothing. No protest. No move to cut off funding. No letter to the president or the CIA chief or anyone else saying "Don't do it."
On the contrary, notes Porter Goss, then chairman of the House intelligence committee: The members briefed on these techniques did not just refrain from objecting, "on a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda."
More support, mind you. Which makes the current spectacle of self-righteous condemnation not just cowardly but hollow. It is one thing to have disagreed at the time and said so. It is utterly contemptible, however, to have been silent then and to rise now "on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009" (the words are Blair's) to excoriate those who kept us safe these harrowing last eight years.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
|
|
|
Post by Big Lin on May 3, 2009 22:28:44 GMT
One of the things that the Nazis were put on trial at Nuremberg for was because of crimes against humanity.
The most obvious example of their wickedness was the attempted genocide of millions - including my own relatives.
Another thing for which they were RIGHTLY put on trial and punished was their use of torture.
The US, like every civilised nation, has signed a declaration which commits it to REFUSING to use torture no matter what the circumstances.
Leaving aside the MORAL objections, if the US doesn't even abide by an international treaty it signed voluntarily, why should we regard it as anything other than a rogue state on the same level as Venezuela, Zimbabwe, or Vietnam?
I've always thought that America stood for something BETTER than the mentality of a playground bully.
Was I wrong to be so naive about the US?
|
|
|
Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on May 3, 2009 23:14:57 GMT
Lin - I think Krauthammer's article covers the subject very well.
The idea that 'the good guys' should not use torture or they will turn into the bad guys is a bit over simplified.
There are circumstances where torture is merited. I would hope that our leadership would be able to recognize such a situation.
The Bush Administration handled that exactly right. I worry about the Obama crowd being unable to pull the trigger when appropriate.
|
|
|
Post by Big Lin on May 3, 2009 23:17:11 GMT
I'd say Obama's mob were MORE likely to use torture because he's got less opposition to him than Bush had when he was President.
|
|
|
Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on Jun 28, 2010 22:08:02 GMT
DON CHERRY of hockey night in Canada , was asked on a local live radio talk show, just what he thought about the allegations of torture of suspected terrorists. His reply prompted his ejection from the studio, but to thunderous applause from the audience.
HIS STATEMENT:
"If hooking up one muslim terrorist prisoner's testicles to a car battery to get the truth out of the lying little camel shagger will save just one Canadian life, then I have only three things to say:
'Red is positive, black is negative, and make sure his nuts are wet."
|
|
|
Post by sadie1263 on Jun 29, 2010 1:47:27 GMT
Oh seriously......she's been married to Bill for how long? ? Of course she believes in torture.
|
|
|
Post by pumpkinette on Jun 29, 2010 16:41:51 GMT
She's just another New World Order, 1 world government loving STOOGE ***#### just like her SEX LIAR husband. That STOOGE is always spewing about how "good" he is with his charity work, etc. Really? He never says a WORD about the VICTIMS of depleted uranium! Many of those victims were created under HIS watch while he was US president. He did NOTHING to help those people and still has done nothing.
|
|
|
Post by pumpkinette on Jun 29, 2010 16:45:54 GMT
But, I thought the Democrats are DIFFERENT than the Republicans like Dubya on this issue? WHAT A JOKE! This is ANOTHER proof that they're NOT BELOW the surface ***#### that people keep believing. She's NO BETTER than Dubya on this 1. I'm so sick and tired of hearing how this kind of EVIL MENTALITY would END with PHONY "Savior" Obama came in. Really? Just like the ANTI-IRAQ WAR DEMOCRATS proved what cowards MOST of them are after "Savior" got in. NO DIFFERENCE! WHERE are the protests now? I know of 1 of them, though, who didn't sell out and that's Cindy Sheehan. She hasn't changed her views on the Iraq War and hasn't shut up about it either thank God!
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 29, 2010 18:36:15 GMT
DON CHERRY of hockey night in Canada , was asked on a local live radio talk show, just what he thought about the allegations of torture of suspected terrorists. His reply prompted his ejection from the studio, but to thunderous applause from the audience. HIS STATEMENT: "If hooking up one muslim terrorist prisoner's testicles to a car battery to get the truth out of the lying little camel shagger will save just one Canadian life, then I have only three things to say: 'Red is positive, black is negative, and make sure his nuts are wet." Isn't the key word here "suspected"? Legitimise torture and your "dead cert" will sooner or later be proven to be a completely innocent person who (more likely than not) either gives false information out of depseration, thereby wasting time, or kills themselves. If they can.
|
|
|
Post by mikemarshall on Jun 29, 2010 23:46:24 GMT
Why should anyone be surprised that Hillary Clinton supports torture? After all, while her husband was President she presided over a vast assault upon the civil liberties of ordinary Americans.
|
|
|
Post by pumpkinette on Jun 30, 2010 9:30:42 GMT
Why should anyone be surprised that Hillary Clinton supports torture? After all, while her husband was President she presided over a vast assault upon the civil liberties of ordinary Americans. SEX LIAR Bill Clinton also took away the rights of many US military veterans to have guns without even telling them. Talk about cowardly evil! He did this right before he left office. These veterans wouldn't even find out until they went to buy a gun and were then told they couldn't. It's just another example of how some Democrats believe this ***### about how guns are evil, have to be banned, etc. Unfortunately, I used to BE 1 who believed that.
|
|
|
Post by o on Jun 30, 2010 11:27:33 GMT
WHAT?!! Bill's really a SHE?
|
|
|
Post by pumpkinette on Jul 1, 2010 11:54:22 GMT
WHAT?!! Bill's really a SHE? That was cool. ;D When I say sex liar I mean how he LIED TO ALL OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE LIKE THEY WERE TRASH about how he "didn't have sex with that woman" ( ) when he really DID.
|
|
|
Post by o on Jul 1, 2010 13:30:14 GMT
I see.
|
|
|
Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on Jul 1, 2010 21:02:05 GMT
Pumpkinette - Imagine a teenage daughter trying to use the same arguments Bill Clinton used on the American public.
Did you have sex with that boy? No Mom, we did not have sexual intercourse. Well then, what did you do? We just fooled around. Exactly how did you fool around? Oh you know, we fondled and then we did it orally. You mean you had oral sex and you don't consider that having sex. No mom, I looked it up in the dictionary and having sex means having intercourse. We didn't do that so we didn't have sex.
I'm sure mom would be really happy with that line of BS ;-)
|
|
|
Post by pumpkinette on Jul 24, 2010 13:55:30 GMT
Pumpkinette - Imagine a teenage daughter trying to use the same arguments Bill Clinton used on the American public. Did you have sex with that boy? No Mom, we did not have sexual intercourse. Well then, what did you do? We just fooled around. Exactly how did you fool around? Oh you know, we fondled and then we did it orally. You mean you had oral sex and you don't consider that having sex. No mom, I looked it up in the dictionary and having sex means having intercourse. We didn't do that so we didn't have sex. I'm sure mom would be really happy with that line of BS ;-) I agree 100%! This LIE that oral sex isn't sex is disgusting and Clinton is HUGELY reponsible for it! I found out not long ago he was a SEX LIAR for YEARS before the intern thing. I bought a book about groupies and 1 of the women in it told about how he denied having sex with HER. She was totally disgusted by his lies and I agree with her. If someone is going to be a SEX LIAR for years then what does that say about him even POSSIBLY lying in OTHER areas? It's disgusting!
|
|
|
Post by aubrey on Aug 15, 2010 16:54:06 GMT
Oral sex was a Catholic way of saying that you hadn't had sex (see G Legman, Rationale of the Dirty Joke Volume 1). Clinton wasn't the first. He didn't even popularise it. It was popular before.
|
|
|
Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on Aug 16, 2010 1:36:19 GMT
Many men think oral sex is the best thing there is because the woman has complete control over movements of her lips and tongue. She has much less control over muscle movements in her vagina. She's able to make a man very happy with oral sex.
Bill Clinton obviously is on board with that thinking.
|
|
|
Post by jade on Aug 16, 2010 7:36:29 GMT
If someone is going to be a SEX LIAR for years then what does that say about him even POSSIBLY lying in OTHER areas? It's disgusting! He dissembled. You think dissembling in a politician is surprising? Seriously? I doubt any politician on the planet would come up to your standards. Indeed, Jesus would struggle.
|
|
|
Post by aubrey on Aug 16, 2010 16:09:02 GMT
You notice how people in favour of torture are never in any danger of being tortured themselves?
|
|