The torture of the Revealed Truth

libertarian in Austin, Texas

Thank you for publishing such straightforward information.

porkbelly

At last a well-deserved beat-down for the loathsome Andrew Sullivan. Even his photo is detestable.

Dixon

This is all splitting hairs. The fundamental question denied throughout this onrunning hoopla is this: "what is wrong with torture"?

I dont think its so simple. Isnt shooting someone in the course of combat with weapons designed to severely maim but not kill "torture?" All weapons using the NATO standard 5.56mm calibre fall into this category, which is virtually every assault rifle in the Western armoury.

Isnt locking somebody up in solitary for years on end...as happens on occasion in all Western penal systems torture?

Indeed, isnt imprisonment itself a kind of torture?

So in effect, once we start down this censorious slippery slope, just about anything anyone in authority ever does to anyone that is unpleasant will be deemed "torture". You can bet that even now there are lefty intellectuals arguing that "kettling" of G20 demonstrators was an act of torture!

Now, tying cooker rings to a man and letting them roast right through his flesh to his bones...its been done, I've seen a survivor of it on TV...irrespective of whether water-boarding is or is not "torture" is nonetheless on an utterly different plane of horror.

Frankly, if you have to argue over whether something is or isn't torture, then almost by definition, it isnt!

But even then, I would say torture is not an issue for me as long as theres no prospect of it being used against me.

Which brings us to the unsettling awkward fact that whether sqeamish Westerners want to ban their own people from using "torture", this will not under any circumstances discourage our enemies from applying the real thing.

So "banning" torture ( by our friends of our enemies ) will never provide me with an ounce of protection should I ever fall into the hands of torturers among those enemies. A prospect which torturing a few of them might make LESSS likely.

Therefore, I say let us use torture. Not this wimpy kind that the Sullivans and his like are whingeing about. Something much more robust. Certainly technological. Probably electrical.

Lets go further. Let us re-adopt our ancestors practice of execution by slow and agonising degrees over a length of time for certain crimes. In particular, for any would-be suicide bombers captured alive.

It should give them something to think about, possibly even representing rather a high hurdle to jump in order to reach the rumoured "47 virgins" in paradise.

zhombre

Alas, Merry Andrew long ago left the rational world behind, writing articles such as this and employing his beagle as fact checker.

Shaun Harbord

Pathetic. Long-winded, pedantic and immoral. That's MP and Dixon (assuming the latter is not being ironic). If anyone was faced with torture they would surely try to end it by telling the torturers everything and anything they wanted to hear - after that, what's the point of torturing the victim? On top of which, use of torture completely undermines any claim to moral superiority which Ms Phillips and her ilk have based their "defence" of Western "civilisation". Such people are not defending Western "civilisation" as any civilised society of true moral values does not not use torture.

Terry

I think that having to endure limp wristed left wing intellectual enemies of civilisation is torture.

Who do I complain to at the UN?

Nick

If somebody is waterboarded over a hundred times surely it can't be so bad. I expect the poor unfortunate sod was actually enjoying it. And at US taxpayers expense! Terrorists are living the life of luxury in their wire cages at Guantanamo; consider me outraged.

leo solomon

I am in total agreement with Dixon
I have not heard of any lasting physical damage being incurred by our enemies from water boarding- which is something that can not be said of those of our enemies who have lost limbs and major bodily functions in battle .Perhaps we should limit our weaponry to tranquilizer darts and tazer-guns to avoid the torture we currently inflict in battle.

stanley Jerusalem

Terry
April 28th, 2009 8:21am
"Who do I complain to at the UN?"
All of them. They are all very experienced torturers, especially the current chair of the Race Relations Dept.
It is sad but true that to maintain civilised law and order today a government will have to resort to torture to protect its citizens. In fact not just today but always. There will always be enthusiasts to rely upon to carry it out and enthusiasts to rely upon to protest and thus we keep a balance between excess and abject surrender to darker forces.

wonderer

Melanie, there seems to be a typo in "The anti-Bush lobby has consistently peddled the lie that Bush took the west to war in Iraq on the ‘lie’ that Saddam was operationally linked to al Qaeda -- and even that he claimed al Qaeda had been involved in 9/11." Don't you mean Bush claimed Saddam had been involved in 9/11?

And, Dixon, you are understating incentives by more than one-third. If you become a shahid you get 72 virgins, not 47.

Paul Freeman

Shaun Harbord:

A simple question. If your child was being held by terrorists or criminals and the only way to get the information that might ensure her safe release was by torture, would you sanction it?

Another one. There is a bomb hidden somewhere which, if it goes off, will kill many people and the only way to find out where it is and defuse it is by torture. Would you sanction it?

These are both credible examples of situations where demonstratively the use of torture would prevent suffering and save lives. Do you really believe that by using torture on such occasions we should be losing our moral superiority? If so, what kind of moral superiority is it that we have if we wittingly permit the death and suffering of the innocent in order to spare the pain of the guilty?

David Bouvier

Melanie - I am not generally a fan but appreciate very much in this case the accurate reportage of the argument for war as it was made.

Bush made clear at the beginning that 9/11 led to RE-EVALUATION of the threat posed by Saddam - without claiming any link - but the anti-war folk cannot or would not address that and instead reacted to their own straw man argument.

To be fair, some republicans got confused too and other seem to have worked hard to find a link, weak or otherwise for PR purposes.

But I don't take seriously anyone arguing against the war who doesn't address the argument as made.

Ronnie

Paul Freeman, one for you.

If you were being tortured would you tell your torturers what they wanted to hear in order to make them stop?

Here's another one. Would you accept that you were guilty simply by the very fact of your being tortured by your accusers?

Roy

Melanie has to be congratulated for her detailed analysis on a suspect pronouncement by what should be a reputable reporter in what should be a reputable newspaper.

Ian C

Sullivan was on Newsnight last night and wound himslef into an extraordinary frenzy on this.

I had earlier emailed him with a denouncement of his S/Times article on the subject by copying him in Clive Crooks sensible take on all this in the FT yesterday.

It is very odd that the WSJ and The S/Times, both of the Murdoch empire, can have the space for their positions on this. It loses the group much credibility to be so conflicting, not because they have opposing views expressed in the group papers but because Sullivan has plainly 'lost it' as the impartial journalist that he claims to be, and on which his reputation was built. He was my introduction to the blogosphere back in post-9/11 days.

Jake

And Andrew Sullivan's reward for writing such rubbish?

Why, a call from Al-Beebzera to appear on BBC2's Taqiyyanight to deliver more bilge to a salivating Kirsty Wark last night.

This is what The Sunday Times is reduced to these days, people like Brian Deer and Andrew Sullivan.

elixelx

The word "Intelligence" in the acronym CIA MAY be a misnomer, but surely these guys KNOW that they may well recieve both truths and falsehoods from enhanced interrogation techniques! Surely they must sift the post-interrogation material to decide what is actionable and what disposable! Surely they must recognise, on occasion that the very opposite of what they were told is the truth!
Have Interrogators and their techniques lost so very much cachet since WWII that we must dismiss out of hand whatever info is gathered by interrogation collected wither by iron fist or velvet glove?
Finally if an evil man tells a lie while in imminent fear of death, what is he likely to say while sharing a friendly cuppa of java with his buddy, the interogator?!
That's the bottom line here! If a few drops of water, administered under medical supervision get little, that friendly shared cuppa will get bupkiss, nada, nothing, zilch, zero, kutch nay!
This is not a case of the "alleged use of torture"; more to the point would be calling it the "use of alleged torture"!
I can hardly wait for the "barry collateral damage" Memos!

Jake

If you want an antidote to A Sullivan, American Thinker is on absolute rollicking form today with 'Barry Honey, Can We Talk about Torture?' by Kyle-Anne Shiver

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/04/barry_honey_can_we_talk_about_3.html

And this satirical piece by Lee Cary:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/04/tales_from_the_57_states_his_o_1.html

It is just a wonderful, wonderful website.

Hayward Maberley

Mr Bouvier,
Both the CIA and the DIA admitted that they unable to prove links between Usama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 Commission. The Faux Texan and the rest of the White House Cabal,. from the top Five Deferment Dick who still spouts the same Big Lie that was manufactured within his own cherry picking "intelligence gathering", through to Douglas Feith in his "intelligence" on links between Usama and Saddam before it was refuted by a Pentagon Report, on through to Paul Wolfowitz one of the arch Neocons who also tied the 11 September incidents to Iraq. Others in the PNAC/Neocon/Neozionist Cabal Rumsfeld, Perle, Rice all used the Big Lie. The plain fact is that there was no al Q’aeda operating in Iraq until 2003, well after the illegal invasion and occupation.
But from the mouth of the Faux Texan and late unlamented encumbrance in the White House himself.
"We went to war because we were attacked, and we are at war today because there are still people out there who want to harm our country and hurt our citizens. Some may disagree with my decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power...."
An extract from a speech broadcast on 18 June 2005 @ http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2005/06/20050618.html
Never mind that there was not one single Iraqi involved in the incidents of 11 September but 15 Saudi Wahabi Salafi, as well as 2 from the Gulf States and one each from Egypt and Lebanon. So why was “shock and awe” not visited upon the House of Saud? For it is Saudi Arabia that is the haven of Wahabi Salafi Islam and Saudi Arabia was and is still both a non democratic and a repressive regime.
But no, five hours after the” hijacked” aircraft crashed into the WTC and the Pentagon, Defence Secretary Rumsfeld told an aide to begin drawing up plans for war - on Iraq.
This despite the fact that in that afternoon the CIA concluded it was "virtually certain" that the bin Laden network was responsible, not Iraq or any other state actor. Rumsfeld wanted to know if U.S. intelligence was also "good enough hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time. Not only UBL [Usama bin Laden}." His admonition: "Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not."
So who was using a straw man?

Rebel Saint

For all the pro-torturers on here ... here's another far more credible scenario than the 'ticking bomb' one you like so much. Imagine if you will - You are a completely innocent citizen who has been "arrested" on shoddy intelligence and false accusations. The intelligence services however "know that you are guilty" so torture you until you tell them "the truth" they so want to hear. I guess Jean Charles de Menezes can be grateful we just killed him outright without torturing him first to find out who his accomplaces were.

John Birch

Paul Freeman:

Here's another scenario for you. How about someone who is innocent who is tortured and radicalized as a result and ends up becoming a terrorist. That's as valid as your example. And under your scenario should there be any limits in terms of what is used to extract information? And to see this issue once again put into a simplistic right-left dichotomy is so tiring. That left-winger Ronald Reagan signed a convention against torture. That left-winger John McCain, who knows what it is like to be tortured, is against it. Interrogators for both the CIA and the FBI have gone on the record as opposing the methods. Here's an account by an FBI interrogator who, along with CIA members, questioned Abu Zubaydah from March to June 2002. Funny that Melanie references Stephen Hayes but not him.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/opinion/23soufan.html?scp=1&sq=Ali%20FBI&st=cse

John Birch

Dixon: There are rules that govern warfare. How is that different from rules governing the interrogations of suspects?

stanley Jerusalem

Rebel Saint
April 28th, 2009 11:27am
Can you answer THIS question please from Paul Freeman on
April 28th, 2009 9:51am
"If your child was being held by terrorists or criminals and the only way to get the information that might ensure her safe release was by torture, would you sanction it?"

Rebel Saint

stanley Jerusalem -

That's easy. No I wouldn't (and I speak as a father of 4 primary school children).

I don't see what the point of having principles is if you only apply them when it's theorietical!

It's a bit like people who say to JW's, I bet you would have a blood transfusion if your child's life depended on it. No they don't.

I know that most people no longer live by principles but by expedience. However, there are some of us who still do. You see there are actually some things that are more important than life or death.

John Birch

Stanley Jerusalem: Would you be in favour of torture if it was your child who might be tortured because he or she was mistaken for a terrorist?

Nick Kaplan

Ronnie; surely it is a presupposition of Paul Freemans argument that someone being tortured would do exactly as you suggest and tell their torturers “what they wanted to hear in order to make them stop.” In the case of torturing someone who was guilty (another presupposition of Paul’s argument) this would, by definition, involve them telling the truth given that this is exactly what the torturers want to hear, and hence would involve telling them where the bomb is.

It is therefore hard to see whether or not you are arguing against Paul since your question seems to support his conclusion i.e. that the torture of those known to be guilty (how you know someone is guilty is, of course, an issue) is justified to save the lives and prevent the suffering of the innocent.

Ronnie

Stanley Jerusalem, one for you.

Are you torturing because you know you can extract reliable and effective information from your victim or because it makes you feel better because you are 'doing something'?

Rebel Saint

On a more general point, would a parent sanction torture to rescue their child? That is the reason that the law & judciary must remain independent & removed from the accussed & accuser, otherwise we descend to vigilantism & lawlessness. "24" makes good TV drama but we mustn't base our real lives on it!

Pot Head

Taxi to The Dark Side

http://www.taxitothedarkside.com/taxi_trailer.htm

Watch it!

Rebel Saint

And real world experience teaches us that once we have extracted what we need to know from the victim, we go on trying just to see what else they know.

Augustus

In an article in The Spectator of 21 February, 2004 by Brendan O'Neil, regarding reports that Saddam Hussein used an industrial meat grinder into which his son Qusay reportedly fed opponents of the Baathist regime, Andrew Sullivan is quoted in The Sunday Times as having said that reports by Ann Clwyd, Labour MP for Cynon Valley, "showed clearly, unforgettably, indelibly, that the Saddam regime is evil and that leading theologians and moralists and politicians ought to back the war."

Ronnie

Nick Kaplan, quite.

You must first know that they are guilty - how? You must then assume that they will tell you the truth because you also assume that they possess the information you want in the first place. Otherwise you are torturing them to find out if they know and if they don't, then you are just torturing them, period.

That is why it is generally considered to be an illegal activity except when it suits you, from what many contributers are saying.

It is not simply a tool applied to obtain evidence, it is an instrument of revenge, a means of punishment without an initial trial and conviction.

stanley Jerusalem

One must be careful what one wishes for. The key is expediency, and sadly not principles.Theoretical postulates may be argued over a good bottle of wine or two or a fine single malt but reality necessitates decisions not all of which may be correct. The greater good is not a recipe for Marxism or Totalitarianism. I sang in the first postwar performance [1987]of Die Massnahme by Hans Eisler[Play by Brecht]. It had been banned in the 30's by both the Nazis and the Soviets because it was too close to the truth of Communism for comfort.The experience of 'living' the libretto was shattering.

Original Tony

As the pilot who flew into the Alien spaceship in the movie Independence day said...'heloooo, I'm back...'; I would also like to say to all the regular bloggers here that 'helooo....I'm back'.
I'm raring to have a go at the limp-wristed lefties that contribute to MP's blog because they are the epitome of weakness in our world. Weakness and appeasement; two terrible words in the English dictionary.

Reagarding why Bush went to war in Iraq, who cares? It was pay-back time to an axis of THE evil in this world, that would have dispensed untold nasty weapons into the hands of terrorists bent on the West's demise.

Just remember, if the USA went to war over roughly the same number of dead in Pearl Harbour to those in the twin towers, then a war HAD to come. Why not start with one of the pillars of evil that would have spread nastines worldwide...yes Iraq...so let it be Iraq...who cares who got hit by the USA first. Has no-one noticed that the USA is just moving from pillar to pillar in the house of evil?

I have personally waterboarded a terror suspect and while it can be very distressing it is not fatal and I think it should be a legalised way of piling on pressure to get a suspect to talk. Let's see what the lefties say to this...come on now boys and girls!

stanley Jerusalem

Ronnie
April 28th, 2009 1:05pm
Would you say that the knowledge that your enemy uses torture might be a sufficient deterrent?

David

I find it hard to imagine that, where there to be evidence of this type of behaviour by Hamas to captured IDF soldiers, Melanie would be anything but outraged and point to it as proof of the evil and barbaric nature of Hamas.

Do it to muslims, as it's a case of "Well, it's not really torture, and besides, we need the information so it's worth it."

With guardians of our civilisation like Mel, who needs Sharia?

I'm pretty sure there was a post with the word hypocrisy in the title just recently.....

Dixon

Shaun Harbord JUST DOESNT GEDDIT!

"We" are not at war with these people because we think we are "morally superior". Why, that very idea is itself disgusting. No, we areat war with these people because they want to destroy us! Its as simple as that.

Moreover, if anything, our enemies are the "morally superior" party in the conflict They have The Book, and they one hundred per-cent live by it...we have only our freedom to choose how we live. "Morally", they ARE our "superiors". But do we want them to force us to live by their "moral" code? No, its not a beuty contest for Miss Virtue. Its about the difference between freedom and servitude...or Dhimmitude.

As for the old "theyll tell you any rubbish" canard...it doesnt stand a moments scrutiny. A simple thought experiment knocks it to bits. If a bank manager is tortured until he reveals the combination to the vault...and the vault opens, then torture has worked and we know the information is correct. Irrespective of how many false numbers he might give before he cracks.

Apply this to the present conflict. Replace vault combinations with such data as locations of arms caches, co-conspirators, fake ID's, phone numbers, etc, etc, etc anmd it becomes patently obvious that torture damn well WILL work regarding the obtaining of any data that once obtained will be verified if acted upon.

I say again, I am all for torture. Why is it supposed to be wrong?

Incidentally, Shaun , the word "civilisation" merely means ( in its literal translation from Latin components ) "living in cities".

Dixon

wonderer
April 28th, 2009 9:42am
Dixon, you are understating incentives by more than one-third. If you become a shahid you get 72 virgins, not 47."

Except I read the Koran a few years ago and didnt find any virgins mentioned in it anyway, as far as I can recall. Perhaps you can give me ( quite literally ) "chapter and verse". But I think its a characterisation not to be taken literally, like " a pinch of salt".

Dixon

John Birch
April 28th, 2009 11:43am
Dixon: There are rules that govern warfare. How is that different from rules governing the interrogations of suspects?"

For a start, the example I gave of 5.56mm ammunition disproves your argument.

Secondly, the notion of rules of war is itself utterly absurd. War is what happens when rules break down, thats almost axiomatic.

stanley Jerusalem

David
April 28th, 2009 1:22pm
Do you live in a vacuum?
Your opinions are certainly vacuous.I suppose you object on principle to what the British did to their enemies in WW1 and 2 because it offends your principles. Or am I wrong. Are you more selective? One thing's for sure. You are here and expressing an opinion or are you an Aryan who's survival was guaranteed?

David

"Its about the difference between freedom and servitude..."

Favouring torture puts you on the side of those seeking servitude.

Freedom loving people know that torture is wrong. Ask Ronald Reagan.

Dixon

P.S, before anyone tries to confuse the issue, I am well aware of the OTHER reasons why 5.56mm is the NATO calibre ( smaller, lighter, cheaper,higher ROF, more volume carried, allowing smaller, lighter cheaper weapons with higher ROF ). Nonetheless, part of the rational behind its adoption was that wounded Russians will be a burden on their comrades whilst ones killed outright by 7.62mm rounds will be let off easy. I am quite sure writhing around with parts of your body ripped out by 5.56mm fmj's is going to be much more like "torture" than "water boarding".

David

"Let's see what the lefties say to this"

Stalin, Mao - people who loved the use of torture. Why do you think that people against its use are "lefties"?

Original Tony

Rebel Saint (a DEMON ??)...you wouldn't let someone get tortured to free your kids? You think that moral values are worth more than life itelf?

Plah! First of all show your comment on this blog to your kids and get some feed-back from them.

Secondly, you have obviously never experienced true terror in your sheltered, limp-wristed life have you? I mean sheer terror where you shake and shiver to your bones?

That is the fear you would feel if a gook had a gun to your daughter's head and if the ONLY way of rescuing her was to torture someone, you would be the first to pick up the baseball bat or hosepipe.

Don't try and say otherwise, your lofty, liberal ideals go out with the bathwater on this one.

This is why I despise lefties; they are all armchair generals and have never experienced true, unrestrained terror. I hope an d

Stephen Rothbart

Aahh David! Firstly do you have any idea how Hamas is treating the kidnapped IDF Soldier Shalit? No, nor do I, but I bet he is not sitting in a room watching Palestinian soaps and being spoon-fed by 72 virgins either. Is being imprisoned without trial for 3 years after being kidnapped not a form of torture?

But let us stick to the facts. Extradordinary Rendition is where the US Government 'sub-contracted' certain Middle Eastern States who were allies (and no, Israel was not one of them) to practice a more extreme kind of torture on suspected terrorists, and by that I mean WAAAY beyond water-boarding.

And who signed this into law, thus allowing for this to happen?

Kindly step forward Bill Clinton and take a bow. Now if you want to really get after the US for torture, forget Bush and his friends. They actually commissioned a report with their lawyers to ask what constituted torture. Pelosi may have been asleep at every one of those meetings of the Committee that oversaw this (see Brett Stephens in the WSJ today), but unless Bill was thinking with another part of his body that day, he knew full well what he was signing.

So if we want to have a meaningful discussion about torture, let's at least agree what is US sanctioned torture and what is 'sub-contracted' torture, and then decide how far back we go to persecute and prosecute former Presidents.

Hey! I am sure we could even dig up Sherman and try him for the destruction of Atlanta as a war-crime. Then FDR and Truman for bombing Japanese cities, Hamburg and Dresden.

Or, alternatively, we could just all grow up and accept the world is a grotty place and sometimes you have to do grotty things to keep your way of life intact.

The Dems hate Bush and will never forgive him for 'stealing' the election from Gore, so of course they are going to go after him.

However unpopular he made the US with world opinion, he kept the US mainland free from any other attacks, thus putting his own people ahead of the rights of known and suspected terrorists, and ignored public opinion polls that were crucifying him.

I doubt Obama is made of the same stuff. He is an appeaser who likes to be loved and turns on a sixpence once pressured.

Let's judge both Presidents after they have both finished their terms. For the sake of the world and the USA I for one, hope it will be just 4 years before we can do that.

Si, N

David, '[w]hy does [he] think that people against its use are "lefties"'? Because he's not very bright of course.

Si, N

Stephen Rothbart, how do you imagine Israel is treating the 11,000 Palestinian prisoners currently illegally detained in Israeli jails?

Michael

This is the funniest thing I've read for a while. My irony detector has been playing up for a while, but I couldn't help but notice it perked up after I read this:

'In this world of claim and counter-claim by people with shadowy and often deeply partisan agendas, one has to be wary about everything that is said or written. To navigate a path through such a minefield, it is necessary to test all such claims against the reliability and track record of the people saying or writing them, and in the light what is already known to be the case.'

People with 'partisan agendas' eh Melanie? Funny you should mention that....

ahad ha'amoratsim

"Leaving aside for the moment the issue of whether such ill-treatment (most or all of which is apparently used on US military personnel during their training) indeed constitutes torture and if so can ever be justified, . . . " Amazing how many people on this thread (not including the visitor who seems to be a 9-11 "truther") are overlooking that Melanie expressly says that this story is NOT about what consitutes torture or whether torture can ever be justified; it is about whether the facts about why the US went to war with Iraq justify Sullivan's conclusions, and whether the "facts" cited by Sullivan support his conclusions. On that issue, no rational being can conclude that Sullivan has proved his case. Again, one must exclude Hayward M. from that category. Most of the rest of us are debating what torture is or isn't, or when and whether it can be justified.

ahad ha'amoratsim

" how do you imagine Israel is treating the 11,000 Palestinian prisoners currently illegally detained in Israeli jails?"

Well, SiN, let's see. We know that unlike Gilad Shalitt, their families know where they are and whether they are deead or alive; they receive medical care, visits from the Red Cross, reading material, religious services (of their own faith), conjugal visits (the notorious murderer of children, Samir Kuntar, married and conceived children in an Israeli prison), and recreational activities, the ability to send and receive letters, and even to run for political office. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to illustrate Stephen Rothbart's point, and also to observe that they are held "illegally" only if you b eleive that Israel has no right to detain or punish those who engage in or plan terrorist attacks or who commit crimes.

Wm. Hazlitt

I'm sorry, I know it is naive of me, but I sometimes can't recognize a wind-up. For example, there is regular Phoolery so fatuous it surely cannot be genuine; and similarly there is thuggery so egregious only the dimmest would be so unselfconscious (perhaps so nearly unconscious) as to admit to it. Is "Dixon" a hoax?

David

"No, nor do I, but I bet he is not sitting in a room watching Palestinian soaps and being spoon-fed by 72 virgins either. "

I'd like to know where you get the idea I think kidnapped soldiers are being treated well, or that the fact they are kidnapped is okay.

In your own time.

An American

Melanie's blog and all comments here are all water under the bridge.

We have a new world order now.

Obama, the Political Messiah has released all information on how we attain information from terrorists. And in the process, has put all Americans in danger in order to ingratiate himself with his far-left kook followers, his money-man Soros and the Commie ACLU.

The US Messiah will no longer allow 'so-called' torture of our enemies. This will include sleep depredation, playing Celine Dion music, putting catapillars on a detainee, slapping, demeaning, yelling, showing any kind of disrespect like having 'unclean' women interrogators and of course waterboarding. A practice that all US Special Forces and a multitude of other soldiers undergo.

In this new world order, Obama believes that stopping one terrorist's discomfort is worth hundred of thousands of innocent Americans lives along with massive destruction of our infrastructure.

Obama will sleep well knowing he has done away with Bush's 'so-called' tortures while he signs off on sending drones into Pakistan to kill whole families including innocent young children while winnowing out the terrorists living among them.

In the meantime, US soldiers in the field will probably be told to just kill terrorists outright. There will be no reason to capture them as we won't be allowed to 'torture' them for any meaningful information about future attacks on our homeland. And besides, there will be no place to put them because the Messiah is closing Gitmo.

But, sleep well fellow Americans, Obama, our Messiah will protect us.

Yeah sure....

israel

If there was one site on the net where people who l disagree with on a political stance l hoped would have the decency and strenght of character to oppose the use of torture l thought it would be this one.

People, you are avdocating the use of torture. You are saying that the tactics of the Spanish Inquisition, Pol Pot, the Japanese and the Nazis are ones that you have no problem with. You are using scenarios from a popular TV show to justify something that lead to soldiers being executed for after WW2. How can all of theose who claim to hold the moral high ground comfortably sit there and say that you are okay with this? You say "we are better than the terrorists" but how can that be true if we resort to tactics no better than them?

You people do realise that Reagan signed the UN treaty against torture back in the 80's right? That torture is actually illegal in US law as well? You do know that in 1983 a sheriff in Texas was jailed for waterboarding people who had been arrested? You have read the comments of Ali Soufan, a former FBI special agent and perhaps the most successful U.S. interrogator of al-Qaeda operatives, who said that the use of those techniques was unnecessary and often counterproductive? That detainees, he said, provided vital intelligence under non-violent questioning, before they were put through "walling" and waterboarding, and after toutrue they clammed up? But none of this matters to those who are twisting themselves into pretzels to provide political cover for ideologues who drafted legal excuses for cowards and armchair sadists who are now running around doing their best to ensure that they do not have to face judgement on something they knew then was wrong. And yes, l do mean political cover. It's amazing to watch people who were foaming at the mouth to investigate a president for lying in a civil suit now say that investigating an actual crime is "all about politics". The name Andrew Sullivan may have a pavlovian reaction on this site but the fact that people who continually speak of the evil of those islamists we are at war with, yet seem to be okay with using their methods speaks volumes. Most people in the US get it. It's scary how far from the pulse of america people who defend this view are. What is also amazing is how the group of draft dodgers and non-combatants who came up with this are comfortable with the idea of torture ignoring the fact that it puts the troops, who they claim to support and use as a bludgeon to stifle dissent, in more danger when captured.

One last question. Defenders of torture keep talking about how the action was in their view legal. So why is it that they are so against an investigation of it? They always say that if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear, so why say no to it?

Merlyn

Pardon my ignorance, but do we still not have something like a truth drug that works?

israel

Stephen Rothbart:

"However unpopular he made the US with world opinion, he kept the US mainland free from any other attacks, thus putting his own people ahead of the rights of known and suspected terrorists, and ignored public opinion polls that were crucifying him."

So apart from 9/11, the largest single attack on US soil, the Anthrax attacks for which no-one has been arrested, the Washington Sniper,
and the gunman at the El Al desk at LA airport, bush kept the US safe? You could say that. Meanwhile terrorist attacks around the world grew year on year. But hey, it was only foreigners so who cares, right?

And the rightwing media were ready to destroy President Obama if the pirates had killed Capt. Richard Phillips last week?

Pathetic.

phil

Si, N
April 28th, 2009 2:50pm
"
Stephen Rothbart, how do you imagine Israel is treating the 11,000 Palestinian prisoners currently illegally detained in Israeli jails?"---------------------with care and consideration just as AHAD has told you ,you manage to make such a fool of yourself regularly by telling lies and making false accusations that I wonder whether you actually realise how stupid you seem to everyone -oh sorry ,carl and the blade think you are a star so even you must know what league that leaves you in .btw do you know where Gilad is and whether he is getting visits ?

David

I've had this stone since 9/11, and there have been no more mainland US attacks since then.

All hail the stone!

israel

Stephen Rothbart:

"Kindly step forward Bill Clinton and take a bow. Now if you want to really get after the US for torture, forget Bush and his friends. They actually commissioned a report with their lawyers to ask what constituted torture. Pelosi may have been asleep at every one of those meetings of the Committee that oversaw this (see Brett Stephens in the WSJ today), but unless Bill was thinking with another part of his body that day, he knew full well what he was signing."

You're damn right, Clinton should never have signed the rendition programme into law. They always talk about the road to hell and what it's paved with and this one is a biggie. Your laughable claims about what the bush administration did to define torture would be funny if the disgusting actions they took were not so serious. These people tried to REDEFINE torture to allow them to use tactics that they already knew were illegal. They attempted to narrow a definition to excuse actions that had already occured so they had cover in case they were found out as they have been. The auther of the memo now has anonymous sources talking to the Washington Post this weekend in a puff piece speaking of his "anguish" and "regret" about his lack of dilligence in writing these memos, with nothing to do with the fact that people who have read them have been disgusted and the knowledge that had these memos beenseen he would never have been appointed a 9th Circuit Judge.

While you may have a story in murdoch's WSJ which is attempting yet again to provide cover for the authors of these memos by saying that "Democrats knew about it too" l have to ask how he writer is so sure of this. Members of the Intelligence committee cannot even tell their political aides what they had been talking about or confer with anyone of a legal standpoint. How do YOU and HE know that they were told the truth? This is the afministration of "No-one anticipated the breaking of the levees", "Saddam was linked to al-Queda", "Saddam had WMD's" and "We do not torture". You may be okay buying a talking parrot off of them but me? I will ask for an x-ray to make sure they have'nt stuck a tape recorder up it's rear end.

stanley Jerusalem

This 'conversation' is totally hypocritical. EVERYONE employs torture. Some openly condemn it, others say nothing, but they all use it. Us and them. Stop bleating! We wouldn't admit it if it wasn't worth our while. That's politics. They'll complain about it. That's also politics. All this cod self-righteousness is nauseating, and frankly, boring. Covert intelligence actions will always be with us for as long as we perceive that there is an enemy. Sad as Gilad Shalit is, he is a victim of a war. The state and status of Arab terrorists in Israeli gaols is not a source for comparison. It is aimply a reflection of Israeli policy just like Shalit's conditions of incarceration tell you more about his imprisoners than about him.Israel is perceived as wanting to do 'anything' to seek his release. If that were so, he would be free by now. Remember Entebbe?

Tariq

Bush did try to link 9/11 to Saddam and Iraq - and he succeeded as many Americans believed that lie. Not so many do now. America's claim to be on the side of freedom and democracy looks a bit hollow when you see what it actually does around the world e.g. supporting Saddam in his war against Iran in which a million people died just for starters ! Obama may be a slight improvement but still singing from the same hymnsheet so far as I can see. If we are to have standards of behaviour - like banning torture then they must apply to everyone and not just people we like.

Dixon

David
April 28th, 2009 1:41pm
"Its about the difference between freedom and servitude..."
Favouring torture puts you on the side of those seeking servitude.
Freedom loving people know that torture is wrong. Ask Ronald Reagan."

Next you'll be saying "my dads bigger than your dad". Nothing IS or IS NOT simply by virtue of the assertion.

Where are your arguments? WHY is torture "wrong"?

You dont have any.

And you dont geddit either. Its about OUR freedom, not theirs! If OUR freedom requires someon be elses servitude...then I am all for that as well!

Its about waking up to reality and knowing who your friends are.

logdon

Comment from aforementioned The American Thinker article

"mkat33 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> George W. Bush authorized the use of waterboarding
> to protect lives. Now people are calling him a
> criminal. Teddy Kennedy allowed a young woman to
> drown to solely protect his position. People call
> him a statesman. Pardon me for not getting it.

mkat33, it's pretty simple. One is a Republican and the other is a Democrat."

Sounds about right. Hailed as the silvery haired grand statesman at recent Democrat events he is nothing less than the man who knowingly left Mary Jo Kopechne to die in a car at Chappaquidick. As this site ironically points out fewer people died in Abu Ghraib (and by extention waterboarding etc) than in Kennedy's Oldsmobile.

http://search.creativecommons.org/?q=chappaquidik&sourceid=Mozilla-search

Si, N

ahad ha'amoratsim, it must be blissful in your little dream-world. Meanwhile, in reality, it’s a fact that Palestinian prisoners are held in appalling conditions in Israel. Few actually know about the conditions Shalit is being kept in – he may be dead - such was the indiscriminate nature of the recent 29 day bombardment of Gaza. Btw, Shalit would have been free by now were it not for Olmert’s outright refusal to stump-up the requisite number of ‘bargaining chips’.

I note that you automatically default to asserting Israel’s rights and show no concern for Palestinian's rights – which are trampled underfoot on a minute-by-minute basis. As it happens, transferring prisoners into the territory of an occupying power is a direct contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention – of which, Israel is a signatory. Still, I don’t expect you to be concerned with such niceties.

Coco – put a sock in it.

Dixon

Wm. Hazlitt
April 28th, 2009 3:24pm
I'm sorry, I know it is naive of me, but I sometimes can't recognize a wind-up. For example, there is regular Phoolery so fatuous it surely cannot be genuine; and similarly there is thuggery so egregious only the dimmest would be so unselfconscious (perhaps so nearly unconscious) as to admit to it. Is "Dixon" a hoax?"

No Hazlitt, I am utterly sincere whenever I make a comment. Nor am I a thug...BUT if thuggery is of utility in sustaining MY way of life, then I accept it. I dont like it. But thats the way the world IS in reality. You might fantasize about "right" and "wrong" and "morality" or "principles", but none of those things in the harsh light of Human conduct count for anything. 99% of Humanity have not ever, do not now, nor will ever in future act according to such sensibilities.

Its MY tribe or THEIR tribe and I endorse anything MY tribe does in its interests. Its as simple as that. It always has been. It is so everywhere. It always shall be. Nothing you say or do will ever alter that.

Perhaps if you actually tried answering some of my rhetorical questions you would understand that this world-view actually reflects thought on the subject and not the superficiality and moral posturing that characterises the contemporary "left". Stalin must be turning in his grave!

Original Tony

Israel...you are an eloquent writer and offer some very good points but at the end of the day this is a nasty world we live in and I for one believe that if non-lethal forms of torture expose plots of murder and death they must be employed and despite doing so, a moral high-ground can still be maintained. Why? because torture is not the beginning and end of morality.

If, for example, a person is tortured with the knowledge (of the torturer) that what he/she is doing is not and never will be fatal and is strictly guided by rules and regulations; then a supposed immoral act may defined as moral because it may save the life of a fellow human being. You could really say it's being cruel to be kind.

In essence, what everyone here is struggling to understand is, what defines torture???

Dixon

If I may throw in another complicating variable it is that the repeated use of the water-boarding technique hundreds of times on the same individual demonstrates that it generates distress not by physical action but via a psychological reflex that is susceptible to habituitive extinction. In other words, what starts as extremely distressing rapidly becomes routine and almost a ritual. By the time they finished these few hundred sessions, tit perhaps had no further utility at all.

At which point they really needed to put his feet in the trough and tazer the swine.

We are talking here about someone who had previously and openly declared that he had "masterminded" the slaughter of 3000 by-standers.

Winston Smith

Everybody knows that the Iraq war was wrong. Not only was it none of our business, or America's, we also destroyed a stable Iraq, with a working infrastructure where Christians never feared persecution from Islam and women could hold positions in office and the Education Establishment.
Everyone also knew as well that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. The fact is they hated one another as Bin Laden's view on Saddam was that he was not following the teachings of Muhammad and was a very 'liberal' Muslim(apart from the torture and killings that is).
The view of women and the way Muslims should live their lives under Saddam was a world apart from how the Jihadis and Islamists see things. Worst of all, by removing Saddam, we removed the glue that held Iraq together, that has turned it into two states already(Kurd Iraq and Sunni/Shia Iraq) and will be split into a another, no doubt when the Americans leave. Then again there's also the current bloodshed as Iraq turns into an Islamist state.

I've always believed that Saudi Arabia had something to do with the War and it was not solely to do with the Bush regime. Wahabist ideology that controls Saudi Arabia, is on a par with what the Islamists and Jihadis follow. Not only would Saudi Arabia benefit in removing one of their competitors, but also be able to turn a Muslim country into an Islamist state. They succeeded, or should I say are succeeding.

Saudi Arabia is the greatest threat to the West. People may think of Iran and Pakistan, with their terrorist training camps and Islamist ideology, but what they forget is we know this and they know we know this. Saudi Arabia on the other hand, claims to be our friend, while pumping Wahabism into the West along with Sharia compliant finance, the foundation for Islamisation.

Dixon

I meant...Stalin must be turning in his mausoleum!

phil

"Shalit would have been free by now were it not for Olmert’s outright refusal to stump-up the requisite number of ‘bargaining chips’." that quote by the asinine sin shows the values he places on Israeli/Arab life-swop hundreds for one .why we take any notice of him I am not sure, but to be honest he usually gives me a good laugh ,not this time though as it was just plain stupid -no surprise there .
sin I am enjoying the name coco its better than pp(previous poster)and just as childish ,but thanks for the smile .

israel

logdon:

"Sounds about right. Hailed as the silvery haired grand statesman at recent Democrat events he is nothing less than the man who knowingly left Mary Jo Kopechne to die in a car at Chappaquidick. As this site ironically points out fewer people died in Abu Ghraib (and by extention waterboarding etc) than in Kennedy's Oldsmobile."

Yeah, and Laura Bush ran over and killed a guy but that, like Chappaquidick has NOTHING to do with this where the administration of a former US President BROKE US LAW AND ALLOWED TORTURE TO BE DONE IN THEIR NAME. I'm sure they would be happy to know they still have armchair sadists like you to try and defend the undefensable. Well done for making my earlier point.

Russell

"You can't distinguish between al-Qaeda and Saddam."
-- 09/26/2002 George W. Bush

"This [Saddam] is a person who has had contacts with al Qaeda."
-- George Bush (10/28/2002).

"There's been enormous confusion over the Iraq and al-Qaeda connection, Gloria. First of all, on the question of--of whether or not there was
any kind of a relationship, there was a relationship. It's been testified to. The evidence is overwhelming. It goes back to the early
'90s...There's clearly been a relationship.
"
-- Dick Cheney, 6/17/04

Yeah, yeah, I know. People got the wrong idea. They didn't parse those words carefully enough. Strangely, it was Bush's supporters who mostly got the wrong idea.

Israel

Original Tony:

"Israel...you are an eloquent writer and offer some very good points but at the end of the day this is a nasty world we live in and I for one believe that if non-lethal forms of torture expose plots of murder and death they must be employed and despite doing so, a moral high-ground can still be maintained. Why? because torture is not the beginning and end of morality."

I'm sorry Tony but l have to disagree. You cannot claim the moral high ground if you resort to torture. What is amazing is how on this site people of high intellegence are ignoring the statements ofseasoned interregators including the one described by his FBI bosses as "the best of the best" and if HE is saying that torture does not work and brings you false results why on earthshould l believe lying draft dodging , armchair sadist lawyers and politicians who rewrite the rules to allow it. The FBI pulled all of their people out of the room when they learned of the actions that were being taken. Ali Soufan was so incensed by what was going on he demanded of his bosses the reason why he should not be allowed to arrest those involved. The false claims from KSM lead CIA agents shooting around the world chasing wild geese for ages yet for some reason people STILL don't see the stupidity of the continued use of something that BROKE US LAW.As much as you say that youy can keep the moral high ground the reality is that you are satnding on quicksand and you are beginning to sink. I "do as l say, not as l do" attitude may be okay when trying to stop a five year old from drinking your beer but we are talking about things far more serious than that. Again l repeat the fact that people who are defending these armchair saidists on this site do not want pointed out. These guys know they broke the law andf rewotre the rules to try and justify it. They are now running around getting political allies to deflect and throw mud at democrats in the hope that something would stick to reduce the shame of what they have done to the good name of the US.

David

"Stalin must be turning in his mausoleum!"

He thought torture was a good thing. You'd clearly get along famously.

israel

Holy S***!!!!

Arlene Spector of Pennsylvania has just announced that he will switch parties from Republican to Democrat and run for re-election in 2010 as a Democrat!!

Not part of this thread but wow!!! That is really REALLY big!!! This means that the Democrats are 1 vote away from a filibuster proof Senate. I will be interested to see the reation from republicans in the media to that piece of news!!!

David Rose

I don't care what Stephen Hayes may have written. I do know what two excellent, always reliable and well-placed sources told me: that they saw and worked on reports of Abu Zubaydah's interrogation, which stated in explicit terms that he told those who questioned him that Iraq and Al-Qaeda had an operational relationship. Both also told me that they did not know that he had been tortured during the interrogations that produced these claims.

Now here is the thing. I knew these sources BEFORE the Iraq war began. They told me what they had seen then, and I used it in articles which SUPPORTED the suggestion that AQ and Saddam had an operational relationship. Indeed, in those days, Stephen Hayes used to chat and compare notes. So I have all the more reason to believe those sources now. Like me, they feel disgiusted at the depth of the deception that was going on at a high level, and at they were in which they were duped. Some of us are big enough to recognise this: others are not.

Ultimately, parsing the text of what Bush said on October 8, 2002, and trying to minimise its impact, is not the point. That torture of which Bush was aware was used to make the case for war inside and outside the administration is.

Here's another funny thing. I watched that speech live on TV in a Washington hotel room. I was sitting next to one of those sources, whose only complaint then was that the president hadn't gone as far as he should.

Carlin

israel:
Right wing media? In the US?
Are you in one of those parallel universes?

Sleeping dolls

So the claim that Bush lied about Saddam’s ‘operational’ link to al Qaeda to bamboozle us into war is itself untrue.

Oh really?

In remarks on May 1, 2003, announcing the end of major combat operations in Iraq, President Bush stated: “The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 — and
still goes on. . . . [T]he liberation of Iraq . . . removed an ally of al Qaeda.”
In a November 7, 2002, speech, President Bush stated: Saddam Hussein is “a threat because he is dealing with Al Qaida. . . . [A] true threat facing our country is that an Al Qaida-type network trained and armed by Saddam could attack America and not leave one fingerprint.”
• In his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address, President Bush stated:
“Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda. Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own.”
• In his February 5, 2003, remarks to the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell stated: “what I want to bring to your attention today is the
potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and
modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi an associate and collaborator of Usama
bin Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants.”
Dick Cheney: Saddam Hussein “had an established relationship with al Qaeda.” (Remarks by the Vice President to the Heritage Foundation (Oct. 10, 2003).

http://web.archive.org/web/20060514140012/http://www.house.gov/reform/min/pdfs_108_2/pdfs_inves/pdf_admin_iraq_on_the_record_rep.pdf

I wonder why it was that (I believe) eighty percent of Americans believed there was a link between 9/11 and Iraq? Nothing to do with Bush? You're having a larf.

Dave

Torture is wrong. It doesn't deliver useful information.
Those who insist on its use and make excuses for it are weak.
This is real life. Not an episode of 24.

logdon

"israel
April 28th, 2009 5:37pm

logdon:

Yeah, and Laura Bush ran over and killed a guy but that, like Chappaquidick has NOTHING to do with this where the administration of a former US President BROKE US LAW AND ALLOWED TORTURE TO BE DONE IN THEIR NAME. I'm sure they would be happy to know they still have armchair sadists like you to try and defend the undefensable. Well done for making my earlier point."

No, you idiot it is you who miss the point. One, Kennedy’s killing of that woman was airbrushed and defended by a massive collective of family and Democrats. That made it partisan, thus political. As for breaking the law since when was manslaughter legal? Two, your definition of torture is laughable compared with the ways of the people you obviously side with. By aligning yourself with these barbarians who rip out fingernails, castrate prisoners, perform beheadings if front of cameras, execute women on spurious pretext and kill thousands of their own co-religionists merely because of sect indicates a severe problem of perception. Your hyperventilating, out of control and ill informed knee-jerk rant finishes with calling me an ‘armchair sadist’. You are an arrogant liar. And by the way, illiterate too. It is indefensible. Maybe you lack of education reflects your ludicrous and insulting opinions?

logdon

Carlin
April 28th, 2009 6:06pm

israel:
Right wing media? In the US?
Are you in one of those parallel universes?

Quite! The sanity in the US is not to be found in the MSM but the internet. Look at the way Obama was hailed almost as God by tv and preess alike? No critisism of the Palin variety for him even when spouting teleprompterless idiocy. Looks like buyers remorse is setting in already,though. Especially within the CIA!

Gareth

One has to feel sorry for Andrew Sullivan. He used to be an intelligent commentator on the world around us.

libertarian in Austin, Texas

I am sorry to say friends....but there is no such thing as "right wing media in the US."

israel

Carlin:

"israel:
Right wing media? In the US?
Are you in one of those parallel universes?"

Yes Carlin, you are right. There are no right wing media in the US. Apart from:

Joel Achenbach,
Jim Acosta,
Roger Ailes,
Mary Ann Akers,
Peter Alexander,
Mike Allen,
Marc Ambinder,
Jay Ambrose,
Jim Angle,
David Asman,
John Avlon,
Jed Babbin,
Bret Baier,
Chris Baker,
Peter Baker,
Julie Banderas,
Mark Barabak,
Fred Barnes,
Robert Barnes,
Michael Barone,
Dana Bash,
Gary Bauer,
Caroline Baum,
Glenn Beck,
Mark Belling,
Naftali Bendavid,
Bill Bennett,
Jeff Birnbaum,
Brad Blakeman,
Tony Blankley,
Wolf Blitzer,
Eric Bolling,
Marcella Bombardieri,
Neal Boortz,
Julie Bosman,
David N. Bossie,
Peter Boyles,
L. Brent Bozell,
Shannon Bream,
Contessa Brewer,
John M. Broder,
David Brooks,
Carrie Budoff Brown,
Tammy Bruce,
Pat Buchanan,
Elisabeth Bumiller,
Erin Burnett,
Alexander Burns,
Carl Cameron,
Gretchen Carlson,
Tucker Carlson,
Timothy Carney,
Amanda Carpenter,
Cheryl Casone,
Alex Castellanos,
Neil Cavuto,
Steve Centanni,
Mona Charen,
Jean Cochran,
Jamie Colby,
Flavia Colgan,
Charles W. Colson,
Ceci Connolly,
Charlie Cook,
Michael Cooper,
Nancy Cordes,
Jerome Corsi,
Carol Costello,
Michelle Cottle,
Ann Coulter,
Jim Cramer,
Craig Crawford,
Candy Crowley,
Monica Crowley,
Bill Cunningham,
Joseph Curl,
Ann Curry,
Dinesh D'Souza,
Mark Davis,
Nicholas Dawidoff,
Tom DeLay,
John Derbyshire,
Laurie Dhue,
Rebecca Diamond,
John Dickerson,
EJ Dionne,
Lou Dobbs,
James Dobson,
Ben Domenech,
William Donohue,
John Donvan,
Steve Doocy,
William Douglas,
Maureen Dowd,
Matt Drudge,
Thomas B. Edsall,
Dan Eggen,
Larry Eichel,
Dina ElBoghdady,
Larry Elder,
Debbie Elliott,
Boomer Esiason,
Joseph Farah,
John Feehery,
Andrew Ferguson,
Tom Foreman,
Ron Fournier,
Bob Franken,
John Fritze,
Mark Fuhrman,
John Fund,
Frank Gaffney,
Trace Gallagher,
Mike Gallagher,
Tim Gaynor,
Michael Gerson,
Josh Gerstein,
Jeff Gerth,
Bill Gertz,
John Gibson,
Charlie Gibson,
Doug Giles,
Newt Gingrich,
Dom Giordano,
Alexis Glick,
Jonah Goldberg,
Bernard Goldberg,
Wendell Goler,
Michael Goodwin,
Doris Kearns-Goodwin,
Craig Gordon,
Michael Graham,
Bob Grant,
David Greenberg,
Jan Crawford Greenburg,
Jeff Greenfield,
Abe Greenwald,
David Gregory,
Bill Griffeth,
Kimberly Guilfoyle,
Savannah Guthrie,
Tamron Hall,
Kevin H. Hall,
Mark Halperin,
Mary Katharine Ham,
Sean Hannity,
Karen Hanretty,
Victor Davis Hanson,
Tony Harris,
John Harris,
Dan Harris,
John Harwood,
Stephen F. Hayes,
Emily Heil,
Bill Hemmer,
Mark Hemmingway,
Ed Henry,
Bob Herbert,
Sue Herera,
Catherine Herridge,
Andante Higgins,
E.D. Hill,
Michael Hirsh,
Christopher Hitchens,
Roy Hoffmann,
T.J. Holmes,
Lester Holt,
Janet Hook,
Molly Hooper,
Chris Horner,
Deborah Howell,
Mike Huckabee,
Carl Hulse,
Brit Hume,
Charles Hurt,
Mark Hyman,
Don Imus,
Laura Ingraham,
Steve Inskeep,
Victoria Jackson,
Cheri Jacobus,
Matt Jaffe,
Chris Jansing,
Gregg Jarrett,
Eamon Javers,
Terry P. Jeffrey,
Terence P. Jeffrey,
Joe Johns,
Daryn Kagan,
Paul Kane,
Jodi Kantor,
Jonathan Kaplan,
Jonathan Karl,
John Kasich,
John Kass,
Terry Keenan,
Megyn Kelly,
Jack Kelly,
Greg Kelly,
Ronald Kessler,
Glenn Kessler,
Brian Kilmeade,
John King,
James Kirchick,
David Kirkpatrick,
Joe Klein,
Dennis Kneale,
Bob Kohn,
Mort Kondracke,
Anne Kornblut,
Michael Kranish,
Charles Krauthammer,
Mark Krikorian,
Nicholas D. Kristof,
William Kristol,
Larry Kudlow,
Lawrence Kudlow,
Jeffrey T. Kuhner,
Jim Kuhnhenn,
Lars Larson,
Christopher Lawrence,
Mark Leibovich,
Don Lemon,
Mark Levin,
Jason Lewis,
Mara Liasson,
G. Gordon Liddy,
Rush Limbaugh,
Susan Lisovicz,
Ryan Lizza,
Jeffrey Lord,
Jennifer Loven,
Rich Lowry,
Jennifer Ludden,
Michael Luo,
Martha MacCallum,
Jim Maceda,
Michelle Malkin,
Suzanne Malveaux,
Steve Malzberg,
Mancow,
David Mark,
Jan Markell,
Scott Martelle,
Jonathan Martin,
Andy Martin,
Julie Mason,
Clifford May,
Barry McCaffrey,
John McCaslin,
John McCormick,
Paul McGuire,
William McGurn,
Thomas McInerney,
Doug McIntyre,
John McLaughlin,
Jon Meacham,
Michael Medved,
Jeanne Meserve,
Patrick J. Michaels,
Jim Miklaszewski,
Dana Milbank,
Dennis Miller,
Lisa Miller,
Richard Miniter,
Andrea Mitchell,
Russ Mitchell,
Albert Mohler,
John Moody,
Jeanne Moos,
Dan Morain,
Melanie Morgan,
Dick Morris,
Matthew Mosk,
Rupert Murdoch,
Deroy Murdock,
Mike Murphy,
Lisa Myers,
Adam Nagourney,
Andrew Napolitano,
Don Van Natta Jr.,
"Gunny" Bob Newman,
Betty Nguyen,
Peter Nicholas,
Peggy Noonan,
Grover Norquist,
Michele Norris,
Oliver North,
Kate O'Beirne,
Miles O'Brien,
Kevin O'Brien,
Patrick O'Connor,
Norah O'Donnell,
Kelly O'Donnell,
Ed O'Keefe,
Bill O'Reilly,
Bob Orr,
Abdon Pallasch,
Kathleen Parker,
Amie Parnes,
Janet Parshall,
Robert Patterson,
Charles Payne,
Liz Peek,
Scott Pelley,
Ralph Peters,
Jesse Lee Peterson,
Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson,
James Pethokoukis,
Nancy Pfotenhauer,
Kyra Phillips,
Jim Pinkerton,
James Pinkerton,
Randall Pinkston,
Mike Pintek,
Daniel Pipes,
Bill Plante,
John Podhoretz,
Wesley Pruden,
Jim Quinn,
Sally Quinn,
Chuck Raasch,
Martha Raddatz,
Nora Raum,
Michael Reagan,
Ralph Reed,
Maeve Reston,
Foon Rhee,
John Ridley,
Geraldo Rivera,
Cokie Roberts,
John Roberts,
Lee Rodgers,
Christine Romans,
James Rosen,
Brian Ross,
Karl Rove,
Marc Rudov,
Erik Rush,
Bill Sammon,
Rick Santelli,
Michael Savage,
Martin Savidge,
Joe Scarborough,
Louise Schiavone,
Bob Schieffer,
Jacob Schlesinger,
Debbie Schlussel,
Jon Scott,
Frank Sesno,
Eric Shawn,
Michael Shear,
Matthew Sheffield,
Noel Sheppard,
Alan Silverleib,
Roger Simon,
Paul Singer,
Suzanne Smalley,
Michael Smerconish,
Shepard Smith,
Ben Smith,
John Solomon,
Thomas Sowell,
Stephen Spruiell,
Jill Stanek,
Michael Steele,
Ben Stein,
George Stephanopoulos,
Mark Steyn,
Sheryl Gay Stolberg,
John Stossel,
Brian Sullivan,
Tom Sullivan,
Andy Sullivan,
Brian Sussman,
Greta Van Susteren,
Lisa Sylvester,
Andrea Tantaros,
Jake Tapper,
Mark Tapscott,
James Taranto,
Stuart Taylor Jr.,
Rose Tennent,
Cal Thomas,
Fred Thompson,
Brad Thor,
Glenn Thrush,
Chuck Todd,
Victoria Toensing,
Kenneth Y. Tomlinson,
Robin Toner,
Bill Tucker,
Karen Tumulty,
R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.,
Douglas Urbanski,
Jack Valenti,
Jim VandeHei,
Ali Velshi,
Ken Vogel,
Anita Vogel,
Chris Wallace,
Nicolle Wallace,
Kelly Wallace,
Peter Wallsten,
Joan Walsh,
Jon Ward,
Jim Warren,
Carlos Watson,
Ashley Webster,
Jonathan Weisman,
David Welna,
Diana West,
Fredricka Whitfield,
Meredith Whitney,
Casey Wian,
George F. Will,
Cody Willard,
Kathleen Willey,
Walter Williams,
Kevin D. Williamson,
Gerri Willis,
Brian Wilson,
Brian Wingfield,
Alex Witt,
Kelly Wright,
Jessica Yellin,
Charmaine Yoest,
Byron York,
Paula Zahn,
Jeff Zeleny,
Julian E. Zelizer, and
Jill Zuckman.

That also should include the New York Post, The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal and the editorial pages of both The New York Times and The Washington Post. Whew, that was a short list (snark). I'm sure there are more in this universe but your question was uninformed and stupid. Makes you the perfect faux viewer, you just have to believe what they tell you instead of checking with other sources.

Ronnie

No Stanley, these guys don't care. In fact it motivates them. Just as we regard them as evil incarnate, they see us in the same way. Naturally, its what keeps the whole thing going.

If it's OK to torture why do we try to do it in secret? It's against our law.

Why do we go to the trouble of flying suspects around the world to have their torture sub-contracted to governments who don't have the same laws as we do, whose practices we normally condemn until we want to make use of them? It's against our Law.

Why is evidence obtained through torture usually regarded as inadmissible in a western court? It's unreliable and it's against our Law.

We are a society held together by our Laws, created by our elected legislatures and implemented by our elected governments, our judiciary and the relevant agencies. Not some of the time, all of the time.

We sure as hell do not want Sharia but do you not want our Law either?

israel

Oh yeah Carlin, l forgot to add all those booggers on the right. PJTV may have crashed and burned, but the bloogers still have their sites up and are still linked to each other. Or did you not believe in their influence when they went after Dan Rather in 2004?

Ronnie

Winston Smith, absolutely spot on. Hope you don't mind my agreeing with you.

stanley Jerusalem

israel
April 28th, 2009 7:04pm
For a country of 300,000,000 people that's a pretty short list.

stanley Jerusalem

Ronnie
April 28th, 2009 7:05pm
"We sure as hell do not want Sharia but do you not want our Law either?"
Of course I do but we are at war and we have to adopt any and every means at our disposal to prevent the enemy from succeeding. Any and every.

Israel

logdon:

"No, you idiot it is you who miss the point. One, Kennedy’s killing of that woman was airbrushed and defended by a massive collective of family and Democrats. That made it partisan, thus political. As for breaking the law since when was manslaughter legal? Two, your definition of torture is laughable compared with the ways of the people you obviously side with. By aligning yourself with these barbarians who rip out fingernails, castrate prisoners, perform beheadings if front of cameras, execute women on spurious pretext and kill thousands of their own co-religionists merely because of sect indicates a severe problem of perception. Your hyperventilating, out of control and ill informed knee-jerk rant finishes with calling me an ‘armchair sadist’. You are an arrogant liar. And by the way, illiterate too. It is indefensible. Maybe you lack of education reflects your ludicrous and insulting opinions?"

Well on your first point l would refer you to Laura Bush to ask if manslaughter is leagal, she is the one with the experience so maybe she could tell you.

On your second point, thank you for showing once again the "us vs them" attitude which has less people prepared to declare themselves republicans than have for decades. It's easy to see why republicans have strengthend their base but driven moderate people away if you rant is any example of the mindset. If that's how you react to what l have written l would love a video of you having a go at someone who says President Obama is doing a good job. Prehaps you could post it on Youtube? I'm off for the rest of the week so it would be fun to watch something other than train station dance videos.

I do not side with people who do the things that you have described, you do. You do that when you are okay with torture. The majority of US citizens want investigations into what has gone on, the only people who do not, or try to excuse it are those who are doing it to defend a failed policy and actions which (and l will keep repeating it) ARE AGAINST US LAW. My perceptions are not a problem. The United States of America is the lead country in the west. We are fighting a group of terrorists and to prove that we are better than them we have to stick to our principles, our way of life, and our morality. That way we show them that we are better and we show them that they cannot beat us. Why is that hard for apologists for criminals like you to understand that? London survived the Luftwaffe and we survived th IRA for over two thirds of my lifetime and guess what, WE DID NOT TORTURE. We survived terrorist attacks for decades and we did not rush through laws that removed out civil liberties. Can you say the same of the US? One thing l have noticed in the last few months is how much projection there has been from rightwing americans since the election be it over Homeland Security reports of rightwing extremists targeting returning Gulf war Veterans (ignoring a previous report on leftwing extremists) suddenly being turned into bleatings about how it critisizes conservatives EVEN THOUGH CONSERVATIVES ARE NOT MENTIONED IN IT not to forget the armchair sadists, yeah l repeat that, armchair sadists who are as far away from the military as possible but show how tough they are by putting forward scenarios from TV shows as a reason why someone else, not them, should torture people. Hyperventilating, out of control and ill informed? My, you must have a full length mirror in front of you as you are typing away because l seem to have hit a nerve. If l have, good. You say l am "An arrogant liar"? Show me where any reputable legal scholar in the US has said that torture is legal. By that l don't mean the ones who rewrote the law or those from Monica Goodling's Alma Mater Regent University Law School l mean those who are from Law schools in the top tier in the US. On your last point on my literacy and opinions, is that the best you can do? CALM. YOUR. SKIN. DOWN. It's like being savaged by a Labradoodle puppy!! Maybe if your comments did not come across like you were the blog equivalent of a Ted Baxter/Larry the Cable Guy hybrid l would be offended. Then again armchair sadists really should be pitied, don't you think?

Ronnie

Stanley, when we abandon our Law they have succeeded because we become like them.

Conservative Cabbie

Israel

I don't know where you got that list from, but it is a really dumb list. Firstly, it incorporates both presenters (Brian Kilmeade) with political commentators. Second, in what universe are Marc Ambinder, Ben Smith and Andrew Sullivan considered right wing or on a par with Hannity etc.

The fact is, the left have a much greater presence in American media than the right - to deny that is to deny reality. You talk about "faux news", but how about this particular piece of faux news from those wonders of impartiality MSNBC: "There’s been plenty of speculation that Levi Johnston, the father of Tripp, Sarah Palin’s first ACKNOWLEDGED grandchild," (my emphasis).

I can't comment on the Dan Rather story, but I do recognise an attempt by the left wing media to disgustingly smear a person based on disproven stories regarding their family.

israel

Stanley Jerusalem:

"israel
April 28th, 2009 7:04pm
For a country of 300,000,000 people that's a pretty short list."

Yes Stanley but that's just a portion of the ones who drive the stories in the national media like ACB,CBS and NBC all of which have millions of viewers. You have local "talent" as well who will follow and pass on the talking points. Did you know that all the local radio stations who get limbaugh get him for free? This means instead of paying for local talkhosts the sations can spend the money saved for those three hours on other things. Also if i'm correct limbaugh is the only national talkhost broadcast on the US Forces network. That skewers the message to his viewpoint don't you think?

Stuart Rose

Well, Melanie, we all owe you for your meticulous anaylsis of the false information and shoddy reasoning that Sullivan's piece is swimming in. Not to mention all the other bad arguments by politician and journalists on both sides of the Atlantic you regularly lay waste to.

Reading through your post, in addition to being struck by the untruth of Sullivan's piece,one
should keep in mind that people like Sullivan are essentially ruling out the possibility of preemptive strikes against rogue regimes. Insisting on trial ready evidence against these regimes, they jettison such essentials of foreign policy as the ability to make inferences from
the long term behavior of regimes, and discern the easy potential for alliances between bad actors to take shape.

israel

Stanley:

"Ronnie
April 28th, 2009 7:05pm
"We sure as hell do not want Sharia but do you not want our Law either?"
Of course I do but we are at war and we have to adopt any and every means at our disposal to prevent the enemy from succeeding. Any and every."

So we show how right and moral we are and how bad those who are against us are by dropping or ignoring our own moral standards? Really?

Conservative Cabbie

Israel

Did you read the list? George Stephanopoulos? Do you mean the Clinton progressive? It's quite easy to create a list of right wingers when you include anyone to the right of Stalin as being right wing.

I'm also disappointed that you include virtually every presenter on Fox in that list but miss out my favourite Alisyn Camerota. She is a God(ess).

Sleeping dolls

Stanley jerusalem: er ... no! We're not at war! Although, enjoying torture as you obviously do, I understand how you wish we were. Frankly, Sharia law sounds pretty tame compared to what we might expect in an administration run by you.

Drakken

As Ole Dixon said,, my tribe against their tribe, and whatever it takes to make sure my tribe survives and their tribe perishes.
To you useless, limp wristed window licking, lefist liberals. For those of you who want to take that high moral ground? your enemies will bury you in it unless you use total and absolute force.

Augustus

The interrogation techniques which have people like Andrew Sullivan jumping up and down in a frenzied Bush hatefest may indeed be forms of torture, but when they are performed under medical supervision they are alleged not to produce permanent damage to the victims. The same cannot be said for those detainees who are sent back to their own countries. Unfortunately, those who oppose torture make the overiding assumption that torture under all circumstances is wrong. This is a belief only in intrinsic values: The belief that all things can only, by their nature, be good or bad, without applying objective standards. It's not difficult to understand why torture produces feelings of disgust and horror when one looks at history. Take the practices of the Inquisition as an example, where people under torture confessed to being guilty of heresy. The recent film Red Dust shows the torture of ANC activists in South Africa under Apartheid.

In December 2005, an opinion poll in America showed that 61% of Americans felt that torture was acceptable in a 'ticking time-bomb scenario'. In Europe that was big news and there were quite a few indignant editorials until it was discovered that a majority of Europeans felt the same way.

Torture, as standard practice, is without doubt wrong. Not so much because of the poor old terrorist, but because it can corrupt one's own organization from the bottom to the top. Competent agents become demoralized and exhausted. Sadists can infiltrate into the ranks. The database gets gummed up with false information because desperate prisoners say things they believe their interrogators want to hear. But in special circumstances, when time is of the essence, and when a terrorist has vital information which could avoid an attack involving possibly thousands of innocent victims, the use of torture really boils down to a trade-off between those innocents and the comfort and well-being of one terrorist.

Wm. Hazlitt

"Dixon", I suppose I should not be surprised if you insist you are not a hoax, after all it takes a certain stark insensibility to drool quite so publicly about your favourite methods of torture. You prefer electricity? applied where?

Carl

Wonderful stuff, people twisting themselves into knots to excuse torture. I have to love Armchair Lance-Corporal Dixon as well and his assault rifles that are only designed to maim - but hey, he's a tough guy and would torture "the swine" himself if he had a chance and could personally take any amount of waterboarding!

An American

Israel,

I find it interesting that the media makes no mention of Spector's two surgeries for brain cancer.

In truth, Conservatives are so happy to be rid of Spector...he was nothing but a self-serving, egotistical, politically motivated, pathetic, old man.

Spector has voted with the far-left on all important issues anyway, so there will be no loss to conservatives in this country...just relief to be rid of the old hypocrite.

Spector will lose his next election, big time. Its really pathetic that he would do anything to stay in the Senate. Apparently he was running close to 30% behind his Republican opponent in the polls. Once a political cronie, always one.

When he losses his next election, he won't be missed, then he will join Kennedy, wherever that will be...

I find it interesting that the CBS poll had Obama's first 100 days approval at 70%. But the Gallup poll just came out with an approval rating of 57%...one of the lowest approval rating in decades. Even the liberal pollsters are lying to the American public...

Stephen Rothbart

Israel, 9/11 may have occurred when Bush was President, but it was conceived and planned while Clinton was President. Al Qaeda has attacked the USA since 1979 and largely without any kind of response from any other President, especially Clinton.

Bush was the only one who hit back, and there have been no further attacks on US soil during his entire term.

Was that because of torture or extra-ordinary rendition or water-boarding? Who knows? Certainly no one writing in this blog.

So tell me, Israel, and all the other righteous thinkers who believe nothing justifies torture, does sending over an unmanned drone that bombs a terrorist hideout that not only kills terrorists, but also possibly innocent bystanders constiture an act more justifiable than water-boarding a suspected terrorist to avert a terrorist act?

The former is an action still going on and sanctioned by Obama, the other, no one died, and may have saved a life or two.

Now switch the two Presidents. One is Bush advocating drone warfare,(yes I know,he did), and the other is Obama who sanctions water-boarding.

Who do you think Congress and the Liberal Press would be going after now?

Dixon

David
April 28th, 2009 6:01pm
"Stalin must be turning in his mausoleum!"
He thought torture was a good thing. You'd clearly get along famously."

The kind of leader we need. Not the system he lead. But the leadership provided. He turned the USSR from peasant dung-heap to industrial super-power in a single generation.

And you cannot make an omelette witout breaking eggs.

Sam Armstrong

Dixon for PM

israel

Cabbie: Sorry mate l have a thing for Mary Kathrine Ham but otherwise l keep away from most conservatives. Faux is there in large numbers because of what they do, but then you seem agree with a lot of the stuff nutjobs like beck seem to be spouting regardless of the level of crazy. As for Stephanopoulos? I refer you to the ABC primary debate and the questions that were asked by him and Gibson, including the ones supplied by hannity who was gloating about it on his radio show the next day. Have you forgotten the booing at the end from the audience?

An American:

You are right about Spector being 30 points behind Pat Toomey in the republican primary but fail to mention the fact that 200,000 people left the republicans and joined the democrats before the last election. How do you think that will play in the mid-terms? With the move over to the hard right and the championing of the Club For Growth how do you think other moderate republicans are feeling now? What do you think senators Nelson and Snowe, the other two who voted for the Stimulus bill are thinking about comments from people like Michael Steele and boss limbaugh?

"When he loses his next election, he won't be missed, then he will join Kennedy, wherever that will be..."

You know, l expected better from you with all the comments you have made in the past couple of weeks. That comment was low. What was your reaction when people said the same sort of things about Tony Snow? Or the comments about Justice Ginsberg last month? Seems like its a bad thing to say about republicans but democrats are fair game.

Stephen Rothbart:

You may not have seen it on faux (then again it happened before they were on the air, like the million man march) but Ramzi Ahmed Yousef the man responible for the World Trade Centre attack in 1993 was captured, tried and convicted to life inprisonment. Thanks for bypassing the Aug 6th 2001 PDB and skipping onto the aftermath but l would say that the work of intellegence professionals had more to do with the lack of attacks in the US since then, even though the timeline for the torture of KSM doesn't follow the attack it was supposed to have stopped.

"So tell me, Israel, and all the other righteous thinkers who believe nothing justifies torture, does sending over an unmanned drone that bombs a terrorist hideout that not only kills terrorists, but also possibly innocent bystanders constiture an act more justifiable than water-boarding a suspected terrorist to avert a terrorist act?"

Erm...... I'm sorry to bring you up to speed this late in the game but OVER 100 PEOPLE HAVE DIED DUR TO THE TORTURE METHODS USED. What, faux didn't mention that? Really? WOW!!!!! I also hate to knock down your strawman but there has been no evidence that torture actually stopped any attacks. There is lots of evidence that the CIA were running around the globe chasing false leads though. On the unmanned drones, l have to say that l am more than a bit squeamish on them. I can understand the idea behind the use but the mistakes made in the application is very bad, as is the cover up. To be honest though l haven't heard of a wedding being bombed by mistake in the last 100 days, have you? If Obama had authorised torture then democrats would have gone after him, but not that they would have to, republicans would still be leading the charge. Do you know why? Because torture IS AGAINST US LAW.

Dixon:

"David
April 28th, 2009 6:01pm
"Stalin must be turning in his mausoleum!"
He thought torture was a good thing. You'd clearly get along famously."

The kind of leader we need. Not the system he lead. But the leadership provided. He turned the USSR from peasant dung-heap to industrial super-power in a single generation."

Bloody hell man, get a grip!!! What are you going to say next to defend torture? That the Germans made the train run on time in the 30's and early 40's? Sad man, sad!!!

By the way people, watch your spelling, logdon's on the case and will do something to show hubris.

Hayward

Winston Smith,
I am with Ronnie in agreeing with you.
For "......when we practice to deceive"
Insert what we say Down under "It comes back to bite one on the bum!

Ronnie

Yes, Augustus, Jack only has five minutes until the next commercial break.

Ronnie

Dixon, the Soviet Union was a military super power but it was never an industrial one. A US statesman, whose name I forget, once described it as 'Upper Volta with nukes'.

The Soviet Union lost the cold war because it couldn't keep up with Thatcher and Reagan's increased levels of defence spending and it became virtually bankrupt. If you take away gas, oil and armaments production that is pretty much where it is today.

Outside of the largest cities it remains very much a third world country with poor infrastrucure, an appalling demographic profile, very low levels of investment and a political 'system' dominated by an entrenched elite who regard it as their own private business.

I'm not sure the CV of the 'leader we need' should include the starving of millions and the crushing of even the slightest whisper of dissent. We seem to have different expectations for the place we want to live.

Ronnie

Stephen Rothbart, you raise the wrong question about the use of drones, particularly along the Afghan/Pakistan border.

In the context of this 'discussion', it would be more useful to ask how drone targets are being selected and how is the relevant intelligence obtained.

Are local's being tortured to provide the hiding places of Taliban leaders or are other, 'normal', intelligence-gathering methods being employed?

Furthermore, how succesful are these more normal methods compared to the strike rate achieved previously by the use of torture?

Ronnie

I apologise Augustus, your scenario may not be from series 36 of '24'. I think you are talking about the movie 'Face-Off'. Whose character are you, John Travolta's or Nicholas Cage's. It doesn't really matter as they become interchangeable in the movie.

Ronnie

I'm sorry, An American, you seem to have wandered through the wrong door into this blog.

The one you are looking for, entitled 'Shrinking Bitter Conservative Cult Members' Spector Hate-Fest' is over there, on the right.

You enjoy your day and I'm glad to have been able to help.

stanley Jerusalem

Sleeping dolls
April 28th, 2009 8:50pm
"Stanley jerusalem: er ... no! We're not at war! Although, enjoying torture as you obviously do,"
Continue your slumber, the clue is in the address, and no, I have neither experience nor the desire to torture. I was writing of expediency, reality and the need to protest one's own. Try sleeping in an air-raid shelter for two years.

stanley Jerusalem

Dixon
April 28th, 2009 11:22pm
"The kind of leader we need. Not the system he lead. But the leadership provided. He turned the USSR from peasant dung-heap to industrial super-power in a single generation.
And you cannot make an omelette witout breaking eggs."

So did the 'dictator' Ben Gurion but without murdering and imprisoning upward of 30,000,000 people.Stalin was a bully like Ben-Gurion but in Israel the people wanted progress, in Russia they just wanted vodka.

leo solomon

Si,n
To answer your question on how Israel treats its prisoners-here's an example.
Kuntar-the Lebanese druze who smashed in the head of a four year old with his rifle butt and murdered three others -during a terrorist attack in Israel- was recently released.
While in prison he acquired a college degree,got married, had congugal visits and visits from his relatives and the red cross as well. He left prison fat and happy and determined to return to that good life by resuming his terrorist activities as soon as possible.

Michael

Dixon, you need to do a little reading up on Stalin's Russia I think and just remind yourself of the cost to the ordinary man of getting to that all important 'super-power' status.

And if mass murder & genocide equates, in your mind, to the concept of breaking eggs to get to that omelette, well that raises a few questions about your sanity.

John Birch

Stephen Rothbart: al-Qaeda was only created in the late 1980s and Clinton did strike back after the embassy bombings in 1998.

Hayward Maberley

Here is the voice of reason, from someone who would seem to be aware of what torure creates an extract from
"How to Break a Terrorist: The US interrogators who used brains, not brutality, to take down the deadliest man in Iraq", by Matthew Alexander and John R Bruning
"The reason why foreign fighters joined al-Qa'ida in Iraq was overwhelmingly because of abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and not Islamic ideology," says Major Matthew Alexander, who personally conducted 300 interrogations of prisoners in Iraq. It was the team led by Major Alexander [a named assumed for security reasons] that obtained the information that led to the US military being able to locate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qa'ida in Iraq. Zarqawi was then killed by bombs dropped by two US aircraft on the farm where he was hiding outside Baghdad on 7 June 2006. Major Alexander said that he learnt where Zarqawi was during a six-hour interrogation of a prisoner with whom he established relations of trust.

Conservative Cabbie

Israel

"but then you seem agree with a lot of the stuff nutjobs like beck seem to be spouting regardless of the level of crazy."

I expected better from you - has your level of debate succumbed to name calling? I have zero time for Glenn Beck and I've said that a number of times on here. So Stefa-wotsit gives your darling Obama a hard time in the debates and all of a sudden a left wing progressive in the Clinton administration morphs into a right winger. Even Glenn Beck makes more sense than that ridiculous twisted logic.

I'm game for a partisan fight if that's the way you want to play it but you are going to have to do better than silly lists and name-calling!

And no response to the MSNBC story - what a surprise!

israel

Cabbie:

Sorry to jump down your throat on this mate, l get a bit worked up on some issues and regretably you got the blowback someone else deserved. One thing l missed on the discussion on this issue is how people who are so unfeeling towards the civilian victims in Palestine are now touting torture as a way of reducing civilian casualties in Afganistan!!

The problem with Stephanopoulos wasn't him asking hard questions, it was the fact the question he was asking were supplied by Sean Hannitty straight from the republican talking points. You may hang onto the point that he worked for Clinton bu his TV show has shown him to be ineffective in dealing with the regular misinformation spouted by people in the last administration.

I scanned the page but l could not see what MSNBC story you were referring to. Can you enlighten please?

An American

Israel,

You seem to be in state of rapture with all that's happening under Obama. My question to you is who do you think will come to your and the UK's rescue the next time? It won't be the US...our intelligence and military have been castrated by the 'girlie boy'.

Historically speaking, Britain takes the cake on torture with political adversaries being drawn and quartered, beheaded...yes, even their women, the rack, neeed I go on with all the horrific practices? While the US is critized here for putting catapillars on a prisoner and clearing their sinus out.

An American

Augustus,

Thank you for best comment of the lot.

Only three al Qaida leaders were waterboarded with the result that important information came out of those waterboardings. One helped stop a large attack on Los Angeles. But people like Israel and others would rather that thousands of Californians died instead. Amazing....

An American

H. Marberley,

Your last statement about 'trust' disturbed me. Ah yes, trust with someone who would gladly love to cut your head off with a dull butcher knife.

Many bloggers here have no idea what they are up against...the Muslims plan to rule the world someday and always giving them the benefit of doubt and your 'trust' will most likely bring it about.

What really angers me is that this mineset endangers my family's lives. With all this liberal bleeding heart nonsense, we are doomed.

Dixon

Bloody hell man, get a grip!!! What are you going to say next to defend torture? That the Germans made the train run on time in the 30's and early 40's? Sad man, sad!!!"

No Israel, I mean it. I dont believe in irony ( it equals ambiguity ). You have been coming here a while. Dont you actually read what other people write? So how come you dont know what I have said I believe in past posts. Absolute liberty within an absolutely ruthless state. No law for citizens but that no-one may prevent anyone doing anything between CONSENTING ADULTS, but within the paramaters of a state that will do ANYTHING to any other population in any other location in the world in order to enhance the prosperity and security of its own enclosed citizenry. That is my ideal.

I have already said that my solution to Afghanistan and Pakistan is to cleanse the entire region and render it uninhabitable using all nuclear, chemical and biological means available.

I dont believe in common "Humanity", only the commonality of MY TRIBE!

Ronnie

An American, if I may interject on the UK's behalf, there is very little beheading, drawing and quartering and racking going on at the moment. Save perhaps in Edinburgh where they still have the castle dungeons and a general population possessed of an anti-social disposition.

israel

An American:

"Only three al Qaida leaders were waterboarded with the result that important information came out of those waterboardings. One helped stop a large attack on Los Angeles. But people like Israel and others would rather that thousands of Californians died instead. Amazing...."

What is amazing is how quickly a republican talking point can become the easily repeated mantra of those who support them. The Library tower plot was foiled in 2002. Khalid Sheik Mohammed wasn't captured until March 2003 when they started waterboarding him. Are you now saying that the US have a secret method of time travel and managed to get from a man who they had not yet captured and tortured the details of a plot you and the other supporters of torture are using to prove the effectiveness of a policy that the top interrogators in your own country say doesn't work? One that is illegal under US law? One that Reagan signed a treaty saying the US were against back in the 80's? Is this wonderful time machine in Area 51 maybe? Or did you get this talking point off of the same network that claimed to have covered the Million Man March a year before they were on the air?

Just three words:

MUST. DO. BETTER.

israel

Dixon:

My god, you were born in the wrong times!! You would have made a very good Roman!!

ahad ha'amoratsim

I'm still chuckling at the idea that the NY Times, which fired Bill Kristol and which serves as the house organ for Obama and for the left wing of the Democratic Party, regularly prints lies disparaging Israel, spread damamging lies about John McCain during the 2008 campaign, misunderstands US constitutional jurisprudence and regulalry distorts the record and opinions of conservative judges, and has never seen a gun control proposal it didn't like, is somehow an example of right wing media.

Martin

I'm not interested in Western Civilization being morally superior to Islamism. I just want it to survive.

The fact that we are superior in every way to Islamism is an added bonus to our Darwinist desire to survive.

Martin

israel

An American:

"Israel,
You seem to be in state of rapture with all that's happening under Obama. My question to you is who do you think will come to your and the UK's rescue the next time? It won't be the US...our intelligence and military have been castrated by the 'girlie boy'."

Again with the talking points and strawmen so easily debunked. I am happy with what is going on in the US. You now have adults in charge who are doing there best to return the US to a place where following the rule of law trumps creating their own reality and placing proffessionals in charge of government departments not inept cronies and political operatives who put party before country. The US military budget has been INCREASED. As noted by CNN.com on April 6th "The proposed overall fiscal year 2010 Defense Department budget is almost $534 billion, or nearly $664 billion when including the costs of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The current Pentagon budget totals slightly over $513 billion, or almost $655 billion including the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts."
"According to the White House, the administration's proposed budget for fiscal year 2010 requests $533.7 billion for the Department of Defense, "an increase of four percent from the 2009 enacted level of $513.3 billion," plus $130 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010."

I know that No Child Left Behind is still in effect in the US but when has an increase in funds been classed as "Castrating intellegence and the military"? Nice use of Ahnold's old quote by the way. Pity he's decided to adopt what those he called "girly men" had as ideas for the fiscal policies for California. On your second point l am trying not to sound too bullish in reply to your staggering arrogance but the UK has stood up to tyrants before the US became a nation. Personally l feel that Hilter's mistake of opening a second front on the east against the Russians therefore dividing his forces was as important a factor as the US joining the war. Thank you for the help and the sacrifice, l just hope the loans you may give us don't take 60 year to pay back like the last time.

worn

Dixon:

Absolute liberty within an absolutely ruthless state.

Yes, and this is all well & good except for the fact that it's an oxymoron. I would be interested in you citing one single nation state in history that embodies this idea. I do not believe that you can. This is because human nature (especially as amplified over collective institutions)dictates that this same "absolutely ruthless state" will inevitably begin to see enemies (citizens, even) within her borders and take the same "ruthless" measures necessary to eliminate the perceived threat. This unfortunately leads directly to a diminishment "absolute liberty". And judging by the majority of comments on this site, many folks have identified exactly who is this traitorous element within our ranks (no need to explicate; we're all intelligent readers here). I wonder, somewhat idly, whether these folks indentified are in our outside of your "tribe".

a state that will do ANYTHING to any other population in any other location in the world in order to enhance the prosperity and security of its own enclosed citizenry

Gotcha there, hoss. Let's enslave the world, take their land by force, all the good stuff that will enhance of our "prosperity". Sounds like a plan.

I have already said that my solution to Afghanistan and Pakistan is to cleanse the entire region and render it uninhabitable using all nuclear, chemical and biological means available.

Once more, a bit of silliness. as written you seem to imply that we operate in some sort of vacuum internationally. Do you really think that every other nation on earth would sit by idly and while the U.S. completely razed and made uninhabitable those two nations? It is certainly true that our military is the largest and best equipped on the planet. And by extension that we can pretty much quickly and easily kick the ass of any single nation on the planet (with a couple of exceptions that might not live up to the adjective 'quickly'). But could we kick the asses of nearly everybody at the same time? Well the dustbin of history is littered with leaders and nations that have tried this folly - multiple front wars, empire etc. None has been a sustainable enterprise.

But the thing I most took away from your, ahem, interesting worldview is that you, sir, are a moral cretin. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go wash my hands.

Conservative Cabbie

Israel

Peace will reign. The reason I haven't got involved in the torture debate is that I am conflicted on it. Ideally, we shouldn't be using torture but I'm prepared to give a pass to the Bush regime for two reasons. Firstly, I believe that Bush's intentions were honourable - to protect the people he was elected to protect. And secondly, because the people tortured (and we're not talking lasting damage) were vile human beings who gave up their rights when they planned to murder innocent civilians. I have not lost any sleep over their treatment.

My big concern is that those seeking to prosecute those from the Bush regime are not doing it because they sympathise with those tortured (you'd have to be a sick individual to sympathise with them), but are doing it to get at Bush. That's wrong. It encourages a cycle of criminalising previous administrations and it makes the task of civil servants next to impossible as they will wonder whether the next administration will try to criminalise them.

The MSNBC thing was a story where they said that Tripp was Sarah Palin's first ACKNOWLEDGED grandchild. Disgusting!

Dixon

"Worn"...Where does your "morality" come from?

"Morality" is itself a fantasy.
There is no such thing as "morality". YOU are the cretin, believing in faeries!

If my ideal state already existed I wouldnt need to describe it. To say it couldnt exist because it hasnt existed is like someone telling Karl Marx "It'll never happen mate...".

Yes, enslave the rest of the world. "International framework" means nothing if one has the nuclear weapons and the others do not.

I dont give a stool for you either, but at least I have the self-insight to admit that, rather than pompously espousing "moral" superiority. Lets face it, given the choice between being tortured and having them torture someone else, YOU sir , like Winston Smith, like ANYBODY, would scream "Do it to Julia". I can admit that I would. You only wrap yourself in delusions of "morality" so as to spare yourself the realisation that you would also!

We are all ultimately purely and solely self-serving when it gets down to truth. Only few of us have the courage to admit it You do not. You are a coward.

israel

I never agreed with the Palin family thing (even though she didn't help with the Ice Hockey photo stunt) and l felt that anything on the parenting of her youngest was off limits, just as l was disgusted by that idiot on LBC having a go at Lampard regarding his family (i'm a Manchester United fan and last year l could have written an essay on why l don't like his style of football, but l digress) without knowing the full facts. Politicians don't help themselves really and regardless of if it's Palin or Obama putting your kids on the front line is pretty bad. It doesn't help if it's retaliation for the simplistic idiocies of limbaugh and mccain with the things they said about Chelsea Clinton back in the day.

israel

An American:

"Historically speaking, Britain takes the cake on torture with political adversaries being drawn and quartered, beheaded...yes, even their women, the rack, neeed I go on with all the horrific practices? While the US is critized here for putting catapillars on a prisoner and clearing their sinus out."

Hmm..... Well can't really argue with too much of the first point. I know you guys did your best in Salem to match us but there you go. On your second yet again defenders of torture try a talking point which is so poor it's a bit sad to have to reply to it. PEOPLE WERE TORTURED. It was not a job of dropping a caterpiller in a small confined space with someone with a phobia or your ridiculous statement of clearing out sinuses. I have a friend who, like Winston Smith, is scared of rodents. I myself am terrified of wasps and bees. I nearly got myself killed last year by running into the road to aviod one that came out of a hedge at me. I know if you stuck me in a small box with one l would be screaming like a lunatic to get out of there away from it. What is it with the rightwing defenders of torture who seem to think that their attempt to provide political cover for the people who broke US law will work by trying to equate the torture they did with college hazing? It stupid things like this which has seen so many walk if not run away from republicans. If people want to know why those identifing themselves as republicans has dropped to 21% you can point to things like this.

israel

Cabbie:

A brilliant discussion between Jon Stewart and Cliff May.

http://blog.indecisionforever.com/2009/04/29/jon-stewarts-extended-interview-with-cliff-may/

One of the best on the subject.

CrumbleKid

You're being disingenuous. Quoting these articles is a specious defence of the war. You know, I know, everyone knows the way it was spun. Cheney wanted his war and was determined to get it. Sticking up for that dreadful regime does you no credit at all.

Stephen Rothbart

Israel, please make up your mind. I was talking about the three supposed tortures that were carried out by the CIA involving waterboarding, which is the SOLE topic of the discussions, becasue that was where Melanie started.

I also said that no one truly knows what came out of the intelligence produced there, as it is classified. People guess and then print them as facts.

The discussion, and my sole point is that Obama's miserable attempts to ingratiate himself with every PC event, and to shake hands with every dictator and demagogue in the world, has led him and the Democrats and the liberal Press to attempt to investigate this action as the problem of the Bush administration.

The real torture, and I am against this, is that carried out by Extraordinary Rendition. This involves actual physical harm.

This act was approved by Bill Clinton and his regime, and yet no one is asking for this to be investigated, which is hyprocritical. If Obama was a real utopian, instead of a sham, he would have apologised for all of the USA's misdeeds, not just those of the last eight years.

But he does not do that. Why does Congress not ban the act of Water-boarding? Because to ban it would mean it is now legal. Which is the whole point. Why do you need to ban something if it illegal? If it is not illegal, then Bush and the CIA was right to use it.

The example I used of drone war-fare is a red herring as far as torture is concerend. I was not asking if the intelligence that led a drone to a target was got by the brilliance of the CIA, torturing, or water-boarding.

I was suggesting that this act, is an act of war, and can KILL innocent people. No one is accusing Obama (yet) of war crimes, perhaps because he is not Jewish. But many people are accusing Bush of something where no one died, but was also carried out at a time when most of the world, the two Houses in the USA and the White House, believed America to have been the subject of an act of war by al Qaeda.

Again, if you believe that both Presidents are acting under the impression they are at war, and one uses water-boarding, legally investigated, subject to certain conditions, to try and find intelligence that the CIA, then emasculated by Clinton's budgetary plans, and thus ineffective, had missed, and the other, at a time of war, uses drones to take out targets even if innocent bystanders are killed, which is worse?

I believe that at times both can be justified, but of the two, the drone is a more extreme measure as people actually died.

No one died, as I said, because the CIA water-boarded them, but this is where Obama is shaking his puny fist.

It makes him and his supporters look like hypocrites to me, and to many of his friends. And it strengthens the causes of his enemies, that now believe they are jsutified in attacking US targets, because Obama is inferring his country is evil.

All round, a disaster. I don't care what the Polls say about his first 100 days. Talk to his former supporters living on the front line in harm's way, as I do, and you will get a different picture of this intelligent but ultimately stupid President.

Ronnie

If I may return to this point with you Stephen Rothbart.

'But he does not do that. Why does Congress not ban the act of Water-boarding? Because to ban it would mean it is now legal. Which is the whole point. Why do you need to ban something if it illegal? If it is not illegal, then Bush and the CIA was right to use it.'

Again, I'm not very clear on what your point is here but I'm pretty sure that Joseph Heller has already dealt with the issues you raise in his novel 'Catch 22'.

Stephen Rothbart

Ronnie, please forgive me for not being clear in that statement. If you would like to see what I was trying to express, albeit badly, I propose that you find the article by William McGurn in yesterday's Wall Street Journal.

He expressed it much, much better.

An American

Israel,

The only thing I get out of all of your comments is that you want Americans to be just as used and abused by our government as you are by yours and in consequence, as miserable as you Brits.

Be happy...we're almost there.

Mark

Dixon, have you ever thought you might be projecting your own mental make-up onto everyone else, and if this might be a questionable move?

davod

I have not read all the posts so forgive me if this has already been mentioned.

Any interrogation takes the information received and compares it with information already received from all other sources.

ahad ha'amoratsim

rippon, there is a good discussion right now at Volokh.com, where a blogger observed that though all anti-Semites may be appallingly ignorant, not everyone who is appallingly ignorant is an anti-Semite. I have seen nothing that tells me that you are anti-Semitic, but much that tells me that you are so uninformed on the middle east that you are incapable of evaluating responsible from irresponsible sources.

Ronnie

Stephen Rothbart, I did read the article in the Wall Street Journal as you suggested. Thank you very much, it was very helpful and I see your point much more clearly now.

I replied yesterday but my post was not published. I don't want you to think me rude.

YA

Dixon, Drakken - I am with you. Just don’t repeat this juvenile nonsense like “I am for torture”, “make AfPak uninhabitable” and so on. We humans bear the curse of our animal origin, but there are 3 things, essentially communal and co-evolving, that constitute identity of your beloved “tribe”: rationality/intelligence, moral code, and aesthetics. Don’t stand against categorical imperative, chances are slim. Even animals have moral, these things are an attribute of species make-up, like paws and claws. As to the torture and other forms of cruelty to enemies, - well, this is unavoidable evil of hurting others in self-defense. The best mode is to minimize it, is deterrence. There is a legend about 9/11, why there were no more attacks on America (I personally like it) - that W just warned Saudis if something like this happens again, I will evaporate Mecca and Medina. He warned them quietly, because he knew it is not nice to threaten. There are lots of things about us that are not nice. Racism, dehumanizing whole enemy tribe isn’t nice. In the end, when we go to the toilet.. it’s not nice. We admit that it happens, we aren’t proud of it; we modestly close the door.

An American

C. Cabbie,

You're not only intelligent and have a fondness for American history...you also have good taste in women...Camarota has it all...brains and beauty.

An American

Israel,

Let's face it...some people are better off dead than continuing to do great harm to their fellow humans all in the name of self serving ambition and ego.

That's why we badly need term limits in our US Congress. Unfortunately, many politicians will stay in the 'good ole boy's club' called the US Congress until their last dying breath, no matter how senile or infirm they become.

It's hard for these ego driven politicians to give up a well paying plum job, not to mention hundreds of millions of outside money opportunities, with dozens of servants, paid for by the American taxpayers, at their beckon call along with some of the public and media treating them like they are some kind of demi-gods.

There's good reason why the American public rate our politicans dead last in 'respect' polls. I personally would rate most of them lower than fungus.

I lived in Washington DC, which is actually a small town in many ways, and some of the stories of these so-called public servant's antics would perhaps even open your eyes.

links

So we were never invited to understand that links between Saddam and Al Q were anything other than minimal. Really?

Wasn't Melanie Phillips herself still defending the war last year by talking up these supposed links? – see her blog That non existent link, 25 March 2008.