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It continues to me that Conservatives, who normally stand for limited government, liberty and respect for enduring institutions, are defending Cheney and the Bush administration's use of torture. I just came across this post from Andrew Sullivan and thought it was dead-on.
he assertion of total power through unchecked violence - outside the Constitution, beyond the reach of the law (apart from legal memos from hired hacks instructed to retroactively redefine torture into 'legality') - will be seen in retrospect as the key defining theory of Bush conservatism. It ended, as all regimes bent on total power always end, with torture. Moderator cut: copyright violation, link and first two sentences only, please
Last edited by katzenfreund; 04-23-2009 at 08:20 AM..
I wrote this in 2005 and published it in 2006. If I could figure this out from the outside, why was no one resisting in the White House?
Because you where just that. Just as our current President wont release the ENTIRE CIA memo on torture(w/o blacked out areas and omissions). There are things we do not know. The fact that the first line in the memo states that American lives where saved I have a hard time questioning their methods. While water boarding, sleep deprivation, cold, and nudity all sound like grotesque unforgivable actions I tend to think that if Americans were saved it was worth it. Besides the fact that when I think of torture I picture broken limbs, burning, knees being shot, finger smashed or cut off, and yes even a child's balls being smashed I guess.
Moral or immoral in your eyes, lives were saved. Especially in the case of KSM where he taunted interrogators and acted like he was hiding info, which in fact he did! The day your child is abducted and hidden away and the only way for you to get the abductor to tell you where your child is it to smash his finger and toes.....I venture to guess you will have a hammer and he will have a few less fingers and toes.
ALLLLL that being said, I understand the urge to take the moral high ground, but unfortunately in dire time terrible and often regrettable choices have to be made for the sake of protecting OUR OWN.
Basicaloly the argument by conservative is that it was nt torture. In fact even presdient bush has said he knew and approved of teh techincs. Key democrats were i fact notifies of this policy including the house leader Pelosi. Spo basicaslly its in the democrats coutr to take iot to court that I see.Their old spin for political purposes is getting old by now. obama does seem to want to actaully make a choice himself havinf flip-flopped on this issue just recently. he stioll hasnt't aken the l;ead and seem to leave it to congress to call for trials. They probaly will waffle with the same old ;same old hearings or commisiion because I don't think they have the guts it takes really. It would be nice to see all the records and tesimony but i doubt that many possibly facing indictment will want to testify before congress now or even then would it be as effective as discovery by a defense in a prosecution which gives more power to get at the documents.
Because you where just that. Just as our current President wont release the ENTIRE CIA memo on torture(w/o blacked out areas and omissions). There are things we do not know. The fact that the first line in the memo states that American lives where saved I have a hard time questioning their methods. While water boarding, sleep deprivation, cold, and nudity all sound like grotesque unforgivable actions I tend to think that if Americans were saved it was worth it. Besides the fact that when I think of torture I picture broken limbs, burning, knees being shot, finger smashed or cut off, and yes even a child's balls being smashed I guess.
Moral or immoral in your eyes, lives were saved. Especially in the case of KSM where he taunted interrogators and acted like he was hiding info, which in fact he did! The day your child is abducted and hidden away and the only way for you to get the abductor to tell you where your child is it to smash his finger and toes.....I venture to guess you will have a hammer and he will have a few less fingers and toes.
ALLLLL that being said, I understand the urge to take the moral high ground, but unfortunately in dire time terrible and often regrettable choices have to be made for the sake of protecting OUR OWN.
There is no evidence that lives were saved. In any case, it's beside the point. There are other, FAR more effective ways of extracting information, as any seasoned interrogator can tell you. Torture almost NEVER yields reliable information. In fact, it most often yields false information.
And--minor point--we live in a Constitutional Democracy. Under the RULE OF LAW. It is AGAINST THE LAW TO TORTURE. PERIOD. Our Presidents don't get to unilaterally break the law in order to further their political agenda. Not difficult to understand.
It continues to me that Conservatives, who normally stand for limited government, liberty and respect for enduring institutions, are defending Cheney and the Bush administration's use of torture. I just came across this post from Andrew Sullivan and thought it was dead-on.
he assertion of total power through unchecked violence - outside the Constitution, beyond the reach of the law (apart from legal memos from hired hacks instructed to retroactively redefine torture into 'legality') - will be seen in retrospect as the key defining theory of Bush conservatism. It ended, as all regimes bent on total power always end, with torture. Moderator cut: copyright violation, link and first two sentences only, please
The best one can say of president Bush is that he is a deeply ignorant man, unaware of the history of the country he was leading and the civilization he probably thought he was defending. But Cheney knew what he was doing. And he is aggressively unrepentant, accusing his successor of deliberately leaving Americans vulnerable to attack; and he and his followers would do all of it again - and more. Remember: waterboarding someone 183 times was not an agonizing choice for him. It was, in his own words, a "no-brainer." Remember also the war criminal, John Yoo:
"Cassel: If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty
Cassel: Also no law by Congress -- that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo...
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that..."
Yoo is absolutely sincere in believing that the executive branch can over-ride any domestic law, any international treaty and any moral boundary if necessary to protect national security. In a war on terror that stretches decades into the future, the new conservatism allows for a president with no checks at all on his own power as commander-in-chief. What might have once been a theoretical debate became a pressing reality.
And within weeks of this new legal doctrine being expressed, military detainees under the control of American forces were being tortured - consciously, with pre-meditation, with legal cover provided. America went from being a constitutional republic, under the law, to an imperium of one man, answerable only to an election every four years, empowered to break any law and violate any moral law if he believes it is necessary for national security. If conservatism had begun as a political philosophy designed to check power, to ensure individual liberty, to protect individuals from lawless government authority, it ended in a dark room, with a defenseless detainee strapped to a board, terrified beyond most of our imagining.
I wrote this in 2005 and published it in 2006. If I could figure this out from the outside, why was no one resisting in the White House?
Last edited by katzenfreund; 04-23-2009 at 08:03 AM..
Even if you accept the the claim the claim that "lives were saved"... (highly doubtful imo)
They are only speaking of one positive outcome.
It doesn't say how many people were torured needlessly to get that info.
It doesn't say how much bad intelligence came along with the torture.
It doesn't say what kind of damage that bad intelligence did.
It doesn't say how much damage it did to our efforts to prevent other Countries from torturing. ( Since we've lost the high ground )
It doesnt account for the damage to our Country's reputation and good standing all over the World.
It doesnt take into account the mental toll it took on the those who committed these acts.
And most importantly it doesnt take into account the damage done when our highest leaders (no less) break the Rule of Law.......They are law breakers, everyone knows it, and nothing is being done about it.
That's a shamefull and devastating turn of events for the USA. It sets a terrible example to our young that principles are something you set aside from time to time.
Last edited by padcrasher; 04-23-2009 at 03:09 AM..
No true Conservative would support torture. It's against the Law. It's against the idea of freedom and liberty. It's against what this Country stands for.
........We're the guys in the white hats remember!
Now on the other hand those who run and vote for the GOP are are happy with torture. They are not real Conservatives. They are Authoritarians who have no problem breaking the law when it's "their side" doing the law breaking.
Your sensationalized title to this thread makes some wild assumptions:
Conservatives support torture.
They do not.
Cheney and Bush are conservativs
They are not.
America tortures prisoners
No. We don't. Torture is the infliction of severe pain, the breaking of bones, and doing other bodily harm etc. We did none of those things.
George Tenet, Bush's CIA director, and who also severd in that capacity under Bill Clinton, believed the program saved lives. So it cannot be said that this is the doing of "conservatives", which is your assertion.
Quote:
"Reactions to this former CIA program, which was used against senior al Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003, are demonstrating how little President Barack Obama and some Democratic members of Congress understand the dire threats to our nation."
"After many long and contentious debates, Congress repeatedly approved and funded this program on a bipartisan basis in both Republican and Democratic Congresses."
Last edited by nononsenseguy; 04-23-2009 at 04:41 AM..
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