Today brought a declaration that many Americans have long waited to hear from their Justice Department: “Waterboarding is torture.” The speaker was Attorney General-nominee Eric Holder, on the first topic of today’s confirmation hearing. He also said that he doesn’t believe the attorney general is the president’s lawyer and pledged to restore the independence of the Justice Department. Those would be welcome changes.
Registered?
Commenting on WE Blog now requires you to be a Kansas.com member. Use the links above to register, if you haven't already, or to log in.Contact us
Follow us
Daily Archives
-
Recent Comments
- Jed on Let immigrants run
- Regular on Open thread 11/23
- Regular on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- Freebird1971 on Open thread 11/23
- Freebird1971 on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- Freebird1971 on Open thread 11/23
22 Comments
Those would be welcome changes.
Yes, they would. However, Eric Holder comes with a lot of other, not so positive baggage.
On balance, Holder’s a NO.
And long experience tells us that when GMC doesn’t like someone, they must be good.
Thanks for the vote of confidence.
whew, life going back to normal. Its about time.
Holder is the wrong man for this job; he didn’t think bombing the Davidians was torture he is another Clinton hack that studied under the evil janet reno
Capn –
I must be doing something right.
I have a list of reasons to oppose Holder. They begin with his lack of respect for the Constitution, in particular the 2nd and 6th amendments, and continue with his participation in Clinton’s pay-to-play pardonfest, in particular Mark Rich, among other things.
For you, however, it is my opposition that is enough to generate your support. I appreciate the power and influence you have afforded me; I hope I use it wisely. I’ll do my best.
Is Holder already speaking for the Justice Dept. in an official capacity? Maybe he’s just another Washington bureaucrat posturing himself nicely and telling the audience what they want to hear so he gets the hancho job. Yes, ‘waterboarding’ used as an aggressive coercice interrogation technique might push the ethical envelope. But maybe whatever it is that’s at stake needs to be considered as well. I’m sure all the libs are tired of hearing the aegis “… but what our enemies do to our soldiers is much, much worse.” But, in reality, if Johnny down at the local middle school went to the principal and said, “Timmy held me down and poured water up my nose.”, Timmy would get suspended for five days, but the DA wouldn’t look at the case.
“WAR” tries –
“‘waterboarding’ used as an aggressive coercice interrogation technique might push the ethical envelope. ‘”
Ya think?
Americans hanged Japanese soldiers for
pushing the ethical envelopewar crimes in 1946.To equate it with “Timmy held me down and poured water up my nose” is demeaning to honorable Americans who serve in the military.
Why do you hate America?
I recently saw a video on some news show where Bush’s first FBI director,Robert Mueller III,said that the US had not received any worthwhile information from persons who had been tortured. He is not alone in that assessment.
Look how much effort time and emotion have been spent on trying to determine to which side of the “torture” line water boarding falls. It was used on what, 3 or 4 of the worst terrorists? And it worked.
If you can extract information from someone like that with a technique that only lasts seconds and causes no permanent harm, you should probably have that in your bag of tricks, just in case.
I bet Barnard Maydoff (Madeoff with billions) is hoping he can get a pardon like Mark Rich.
outlander,
You are right in your post above, lets see:
Pour a little water in a terrorists nose, save a few American lives…..that’s a no-brainer. Which of course many here suffer from.
Political_mama
Posted January 15, 2009 at 2:19 pm | Permalink
whew, life going back to normal. Its about time.
—
Here here.
I could not agree more…and it really IS beginning to feel like we’re sliding out of a bad, long nightmare and into something like normal.
That’s refreshing, an Atty. Gen. that can actually ennunciate a position on whether it’s torture, instead of giving a torturous evasion.
The torture didn’t save any lives. Only lessened our moral standing.
outlander
Posted January 15, 2009 at 3:38 pm | Permalink
… water boarding … was used on what, 3 or 4 of the worst terrorists? And it worked.
—
lol
What, only 3 or 4? And it worked? What exactly was “worked” here, except to sully the reputation of the USA in the eyes of foreign democracies existing and waiting to be born?
It’s funny in a very black not-haha way to see even the more articulate of Augustus Stupidus’s supporters resort to moral relativism of the rankest variety at the drop of a water board.
If blue is a color yesterday then it is not a safe bet it is a color also today? If water boarding is torture yesterday then it is torture today. Holder simply stated today what was also true yesterday.
Again the water boarding argument is comparable to my son hitting his little brother and denying he hit him rather he touched him really hard! A crime is a crime whether you call it a different name. The numbers of whom has been tortured does not make it not a crime. If you kill only one person or a dozen are you still a murder?
Pedant: How do you know it didn’t save your own sorry butt? You don’t. And we will likely never know what information was obtained and how it was used to protect us.
With regard to sullying our standing in the world, I don’t believe it did. It certainly shouldn’t have. We took perfectly reasonable steps under the circumstances. I would have been upset if we had not taken those steps, because our national security was at stake. It is easy now, safe and sound 7 years later to whine that we were too rough on those nice terrorist boys.
But let’s go ahead and assume our global reputation was sullied. The main reason would be that they just followed along with the NYT (the jihadist’s best friend) and other liberal media outlets in their America hating coverage.
If you are so worried about it, let’s all put on sackcloth, feel bad, and have national day of self-flagellation. Then maybe the p*ss ant countries that we have protected over the decades will feel good about us again.
OK the leading justification for the torture is the unknown, we did not know whom or when we might be attacked again. We did not know what might happen and went on the idea of the ticking time bomb plot. We did not know where it might be or when it might go off. So we violated the laws and our moral core to learn something that we did not even know was a real thing to begin with. I’m I stating that too simply?
Riiight we’ll never know if waterboarding was productive, just like we didn’t have all the facts that bush had when he declared war.
“bombing the Davidians”
Nobody bombed the Davidians. Vernon Howell torched the place.
Waterboarding was just one part of the torturing; sleep deprivation also had a major role; as did making a prisoner stand naked in front of a female officer; and keeping a prisoner in a very cold environment was also included.
Do you notice that the public has never been told what we were saved from by getting information from torturing? Yeah, that is classified so I guess we just have to trust our wonderful leaders that it did produce something.
After all, they are all honorable folks who would never lie to us–unless it was about WMD or yellow cake or that Saddam Hussein was involved with Al Q & Osama bin Ladin. So it must be true that we would have all been wiped out if we hadn’t been saved by the results of our torture program.
War(monger),
“But, in reality, if Johnny down at the local middle school went to the principal and said, “Timmy held me down and poured water up my nose.”, Timmy would get suspended for five days, but the DA wouldn’t look at the case.”
That’s too bad! Maybe if those bully apes had been prosecuted in middle school, they wouldn’t be getting the country in so much trouble now!