ST. MARY’S CITY, Maryland (Reuters) – The CIA’s harsh questioning of terrorism suspects was legal and saved lives, the U.S. national intelligence director said on Wednesday, as Congress questioned a CIA lawyer about the agency’s destruction of interrogation videotapes.
“It has saved lives. And so from my point of view, we’ve accomplished the mission within the bounds of U.S. law,” the director, Michael McConnell, told students at St. Mary’s College in Maryland.
Waterboarding has been condemned internationally as a form of illegal torture, and McConnell was quoted in the current issue of The New Yorker magazine as saying he would consider the practice torture if it were applied to him.
“The United States does not engage in torture. We do use enhanced interrogation techniques,” McConnell said. “There are Americans today that are alive, that are living and breathing because of those interrogation techniques.”
The Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation, and sought to discourage congressional probes, fearing they could undermine its efforts.
Human rights activists and some intelligence analysts and congressional critics have questioned the validity of information gained under harsh interrogations and called for a ban on waterboarding. McConnell said it was important to keep suspects guessing about the techniques they would face.
—————————————-
“The United States does not engage in torture”. Well, we learned from the Clinton administration that guilt lies largely on what “the meaning of ‘is’ is”, so it follows that this entire debate rests on what your interpretation of “torture” is.
If you were forced to stand naked in a 50 degree cell as buckets of cold water were periodically dumped on you, would that be torture? What about being shackled and forced to stand without food or sleep for 40 hours or more? Or the now infamous waterboarding? What do you think constitutes torture?
”But, but–” whine the voices of those who routinely confuse blind trust with patriotism, “They’re TERRORISTS!”
Wrong. They are terror *suspects*, who may or may not have done anything wrong to begin with. I must have been asleep when the United States of America adopted the practice of holding someone prisoner indefinitely, without charge, without aid, in secret prisons where they applied “enhanced interrogation” methods merely because you are “suspected” of wrongdoing. That would certainly be a chilling thought if it were being done to anyone besides the “bad guys”.
Something I have noticed is that we look with shock and disgust on the deeds of dictators who commit mass murder to eradicate the “sub-human” portion of the population, we go to war against tyrants who commit torture in secret prisons. We justly decry these heinous acts, with the air that America, the beacon of Liberty and Freedom, would never and could never be guilty of anything even remotely similar.
Yet here we are.
We just can’t wait to nuke us some ragheads. It makes little difference which ones, Iran, Saudi Arabia, we just want to teach those camel-lovers a LESSON. We have de-humanized an entire race, to the point where we actually defend acts of abuse. As if they are not really people anyway. If this thinking persists, WE are going to be the ones to suffer. That the treatment you saw in the above video “complies with our laws and our Constitution” is a lie, a blasphemy, and a sad sign of just how much the Constitution is raped by those who shoud protect it.
Someone, please look up HR1955, the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act. Under this resolution, the poster child of thought crime legislation, the “bad guy”, the terrorist, could be you. I am not against our soldiers, nor do I have any attachment to Arabs. But I will call it as I see it, regardless of how politically correct it is. Sometimes the truth hurts, and the truth is we should be ashamed of ourselves for passively allowing the mistreatment of a fellow human being, solely on the basis of ethnicity, and because somehow we think that ignorance, towing the party line, and blind servitude make us patriotic. When the monster turns on those who feed it and our government cracks down on blogs like this as being a homegrown terror threat, you will have only yourselves to blame. Enjoy your stay at Happy Kamp FEMA.
“They came first for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
ST. MARY’S CITY, Maryland (Reuters) – The CIA’s harsh questioning of terrorism suspects was legal and saved lives, the U.S. national intelligence director said on Wednesday, as Congress questioned a CIA lawyer about the agency’s destruction of interrogation videotapes.
“It has saved lives. And so from my point of view, we’ve accomplished the mission within the bounds of U.S. law,” the director, Michael McConnell, told students at St. Mary’s College in Maryland.
Waterboarding has been condemned internationally as a form of illegal torture, and McConnell was quoted in the current issue of The New Yorker magazine as saying he would consider the practice torture if it were applied to him.
“The United States does not engage in torture. We do use enhanced interrogation techniques,” McConnell said. “There are Americans today that are alive, that are living and breathing because of those interrogation techniques.”
The Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation, and sought to discourage congressional probes, fearing they could undermine its efforts.
Human rights activists and some intelligence analysts and congressional critics have questioned the validity of information gained under harsh interrogations and called for a ban on waterboarding. McConnell said it was important to keep suspects guessing about the techniques they would face.
—————————————-
“The United States does not engage in torture”. Well, we learned from the Clinton administration that guilt lies largely on what “the meaning of ‘is’ is”, so it follows that this entire debate rests on what your interpretation of “torture” is.
If you were forced to stand naked in a 50 degree cell as buckets of cold water were periodically dumped on you, would that be torture? What about being shackled and forced to stand without food or sleep for 40 hours or more? Or the now infamous waterboarding? What do you think constitutes torture?
”But, but–” whine the voices of those who routinely confuse blind trust with patriotism, “They’re TERRORISTS!”
Wrong. They are terror *suspects*, who may or may not have done anything wrong to begin with. I must have been asleep when the United States of America adopted the practice of holding someone prisoner indefinitely, without charge, without aid, in secret prisons where they applied “enhanced interrogation” methods merely because you are “suspected” of wrongdoing. That would certainly be a chilling thought if it were being done to anyone besides the “bad guys”.
Something I have noticed is that we look with shock and disgust on the deeds of dictators who commit mass murder to eradicate the “sub-human” portion of the population, we go to war against tyrants who commit torture in secret prisons. We justly decry these heinous acts, with the air that America, the beacon of Liberty and Freedom, would never and could never be guilty of anything even remotely similar.
Yet here we are.
We just can’t wait to nuke us some ragheads. It makes little difference which ones, Iran, Saudi Arabia, we just want to teach those camel-lovers a LESSON. We have de-humanized an entire race, to the point where we actually defend acts of abuse. As if they are not really people anyway. If this thinking persists, WE are going to be the ones to suffer. That the treatment you saw in the above video “complies with our laws and our Constitution” is a lie, a blasphemy, and a sad sign of just how much the Constitution is raped by those who shoud protect it.
Someone, please look up HR1955, the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act. Under this resolution, the poster child of thought crime legislation, the “bad guy”, the terrorist, could be you. I am not against our soldiers, nor do I have any attachment to Arabs. But I will call it as I see it, regardless of how politically correct it is. Sometimes the truth hurts, and the truth is we should be ashamed of ourselves for passively allowing the mistreatment of a fellow human being, solely on the basis of ethnicity, and because somehow we think that ignorance, towing the party line, and blind servitude make us patriotic. When the monster turns on those who feed it and our government cracks down on blogs like this as being a homegrown terror threat, you will have only yourselves to blame. Enjoy your stay at Happy Kamp FEMA.
Posted in Current Events/Commentary, politics