Monday, May 18, 2009

Practical consequences of torture

Suicide bombers. Jihadis. More terrorism.

Former VP Dick Cheney has requested the release of additional memos showing that torture and abuse saved American lives by preventing terrorist attacks. If the Obama Administration decides to release these memos, then I suggest they also release statistics from Iraq showing the number of foreign fighters that were recruited because of our policy of torture and abuse. It was tracked. I know because I saw the slides and because I heard captured foreign fighters state this day in and day out.
H/t Tom, and go read his piece, too:
There is much more to the history of English legal theories of torture, but the point of this lightning fast gloss is simply to reinforce what should be obvious: the opinions of the Bush “Justice” (sic) department were nothing more than words in the form of law whose sole purpose was to provide cover for what any competent lawyer would have had to recognize as crimes.

4 comments:

Silence DoGood said...

So we should all tell our president to end torture outright, as opposed to his empty words and staus quo policies.Onca again Obama laughs and smiles and we all go misty eyed. I wish we could see instead.

Question Authority, especially the smiling ones.

globeisatrocious said...

He is a dastardly accomplice after the fact. Or he does not believe it is torture.

Silence DoGood said...

Obama is playing to the crowd. He is very clever and knows that if he sells his image well, most people will not question him and will not bother with petty details like follow through.

He often says what other politicians say but he puts it so well!

I remember the debates with HRClinton. Example: She said she would meet with certain controvercial world figures only after preconditions. Obama retorted he would meet with anyone and muttered "of course there would be some conditions".

Of course they were both saying the same thing but he knew how to play the audience. Hillary just spoke her mind, a fatal flaw in US politics.

I sure don't like being played.

Check out gp.org to see what real liberals look like. As opposed to the DNC cartoon world.

I suggest working locally to get some independents elected. Question the DNC / RNC club.

lovable liberal said...

Hey, Silence, run for office. See how many votes you get.