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United States News Title: TORTURED REASONING Just when it looks like John McCain has reformed from his RINO ways, the old John McCain resurfaces. His tortured reasoning is very damaging for several reasons:
1. There was no reason for him to opine on the subject of water boarding.
2. He is clearly wrong.
3. He gives cover to a weak administration with regard to critical national security issues.
Water boarding is not torture. One of the statements I heard on Fox News the other night was some loudmouthed liberal saying that no one who has ever been water boarded has called it anything but torture. Excuse me, but I was personally water boarded as part of my SERES (Survival Escape Resistance Evasion) training in 1968. Unlike these morons, I understand exactly what happens. It was a decidedly unpleasant experience, I didn’t want to undergo it then, and certainly wouldn’t want to undergo it again. But real torture results in permanent injury. Torture involves things such as pulling out teeth and hooking up electrical power to one’s gonads. Torture is what the other guys do to our guys whenever they have the opportunity. Torture is also what Obama is allowing to happen to people we capture now because he is still using rendition tactics. He doesn’t do the water boarding, he allows someone else to it. Torture is also what Great Britain, France, Germany and every other civilized nation does when it feels its national security is at risk. Those who pretend otherwise are naïve fools.
What Bush did was remarkable. Clinton was just sending people to garden spots like Egypt where real torture was being done. But, Bush had two problems with that policy: 1. We encouraged other countries to do things we claimed were illegal and immoral. 2. We lost control of the process and lost critical intelligence as a result. So Bush said no. He said we will take them to Guantanamo, and we will get the information from them using techniques that are tough, but which are a far cry from torture. The ONLY difference between what Clinton did and what Obama is doing is that Bush didn’t play games and pretend it wasn’t happening.
McCain is parsing words to try and justify a conclusion that is clearly inaccurate. Numerous experts say that our intelligence didn’t realize the significance of the nickname of the courier until Khalid Sheikh Mohammed tipped them off that this was one of the people who had direct access to Osama bin Laden. That is an extremely important distinction. Yes, other people may have mentioned this guy’s name before Khalid Sheikh Mohammed did, but that would have meant little to the intelligence community. It would be the equivalent of someone telling Germany there was a secret military installation at Los Alamos. That probably happened. A lot of people knew there was a secret military installation there. But, what Germany did not know was that this was where the U.S. was constructing a nuclear weapon there. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was one of a handful of people who knew how to communicate with Osama bin Laden. Even if he just confirmed information already obtained from another source, it was still incredibly important information.
I, unfortunately, had a lot of personal training with regard to interrogation techniques. It is true that most intelligence experts believe that information obtained under extreme duress, such as torture, is of questionable value. There is merit to that position. But, that is not the complete story. It depends on the kind of information you want. For example, suppose police have someone in custody who they know kidnapped a little girl and has stashed her away some place. If that person is put under duress, they are very likely to tell the police where she is located. Is anyone really naïve enough to think that the police would not do whatever is necessary to get this information? This information may not hold up in a court of law, but it may save that girl’s life. This is exactly the type of information that our intelligence people were trying to get from the enhanced interrogation. Lives were saved as a result.
I suspect that Osama bin Laden could have been captured alive. I also suspect that this was not even considered because Obama had boxed himself into a corner and would have had no good option for dealing with a live Osama bin Laden. What was he going to do, bring him to New York for trial? So instead, we just killed him to avoid the problem.
Whether it is Obama, or another U.S. President, at some point in the future we are going to get our hands on someone else who has information we absolutely have to get. Sadly, because of people like John McCain, the balanced rational and moral alternative brilliantly developed by George W. Bush is now off the table. Sad!
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#1. To: no gnu taxes (#0)
(Edited)
Is this the same McCain with the bad skin? And I was hoping you would post yet another version of this same subject matter.
"http://first-draft-blog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c5ced53ef0148c7a28c4b970c-320wi"
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