Pakistan has a very large military controlled by secular leadership. The chance that nukes would fall into the hands of the Taliban is still very remote. I'd be more concerned with loose Russian nukes at this point.

Remember as well that Pakistan is a pretty big country, and it's only the northwestern corner which has radicalized. Clinton has been pretty vocal of late that the policy to allow Sharia Law was a mistake and the Pakistani Government must do more to contain religious extremists.

I think that before the US has a large military event in Pakistan we'd see India making a play. Right now they're both US allies and in the near term India has a lot more to loose.

All that being said, the area does have the potential for explosion, as does the Middle East.

-spence

"Waterboarding stopped a West Coast 911."

This seems to be 'slightly' inaccurate.

The 9/11-sized event was prevented in February 2002. However, the terrorist that Cheney/Rove claim yielded information on the event was apprehended in March 2003.

I must ask, why are we suppose to believe a word anyone from the previous administration says? They cannot even get the dates of their lies in line.

2 separate west coast instances that were stopped. you are confusing the time of one with the other.

Care to cite any references to back up your assertion?

And I think one must be careful with the assertion that an attack was "stopped". I'd wager that the number of terror attacks that actually become real threats (i.e. have proper funding, resources timing etc...) is very small.

Granted, any disruption is a good thing, but if we get word that two guys in Singapore are talking about attacking Americans and break it up that doesn't necessarily mean that an attack has been "stopped" as it may have never had a likely chance of becoming real in the first place.

I'd also note that we probably do disrupt a lot of early planning due to regular anti-terror activities that target funding, communication etc...some of this is credible and I'd think a lot of it is just noise. This must present a huge challenge for the CIA/FBI/NSA trying to sort out the wheat from the chaff.

All that being said, I still haven't heard much on credible attacks that have been thwarted, and certainly nothing that you could say wouldn't have happened without torture, which is really the point.

-spence

Yep, and while we have our front lines and thousands of troops in AFG, our only real supply line goes through Pakistan / Khyber Pass...


Hey sizzlecheeks:

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archiv...vance_east.php

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle6164687.ece

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_pakistan

I like how your first link starts with a quote on the Taliban's progress from an Islamist leader :tooth:

But it looks like the Taliban is already in retreat as they've overstepped their bounds. I still maintain that the Pakistani Army of 500,000 active and another 500,000 reserves isn't going to let the Taliban take over.

That being said, I also noted it was ripe for flame up. Could get ugly...

-spence

I think that we are in for some big problems over there. The Paks are more worried about India than they are than what is happening in their own yard. On top of that, a sizeable percentage of the inteligence services and the military sympathize (if not members of) the Taleban. Yeh, its going to suck badly.

I'm not confusing anything.

Bush, Rove and Cheney have all said at one time or another that the attack planned in 2002 was prevented with the intelligence they received from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. However, he was not tortured for information until March 2003.

There's nothing to confuse.

there were no attacks planned on America...it's all made up to justify the horrors of waterboarding....

hey, for the folks...democrats in washington and liberals everywhere that are just "OURTRAGED" that their country engaged in the brutal and unspeakable procedure known as waterboarding, how the world views us as a result and it's use on "3" terrorists so far as I can see ....

aren't many of you the same people that barely blink when asked about abortion and all of it's forms? our fearless leader has condoned the procedure(AND NOW ARRANGED FEDERAL FUNDING FOR) right up to the point that if you happen to survive THE TORTURE OF LATE TERM ABORTION..... you get no medical assistance.....simply expire in a closet....huh?

which would you prefer?....water poured over your head to simulate drowning.....or....being dragged through a tight space then having something jabbed into your brain to hopefully cause you death ? I know that the latter occurs far more frequently in this country each year...the former are mass murders or potential mass murderers and the later...well.....we'll never know now will we???

WHY SHOULD AMERICA EVER BE PUNISHED WITH A TERRORIST???
WE DIDN'T WANT THEM....
THEY SNUCK IN WHEN WE WEREN"T USING PROPER PROTECTION...
WE CAN"T AFFORD TO HAVE THEM AROUND.....
AND THEY"LL PROBABLY NEVER AMOUNT TO ANYTHING...I MEAN...WHAT KIND OF LIVES WILL THEY HAVE IF LEFT TO DEVELOP???

If we are going to release "torture" photos/videos
We need to release to the public pictures and video of partial birth abortions along with accurate statistics so that the public can know and see what is being done...

let the public decide which is more heinous.....

what do you think the polls would be after watching both..... side by side...partial birth abortion of LITTLE BABIES vs. waterboarding TERRORISTS????
Clearly the dems in Washington and many of their supporters have decided which they find more troubling...YIKES!!!!

I THINK WE OWE THE WORLD A BIG APOLOGY!!!!

ABORT TERRORISTS...SUPPORT PLANNED RADICAL ISLAMISTHOOD

Well that is quite the typical conservative response to being proven wrong...

Act ridiculous and completely stop making any sense at all.

Got Bush through 8 years.

Sure,,, let me just run to the base, and ask the Admiral if I can get those declassified. May take a while as he'd have to get approval from the Whitehouse, but I'm sure once he tells them I need it because some Liberal on a fishing board online doesn't wanna listen to sense, they will jump right on it..... :call:

If Bush "misspoke" on the dates, well he did get confused from time to time. :bl:

Several people in the Administration made the assertion on several different occasions, this isn't based on one Bush gaffe.

To be honest there's so much disinformation floating around it's difficult to know what's believable, although the reports from people who report to have actually been there seem pretty consistent.

-spence

It may or may not work. They might or might not have stopped an attack. It may or may not have even been "torture". But I don't see anyone on this board a victim of a terrorist attack since 9/11 so I say... Job well done.

it points out that this administration is capable of making decisions based not on idealology but on common sense. Not decisions based on who is good or bad, but what is right and wrong.

:jump::jump: Right, that's it.

I, for one, finally welcome an administration that doesn't let the Bible dictate every non-commerce related decision.

Yes, that pretty much sums up their "ends justify the means" justification that started us down this slippery slope. I don't think I could have been more concise had I tried.

-spence

Neither side owns right and wrong.

-spence

Sure they do.
we're married.
hence, always rong

When did Waterboarding NOT become torture?

when the terrorist waterboardee got up and walked away unscathed...

your right. my point is that hopefully our leadership will be more common sense based and not based on ideology.

..."it points out that this administration is capable of making decisions based not on idealology but on common sense." Nebe

REALLY???



CNN.com Ruben Navarrette


SAN DIEGO, California (CNN) -- For someone who insists he is personally opposed to torture, President Obama has a rhetorical knack for it.

This week, Obama tortured the right, left and center with his parsing, hedging, and flip-flopping on newly released Bush-era torture memos and what to do about them.

Along the way, he also tortured logic and consistency, making a total mess of his own position. Only the most die-hard Obama supporters -- those who are invested to the hilt in his presidency and find it hard to see the blemishes -- could deny this.

Obama angered Republicans by releasing the confidential documents, over objections by CIA Director Leon Panetta and Bush administration officials who worried that it would telegraph to terrorists how far U.S. interrogators are permitted to go in trying to extract information.

But he also disappointed Democrats by ruling out the prosecution of interrogators who might have engaged in what some define as torture and initially suggesting that the lawyers who had advised them wouldn't be prosecuted either because, as Obama said several days ago, "this is a time for reflection, not retribution."

And then, this week, while this middle-of-the-road approach was being applauded by those in the center who smile on nuance, he flummoxed them by reversing course and suggesting that the whole matter of whether the three former Bush Justice Department lawyers who wrote the memos -- Jay Bybee, Steven Bradbury and John Yoo -- ought to be prosecuted should be decided by Attorney General Eric Holder.


Nice. And I bet you thought the two men were friends. With friends like Obama, Holder should run out and buy a flak jacket. No matter what Holder decides, he will be criticized. And for all the hay that Senate Democrats made about how former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales allegedly politicized the Justice Department, it's ironic that Obama was so quick to drag his own attorney general into a political firestorm.

Besides, how do you go about prosecuting lawyers for simply offering legal opinions when asked for them? They've broken no law.

A friend of mine who heads up an affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union concedes that is new territory but suggests there could be a case if the opinions were intentionally fraudulent or overly ideological.

I can imagine the same argument from conservatives the next time a liberal-leaning state attorney general issues a legal opinion supporting gay marriage. Just because a lawyer comes back with an opinion you don't like doesn't make it a crime. If Holder says otherwise, good luck to him the next time he asks one of the hundreds of lawyers in his own agency for an opinion on a politically sensitive matter.

Most disturbingly of all, by passing the buck on such an important issue, Obama has fallen short on the Harry Truman leadership scale. This is precisely why we elect a president -- to deal with tough issues, the adjudication of which is never going to make everyone happy. A real leader accepts that fact going in and doesn't cower in the face of it.

For what it's worth, on the issue of torture, I've changed my own view since September 11, 2001. For several years after the terrorist attacks, I bought the argument that the United States couldn't afford to torture terror suspects.

But now, acknowledging that the Bush administration did something right in preventing more attacks, I've come around to the view that we can't afford to take any option away from interrogators as they try to prevent an attack that could cost thousands of lives.

Too many Americans keep forgetting that the threat we face is real, and unrelenting. In fact, the Bush administration claimed that just a few months after 9/11, it thwarted a planned attack on Los Angeles where al Qaeda intended to use shoe bombers to hijack an airplane and fly it into the U.S. Bank Tower, the tallest building in the city. If enhanced interrogation played a role in foiling that plot, wouldn't it have been worth the cost?

After all the bobbing and weaving this week, I'm not really sure what President Obama believes about torture or what to do with those who authorize it. And, at this point, I don't care.

All I care about is that Obama choose a position and sticks to it, and that, as commander-in-chief, he fully grasps the enormous responsibilities that came with the office.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Ruben Navarrette.

HI Nebe....:wavey:....no fish yet...

Was that the standard after WWII when we prosecuted waterboarding as war crimes?

we got em ova heya.. not lots of them, but they are here and there...

(just did a restoration on a set of old steuben champane flutes.. ground down all of the lips to remove chips and dings... then polished them )

scott,

Of all people to be quoting a commentary of Ruben Navarrette, I would expect you to be one of the last.

First off, the guy is a moron. Any minor policy that tries to prevent Mexicans from coming to this country sets the guy off on fits of screaming racism.
Second, he has a friend that heads up an ACLU affiliate.
Third, most of his commentaries don't make the least bit of sense, present poorly supported points and are generally just ramblings.
Forth, he even looks like a douchebag.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/images/p.../0829ruben.jpg

That would be contrary to everything that the libs have done in the past. They lead by emotion. There followers, follow because they too are run by emotions. Common sense has never been a word to describe the Democrats, at least the ones that are now in charge.

I'll take emotion over greed and stupidity any day of the week. How about you?

Emotion is running this country into bankruptcy faster then stupidity and greed did.