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Originally Posted by Jim in CT
Wrong. The Justice Department gave them the green light (we know that for a fact), which means in wasn't in defiance of any law. There i sno law agaiinst waterboarding. The CIA goit the green ligt from the Justice Dept and also from the congressional oversight committee, which included that witch Pelosi. How many times has she changed her story on what she knew, and when? But, I digress.
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Jim, as I said before the torture memo didn't make the actions magically legal, it offered a counterpoint to existing laws if the actions were challenged in court.
Essentially they had a few lawyers come up with something, anything they could cite to get their way. The memo was widely panned when it was released and even rescinded 2 years after its writing.
Did you see Cheney a week ago? He claims we stopped short of torture, not because we didn't torture, but because a rescinded memo defined EITs as less than torture.
That just doesn't pass a basic smell test.
Pelosi has been pretty consistent in her position and the Senate report does appear to go into great detail on how Congress was misled on the extent of the actions or the success of the program.
What's interesting is that even with what Congress was briefed on there's not a lot they can do to challenge the secret briefings. They can't take notes, can't seek legal council etc...it's really just information.
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"that's not where things stopped"
#1, what is your proof of that? Because I agree, it shoud only be allowed in a very narrow scope. #2, does this mean you'd support torture in very, very extreme cases? Yes or no?
Spence, another simple, direct question. Liberals say "torture doesn't work". Here's my question. Spence, do yo ubelieve that some people might refuse to answer a politely presented question, but would be more willing to answer if threatened with torture? Can you EVER see that happening? If so, then the only honest answer is that like it or not, legal or not, torture can work. Th estatement "torture doesn't work" can only be true if it's not feasible, under any circumstances, EVER, to get info from someone that you wouldn't get through other means.
The statement "tirture doesn't work" is an absurd statement in that absolute sense. Of course it works. It might be ugly, we might make it illegal, there might be better ways...but iyt's very dishnest to say that it simply doesn't work. That's absurd.
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I believe those who say there are more effective ways to get information that isn't torture. If we say we're not going to torture then we shouldn't.
Take the EIT's under Bush as a good case study. We did it and appeared to have done it quite a bit without significant results. Hell 25% of those subjected to EIT's weren't even terrorists and were released aside from the one that died.
We did give our enemies Abu Grahaib and a lot of recruitment propaganda though. I guess it didn't produce nothing.