Gosh, I wonder why he takes that position.Wow. The comments on this issue indicate that everyone takes the subject very seriously, and that opinions are sharply divided. I guess I should have avoided the topic altogether. Me, I was just making a Cheney joke. If the so-called pro-torture position is criminalized, Cheney will be redefined as a master criminal, so it's obviously no surprise that he opposes that!
Personally, I don't think any actions can be criminalized retroactively, and I don't think it can be criminal to express a legal opinion. Those items seem to be covered explicitly by Article I, section 9 of the U.S. Constitution, and by the First Amendment, respectively.
But forget about the legal issues and consider practical ones. Obama is no dummy. He will never take action to establish a precedent for the criminal prosecution of former administrations. If he does, guess whose ass will be behind bars on some pretext or another when the GOP gains control again? (And they will, sooner or later.)
I don't think we should let the extreme rhetoric of the right or left dominate this issue. The legislature needs to debate the matter, and to establish clear legal guidelines for what to do in the future.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Dick Cheney argues that those who advocated torture should not be criminalized, and should not have to spend the rest of their lives in jail.
If by hooking the testicles of a Terrorist up to a Battery saves but one American life... I have but one thing to say, Reds positive and Blacks negative.
ReplyDeleteI think the problem with what Dick Cheney is trying to sell is two-fold.
ReplyDeleteFirst, we have no way of knowing if less 'enhanced' forms of interrogation had been used that we wouldn't have gotten the same or even better intelligence. You can't make a comparative argument here. Cheney's requests that documents be released which show how effective the torture was and how it saved "thousands of American lives" ignores this problem. Furthermore, how does he know that those alleged terrorist plots wouldn't have been uncovered anyway by some good police work, as most are? He doesn't.
Second, too many former CIA operatives with 'field' experience have come forward recently and pointed out that torture does not work. Obviously, if it had worked, it wouldn't have been necessary to water-board Khalid Sheik Mohammed hundreds of times.
The final issue, which Cheney has never even acknowledged, is whether or not this behavior is consistent with the kinds of values we claim for America. Once you go down that road, you jump off the moral high ground that had provided you with a 'bloody pulpit'. That's gone now, thanks to Cheney and Bush.
Anonymous gives us the exact "justification" of the unjustifiable resort to torture. Dear Anonymous, did you know that every single one of the torture techniques that Cheney authorized were used by the Soviet Union? We called that torture. Did you you know that water boarding was used during the Spanish Inquisition? We called it torture. Did you know that the systematic brutality "legalized" by the odious John Yoo and David Addington to exculpate the very culpable Cheney was used by the North Koreans and Chinese? We called it torture.
ReplyDeleteDid you know that in the Spanish Inquisition, the Soviet Gulag, the Chinese Cultural Revolutionary centers, and the North Korean "re-education centers," victims would say anything to their torturers to stop the pain; nothing of any worth, of any good, of anything to "enhance" the Catholic Church, the Soviet Union, The People's Republic of China, et al ever came from torture.
So why is that you think it would be any different when Cheney and his thugs employed it?
OH...that's right, it's because Cheney and his cabal are American Conservatives, and when American Conservatives torture, it's just not "torture," because, well, American Conservatives say so.
Inhuman sadists all...
If you don't like the interrogation methods, then vote in leaders who will change the policy. Criminalizing political differences is a big mistake, and that's why Obama is distancing himself from the far left on this.
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