Maybe I missed it but my understanding is that the so-called torture carried out by waterboarding was only done on three Al Qeada high ranking prisoners including Khalid Sheik Muhammed, the mastermind of the 9-11 attacks. Can it really be that the Democrats are upset at tough interrogation of this criminal who is responsible for killing 3000 Americans? If it is true, nothing could be more telling about the lack of seriousness that the Democrats have with regard to the safety of the American people.
The interesting thing is that Muhammed resisted giving any information to US forces until he was waterboarded. After that he became a fount of information and gave up information that led to the thwarting of over 10 separate terrorist plots, including the massive followup to the 9-11 attacks that Al Qeada was planning for Los Angeles. Who knows? Maybe Sean Penn owes his life to the waterboarding.
2 comments:
If history teaches us anything, it is that most humans will eventually say whatever they have to, no matter what, to stop pain.
Torture works. It can be relied on for everything the torturer wants. Except truth.
There is substantial evidence that waterboarding prevented attacks. George Tenet's book makes this clear as do various other former CIA directors, among others. There were attempted follow-up attacks in Los Angeles, an attack on the Brooklyn Bride, among others that were prevented.
Cheney, like him or not, made a reasonable request: the memos setting forth the details of the attacks prevented by waterboarding should be released so that everybody can see the effects. Obama's ONLY response has been, "it's not clear that the same information couldn't have been obtained otherwise". Well, that's very, very weak and dangerous because it's not provable that the information could have and would have been obtained in any other way and that lives wouldn't have been lost but for enhanced interrogation. Most important, Obama did not deny -- and therefore conceded -- that the memos Cheney referred to exist and support the view that attacks were prevented by the use of waterboarding. Now, let's see them. What is Obama afraid of?
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