Posted by
Compassionate Conservative on Monday, April 20, 2009 8:57:11 PM
According to one of my favorite liberal rags, the L.A. Times, Barack Obama revealed last week that under CIA interrogation, "prisoners could be kept awake for more than a week. They could be stripped of their clothes, fed nothing but liquid and thrown against a wall 30 consecutive times."
Oh, my God!! And it didn't stop there! "In one case, the CIA was told it could prey on a top Al Qaeda prisoner's fear of insects by stuffing him into a box with a bug. When all else failed, the CIA could turn to what a Justice Department memo described as 'the most traumatic' interrogation technique of all -- waterboarding." How awful! Those dastardly CIA people!
Of course, Al Qaeda and their affiliates don't bother with torture, usually remaining satisfied to simply cut off the heads of the infidels, but if they wanted to bother with it, now they know how. That's about the only reason I can see to have released such data - to enable our enemies, and Islamic terrorists are our enemies, to figure out how to extract information from Americans and other Westerners from whom they might want to do that.
Of course, Obama has a different idea about this topic. According to his press release last week in which he announced this abomination, such interrogation techniques "undermine our moral authority and do not make us safer." Well, actually, Barack, they do make us safer, at least when it tips us off to terrorist plots and enables us to nab the potential perpetrators before they can do any harm, as has happened at least a few times that we know of. And it "undermine[s] our moral authority" to do this? Shades of Jimmy Carter.
Apparently, our effete President believes that the fact that we're a nation of laws prohibits us from engaging in aggressive interrogations, which is what these tactics were. They did not - I repeat, not - constitute torture. However, I think he needs to reflect on the words of the document which stands as the foundation of all our laws - our constitution. Specifically, he needs to re-read the first nine little words: "We, the people of the United States of America..." They mean, simply, that it's our constitution; it doesn't apply to foreigners, although we extend the courtesy of applying it to aliens who are here legally. It certainly doesn't apply to enemy combatants. Sometimes, the Geneva Convention protects enemy combatants, but only when they are employed as part of an army belonging to a state which has similarly recognized the validity of the Convention by signing it.
In short, we are repeating the mistakes of the 30's and 70's by taking a weak stance with regards to our sworn enemies, people who have vowed to kill as many of us as possible. I can't believe this is what most Americans want, yet there it is. This man was duly elected President last November, and we can't fix this problem until at least 2012. Let's hope we can fix it then.