Posted on 05/21/2009 12:27:41 PM PDT by Winged Hussar
The Left has proposed prosecution of former Bush officials for coercive interrogation of terrorists, and Barack Obama has denounced waterboarding and similar techniques as un-American. It turns out, however, that Nancy Pelosi probably knew about and, through silence, consented to the coercive interrogations long ago. Pelosi now finds herself dancing the Nuremberg Trial Four-Step: "It didn't happen/ I didn't know/ I wasn't there/ I was only following orders." It's hard to say it didn't happen when your own party proclaimed so loudly that it did, and it's hard to say you're only following orders when you're Minority Whip and Speaker of the House.
The bottom line is, however, that torture is not unconstitutional, and furthermore that it may be reasonable and necessary no matter what Barack Obama says to the contrary. Remember that, if you are selected for jury duty in a trial for a Bush administration lawyer, a CIA agent, or a law enforcement officer on charges of torture, you can ignore the judge's instructions, Barry's executive orders, and so on to at least hang the jury and cause a mistrial. (See the Fully Informed Jury Association for more about your rights and responsibilities as a juror.) Now let's look at what the Constitution actually says versus what the community organizer tells us it says.
(Excerpt) Read more at israpundit.com ...
The above single-sentence explanation might be enough to get it past the limited intellects of the leftists. Meanwhile, here is something for Nancy Pelosi.
‘”Waterboarding was reasonable and necessary force whose purpose was to prevent or terminate (not punish) a violent life-threatening felony that was still in progress even though a suspect was in custody.”’
Sounds effective. We should allow police and the local LEO to use such tactics. After all, it’s to keep us safe.
I love when the libs say it is “not in keeping with our best traditions?”
Which traditions are those? The internment of Japanese citizens? Suspending habeus corpus? Executing deserters point blank during the Revolution?
Just wondering which traditions they want to keep?
Absolutley. Now that we’ve established it’s ok, let’s dole it out to everyone.
The Fascist regime and their media puppets could care less about the moral question of torturing terrorists, not that they were tortured. This is an opening for a political inquisition against the Bush Administration, and it will be expanded to anyone who opposes 0’s dictatorship.
That having been said, I can see that the clause ... nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.... does have some room for interpretation in that "due process of law" is a phrase open for interpretation.
I hope that the libs don't decide to arrest me for offering this opinion.
Re: “We should allow police and the local LEO to use such tactics. After all, it’s to keep us safe.”
This would be very rare in a civilian law enforcement context. In general, once the suspect is in custody after attempting or committing the worst imaginable violent crime (murder, rape, arson, aggravated assault), his crime has been prevented or terminated.
On the other hand, if he knew where his accomplices were holding a kidnapping victim, it could be argued that his life-threatening crime was still “in progress” even though he was in custody. On the other hand, if all he has done is to conceal stolen property, his “in progress” crime does not threaten human life and does not justify anything more than, for example, threats of a harsher sentence for refusing to return it.
Law enforcement, dealing with citizens in peacetime, operates on the presumption of innocence. Constitutional rights must be observed.
War is another thing all together. There is no presumption of innocence. A battlefield is not a crime scene. No one is serving warrants on anyone. Your intent is to kill the enemy, and anyone who happens to be within blast radius of your enemy dies alongside him.
Most of your captured enemy have no specialized information and you treat them humanely if they are quick enough to throw down their weapons. But if you capture anyone with information you really need, you will not wait until he is ready to give it up. This is not a police interrogation, you are not gathering evidence for a trial. Its a war, and you're not fooling around.
The repeated claim that torture doesn't work falls on two points. First, a tough interrogation isn't torture. Once he gives up what he knows, he'll be fine in time for dinner. Secondly, the fact is that it did work. It wasn't torture, and it did work.
“The internment of Japanese citizens? Suspending habeus corpus?”
Saint Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Democrat Left) as I recall with regard to the first. Yes, remind Nazi Pelosi how HER people put American citizens in concentration camps because of their race.
I find headlines like this one disconcerting.
Torture- REAL torture is repugnant.
Waterboarding is NOT torture. That’s the problem with some of these so-called debates. We must first agree on definitions before a legitimate debate can begin- and we aren’t going to agree with most liberals on what constitutes actual torture.
Torture, is being given the choice between burning alive or jumping from an office building in downtown New York on a lovely September morning.
Once again, we coming to the idea of effectiveness. If it works so well, we should use it on the public at large.
This particular article is assuming that torture for information is not for a punishment of a crime.
So, lets torture more people in they are involved in crimes. Get the info, solve the crime.
A point that seems to be lost on many.
I assume that since you’re on this website you must consider yourself a conservative but, if you can’t differentiate between the rules of local, civilian law enforcement, and the rules in a war against the kind of enemy we’re fighting now, you may be in the wrong place. One of the problems we have now is the liberals trying to conduct a war using civilian law enforcement as a standard for rules of engagement.
exactly.
which is why due process is afforded to criminal acts
and the not to acts of war.
Only if we are at war with them. Civilian law enforcement is based, in the US, on the presumption of innocence. In war there is only the question of threat versus no threat.
War is not law enforcement. War is the state of affairs that exists when normal civilian law is unable to contain a conflict, either because it is too weak to deal with the conflict, or because your aggressor is not bound by it, or the logic of the law itself is a threat. As long as the law can contain or deal with the conflict, then you are not at war. You are at war when the men in suits, and the cops with badges, are incapable of dealing with the threat at hand. When that happens you are at war, and you send in the men with guns and all bets are off until the smoke clears.
Once you have redefined the status quo, and redrawn the boundaries, and have driven the enemy to a safe distance, such that the normal institutions of law can function, then the war is at an end. Normal rule of law resumes.
It is, however, cowardly and immoral.
Re: “It is, however, cowardly and immoral.”
Suppose you are confronted with the following situation. Four terrorists kidnap a journalist, but one is wounded and left behind. The others intend to saw the journalist’s head off on camera and post it to YouTube. The terrorist you captured refuses to tell you where his accomplices are holding the journalist.
Do you get out the steel-cored rubber hose, or do you show that you are “better” than the terrorist by treating him humanely while his friends saw the innocent person’s head off?
Sorry, under those circumstances, I am going to use the steel-cored rubber hose, or waterboarding, or whatever it takes to save the innocent hostage.
Re: “So, lets torture more people in they are involved in crimes. Get the info, solve the crime.”
The Constitution also says you cannot force somebody to provide evidence against himself so you can “solve a crime.”
CNN?
Not only am I not opposed to torture, in some cases, I insist on it.
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