Just Beat It ... Again: A Response to the Billyburg Commie Pinko Liberal

My well-intentioned friend, the Billyburg Commie Pinko Liberal, recently posted a piece about the evil Republican joy of torture. BCPL listed 5 reasons he’s against the use of any "enhanced" information seeking techniques:

1. Immoral and inhumane
2. Universally illegal (under the Geneva Conventions, UCMJ and US Law, among others)
3. Ineffective
4. Counter-productive, making us less safe
5. Inconsistent with American values

At the end of last year, I posted a few thoughts on the subject; inspired by the previous evening’s Democratic debate. You’ll see that while I don’t condone torture for torture’s sake, there is something to be gained from “enhanced interrogation techniques.” The ticking bomb scenario may be mostly academic, but it’s a necessary discussion none-the-less and ultimately separates those who support a reasonable security measure vs. those who are dogmatically demented by liberal ideology.

Here’s my take again:

The United States must not be in the business of torture. However, to be brutally honest, I believe there are more important things to care about than whether or not a few EVIL ANIMALS WHO SEEK TO MURDER INNOCENT PEOPLE get roughed up a bit by their American captors. The main points against it (what it may do to our moral standing in the world; it makes us less safe) seem a bit naive -- these Islamic Crazies were killing women and children way before Bush and Cheney took office and began "ruining" America's international good will.

Further, only three terrorists were actually subjected to waterboarding, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind operations chief of 9/11. His interrogation was conducted not to extract a confession but in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 when further attacks seemed likely and intelligence about Al Qaeda's operations was limited. The CIA Director testified that these interrogations saved lives. To put it bluntly, I'm not losing any sleep knowing that bad guys like KSM are being thoroughly questioned.

Maybe the BCPL should be concerned about more important issues, like the fact that Iran may have nukes soon and Obama only wants to sit down and have a little chat about it.

Just Beat It

One more note from the Democratic debate two nights ago...

Russert, playing his favorite gotcha game with flip-flopping politicians, posed the following question/scenario to Mrs. Clinton:

“I want to move to another subject, and this involves a comment that a guest on ‘Meet the Press’ made,” Russert said. “I want to read it, as follows: ‘Imagine the following scenario. We get lucky. We get the number three guy in al Qaeda. We know there’s a big bomb going off in America in three days and we know this guy knows where it is. Don’t we have the right and responsibility to beat it out of him? You could set up a law where the president could make a finding or could guarantee a pardon.’”

Russert asked the candidates to comment. Obama said he wouldn’t torture the prisoner under any circumstances. So did Sen. Joseph Biden. Then Russert turned to Sen. Clinton. “Should there be a presidential exception to allow torture in that kind of situation?” he asked.

“You know, Tim, I agree with what Joe and Barack have said,” Clinton answered. “As a matter of policy it cannot be American policy, period….These hypotheticals are very dangerous because they open a great big hole in what should be an attitude that our country and our president takes toward the appropriate treatment of everyone. And I think it’s dangerous to go down this path.”

Russert then pulled the rug: “The guest who laid out this scenario for me with that proposed solution was William Jefferson Clinton last year."

Bill has it right.

Look, I can see why these candidates are opposed to admitting on national television that they advocate torture. But wouldn't it be reasonable for a serious presidential candidate to say, "I believe that torture is a despicable thing. And 999 times out of a thousand, I'm against it. And I definitely DO NOT believe it should be part of a policy to retrieve information. But I DO feel that in the case stated by the former president, an exception could be made.”

If you caught someone involved in kidnapping your child and knew that if he didn't give you information your child might be molested, injured, or killed, you would use ANY tactics necessary to get the information out of him. The same goes for a terrorist and a dirty bomb in New York, LA, or Chicago.

Any president that refused to “beat it out of him,” within the context of mass murder, should be impeached, charged as an accomplice to murder, and thrown in jail.

The world is sometimes a very ugly and dark place, but ignoring this fact is not going to make it better.