Back in Saigon: The Senate Intelligence Committee Report

[Draggingtree]

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Back in Saigon: The Senate Intelligence Committee Report

December 12, 2014 by Bruce Thornton

 

The Senate’s misleadingly dubbed “torture report,” an executive summary of which was released by the Senate Intelligence Committee, is a shameless and dangerous act of political grandstanding and moral preening. The investigative report of the CIA’s long-suspended interrogation program reflects nothing more than just how firmly the progressive mind is stuck in the old Vietnam War paradigm,

 

Jose Rodriguez, a 31-year veteran of the CIA who ran the interrogation program, has detailed the hypocrisy and untruths of the report. He reminds us that in the aftermath of 9/11, lawmakers demanded that the intelligence agencies do everything possible to stop another attack. Indeed, Feinstein in May 2002 told the New York Times that “we have to do some things that historically we have not wanted to do to protect ourselves.” In her comments on the Report’s release, however, Feinstein referred

 

This simple legal reality is why Feinstein in her statement depends on imprecise adjectives like “visceral,” “ugly,” “brutal,” and “harsh”––to create a cloud of emotion that hides the fact that EITs were not illegal and were not torture.

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“Torture Doesn’t Work Anyway”, and Other Counterintuitive Misdirections From the Left

Michael Stopa

December 12, 2014 at 8:36 am ( 1 hour ago )

There ought to be a term for the specific kind of obfuscation – engaged in regularly by the left – wherein escape from a losing argument is effected by the advance of counterintuitive empirical claims that are beside the point: Illegal aliens are a net plus to the economy. Gays are born that way. Increasing the debt is not a problem because interest rates are low. The death penalty does not deter crime. Or, the example du jour, courtesy of leftist radicals on Diane Feinstein’s staff (who still have illicit dreams of George W. Bush and his henchman Dick Cheney being frog-marched to jail for war crimes in Iraq): torture doesn’t work anyway.

 

To be fair, this particular bit of legerdemain is not limited to the left. No less a patriot than John McCain has been vociferous (and consistent) in asserting that people being tortured “will tell you anything they think you want to hear,” rendering that kind of interrogation useless or worse. But my issue is not with McCain – or indeed with any fair-minded left-of-center observers who simply maintain a deep moral abhorrence of torture – so long as they argue rationally.

 

And for those of us (like me) who think that waterboarding or indeed far worse methods of torture are allowable in protecting society https://ricochet.com/torture-doesnt-work-anyway-counterintuitive-misdirections-left/

[Cyber_Liberty]

I sure wish they'd quite calling McCain a "patriot." He might have been one once, but he's been a world-class POS since he walked off that plane, both to his family and to his country. He's been glued to Feinswine on this issue since day one.

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The CIA “Torture Report”: Playing Politics or Giving Aid and Comfort?

By: blbennett (Diary) | December 13th, 2014 at 03:56 PM

 

Two things to remember about every single act of the Democrats: 1. It’s the antithesis of what any sane American would agree with; and 2. It’s something that harms America.

 

Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s release of the CIA “torture report” is both.

 

On December 9^th, Sen. Feinstein, Democratic chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, released the 528-page Summary of the Committee’s study of President Bush’s post-9/11 CIA Detention and Interrogation Program. The report, which cost $40 million and took over five years to complete, is being widely presented as “The Senate Report.”

 

In reality, it is the report of the Democrat majority on the Intelligence Committee—which will no longer be in charge after January first. Put another way: America and the rest of the world is accepting as truth the opinions of the party that voters have just turned out of Congress and from a record number of state houses from sea to shining sea.

 

Voters did this because anyone with more than a double-digit IQ knows that the president and his Democrat disciples have shamelessly and repeatedly lied about Obamacare.

http://www.redstate.com/diary/blbennett/2014/12/13/cia-torture-report-playing-politics-giving-aid-comfort/

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Torture’ Thought Experiment

Andrew McCarthy — December 11, 2014

If you were to take the “torture” report seriously (I don’t – it’s a political document), you would have to say Barack Obama inhabits a very strange moral universe.

 

Here is a thought experiment I have been using for many years as we’ve debated this topic. It goes to what Obama says about the intolerably brutal nature ofwaterboarding, the most coercive of the enhanced techniques that were used.

 

If you were to take everyone in America who is serving a minor jail sentence of, say, 6 to 18 months, and you were to ask them whether they’d rather serve the rest of their time or be waterboarded in the manner practiced by the CIA post 9/11

http://www.aim.org/guest-column/torture-thought-experiment/

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December 19, 2014

Torture or Deprogramming?

By Warren Adler

Amid all the abrasive and conflicting arguments prompted by the so-called "torture report" released by Senator Diane Feinstein, I am baffled by the absence of the crucial, indispensible question that never entered into the conversation, pro or con.

 

That question is simply why those men who were chosen to endure waterboarding never reacted to other, less physically aggressive tactics designed to reveal vital intelligence that could prevent more terrorist attacks.

 

If, as the report apparently alleges, less coercive measures were far more effective in extracting vital information, then why was it necessary to resort to more painful alternatives?

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/12/torture_or_deprogramming.html

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NYT calls for prosecution of Dick Cheney

By: Joe Cunningham (Diary) | December 22nd, 2014 at 01:00 PM

I’ll admit that I’m one of those Americans that Dick Cheney frightens. I also agree with comedian Christian Finnigan that he looks like the Penguin from the old Adam West Batman series (which is a delightful comparison and series overall). Still, while he may scare me, I fail to see what exactly he’s done that the New York Times editorial board would call for his prosecution over. Via Dylan Byers at POLITICO:

 

“But any credible investigation should include former Vice President Dick Cheney; Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff, David Addington; the former C.I.A. director George Tenet; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, http://www.redstate.com/2014/12/22/nyt-calls-prosecution-dick-cheney/