The So-Called "Torture Memos"...Why Democrats Suck On National Security

Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing.

That's how Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair describes the interrogation techniques authorized in the so-called "Torture Memos". Well, count me among the undisturbed.

After reading news reports and the so-called 'Bybee Memo', I'm am simply amazed at the delicacy, planning and angst that went into authorized such 'tortuous' techniques as an open palm (and fingers) face slap, an attention grab (grabbing a detainee by the shirt and pulling him closer to the interrogator), sleep deprivation*, stress positions, small area confinement (with fuzzy insects**) and pushing a detainee against a wall (a fake wall meant to give way to avoid injury and using proper neck protection). The only borderline procedure was water-boarding and to paraphrase Rhett Butler, frankly I don't give damn.

Each application of these techniques was closely monitored by medical and psychological staff experienced in their use at military SERE training courses (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training air crews and other military members go through).

Yes ladies and gentlemen, we "tortured" these killers as much as we "torture" our own service members. Again, color me undisturbed.

Robert Gibbs, That Pantywaist in Chief's spokesman says there's no damage to US security from releasing the memos or giving up these techniques.

"I don't think and the president doesn't believe it's the existence of enhanced interrogation techniques in memos that has made us less safe," Gibbs said. "It's the use of those techniques in the view of the world that has made us less safe. And that's precisely why the president moved swiftly to end"

Emphasis mine.

The John Kerry Global Test survives! Hey Gibby, let Obama know that US national security is not a popularity contest, it's about cold hard choices and accepting that there are bad people in the world who wish us harm no matter who is President.

As for the argument that this techniques are ineffective, a former AG (who as far as I know doesn't think you are a coward by the way) and a Director of CIA beg to differ.

Which brings us to the next of the justifications for disclosing and thus abandoning these measures: that they don't work anyway, and that those who are subjected to them will simply make up information in order to end their ordeal. This ignorant view of how interrogations are conducted is belied by both experience and common sense. If coercive interrogation had been administered to obtain confessions, one might understand the argument. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), who organized the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, among others, and who has boasted of having beheaded Daniel Pearl, could eventually have felt pressed to provide a false confession. But confessions aren't the point. Intelligence is. Interrogation is conducted by using such obvious approaches as asking questions whose correct answers are already known and only when truthful information is provided proceeding to what may not be known. Moreover, intelligence can be verified, correlated and used to get information from other detainees, and has been; none of this information is used in isolation.

You really should read Mukasey and Hayden's piece in full. It's devastating to the Obama administration.

Now the left will simply ignore their arguments since those two men were part of the Bushitler Regime, so let me try a little math for the Terrorist Supporting Community....

The number of terrorist attacks (that's a "man-made disaster" for any monitors from DHS who might keeping an eye on us extremists) on US soil that killed approximately 3,000 people and caused billions of dollars in economic dislocation before use of these techniques...1.

The number of attacks on US soil that killed approximately 3,000 people and caused billions of dollars in economic dislocation after use of these techniques began...0.

1>0.

Democrats don't get this. That's why they suck on national security.

*I forgot to include that in the original list.

**I also forgot to include the fuzzy insects (caterpillars). Below the fold, you'll finally understand why Andrew Sullivan is so sympathetic to the plight of the detainees.

Bugs!

posted by DrewM. at 10:33 AM

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