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Let’s appoint a Special Prosecutor if there was torture than laws were broken.

@John ryan: You mean investigate only REPUBLICANS don’t you?

Funny how Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) is holding a hearing titled “What Went Wrong: Torture and the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush Administration.”

No mention of ANY interest in investigating Democrats who approved of these interrogations of THREE TERRORISTS

http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=3842&wit_id=6151

Could it be that Cheney knows that certain files can never be declassified hence those are the ones he requested, which means he can always claim vindication without proof?

It there was proof, why didn’t they at least release one of those memos during his time in power? It would have crushed the dems argument easily. They wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.

First we denied torture was happening now Cheney says yeah we did it but we needed to it, which is it?

Flavor… Cheney doesn’t deny that waterboarding occurred and is merely stating that if the admin and ACLU choose to spill their guts to the enemy and public about what should be classified intel by releasing the memos, they can at least release documents that show the results of that waterboarding of the three detainees.

Your problem is equating waterboarding with “torture”… with which Cheney and many of us disagree constitutes “torture”. Waterboarding and torture are two different words, not synonyms. Therein lies what you consider a dichotomy.

If we are going to open investigations into “torture”, I want Congress to open investigations into every single last one of the Fraternities and Sororities all across America. I want them to investigate Rush Week activities and hazing rituals. I want photos and video released to the public and splashed across the newspapers and nightly newscasts every day. And then I want all of these photos and video compared and contrasted with the “torture”/”abuse” the CIA administered to the terrorists.

Then, I want the public to be aware that Fraternities and Sororities conduct their “torture”/”abuse” for the sole purpose of humiliating people and as a step to becoming their friend and joining a club. The C.I.A., on the other hand, conducts their “torture”/”abuse” for the sole purpose of gaining information to protect American citizens from terrorist attacks.

If the Congress can investigate Major League Baseball, they damn sure well can investigate the Greek System on every United States college campus.

@Flavor Country: Republicans were AGAINST releasing memos which outlined our interrogation techniques remember? Hence, Bush-Cheney would NOT have released these memos.

However, President Bush did give unclassified details on several occasions. Did you miss it?

Did you believe it?

After Obama released the first batch of memos there is simply no national security reason to suggest these should not be released.

And Obama isn’t making that argument either.

If you cannot come up with something better then there is only one valid conclusion and I hinted at it above.

Mike, don’t waste your breath with John Ryan. He’s a true troll. I follow a few blogs, but this is the only one I’ve ever posted to. I find 99% of the posts here to be well reasoned and thought out, even among the lefties. John isn’t one of them. Here is one of his more eloquent diatribes from Ace of Spades:

John Ryan

He won’t engage in debate, just drops bombs and moves on.

Asked you this before, John Ryan… what’s “torture”.

I notice you haven’t bothered to respond… Perhaps because there is dissent in the legal world over waterboarding as torture, you actually may recognize you are nothing but a high minded political hack with an uninformed opinion, and nothing to stand on to support your smug self-imposed morality?

However if you want to prosecute all those who aided and abetted what you consider “torture”, then you may want to plan on a lot of special elections to refill the halls of Congress.

@Aqua: There is no denying John Ryan is a timewaster. But then, most of the libs are. They are well equipped with the talking point du jour from their favorite lefty sites and simply do their little cut and paste jobs without further thought.

We know John Ryan won’t engage as he is probably well aware we don’t have the luxury of the same willful ignorance that keeps him and his ilk from facing the debilitating reality of the prejudices which blind them. We can muster facts and information that are simply not at his disposal.

@Aqua:

Remember the kid in your Kindergarten class who liked to eat paste?

Well John ryan is all grown up now… sort of.

If that’s his idea of a “bomb”, Aqua… i.e. “Nonetheless, isn’t viva anything generally associated with dictators?”, then the only “bomb” is his intelligence quotient.

Viva means long live, or “he/she” lives… ala Viva (or vive) la France. Then of course there’s “Viva Las Vegas” from another “dictator”, Elvis Presley. Piled on by those tryannical groups like ZZ Top, Bruce Springsteen and others who did covers of the song.

Along those lines, there’s the tune Viva la Vida by the rock bank, Coldplay…. another well known “dictator” body. And we can’t forget MTV’s reality show, Viva la Bam that spun off from Jackass. Think of all that dictator type propaganda emanating from our TV from the despot known as MTV.

What a brain fart this bozo is….

You give him too much credit Mata. John’s brillance was inscribed in the proceeding post. It went something like this:
The poopy poop is also against the poo poos and the poop in poopy, typical poopy poop poopies the poop pooped pee pee for poopy.

You are telling me that the memo that supposedly exist that stopped that attack on the Library Tower was thwarted due to water-boarding, that the Bush administration would not have released this info?

Who if anybody other than those wackos at the ACLU would say we should not have done this? That’s my problem with this. Cheney is suppose to be this big patriot yet kept quiet when president Bush was attacked from the left. Yet now when he has no more power to prove anything he says, he blabs all over the place.

If water-boarding is not considered torture. why did this country sentence men to death for doing so over the years? If it’s not torture why did we lie and say we were not doing it? Why is it not part of the field manual for soldiers?

There’s not much I wouldn’t do to keep America safe, but either we are a nation of laws or we aren’t, which is it? Breaking the law to do good is basically a vigilante, and don’t they face their time in court?

Take Care.

@ Flavor

You make good points Flavor, however…The Bush Administration didn’t make it a habit of going around divulging national security secrets of any kind. Cheney is now saying that if Obama wants to play fast and loose with information formally classified, to tell the whole story.

As for sentencing people to death over waterboarding, I’m afraid you bought into the rhetoric. First, the Japanese used salt water most of the time. Second, they covered the victims mouth and forced said water up their noses. Third, if they were in a really foul mood, the would force water down the victims throat until their stomachs were distended and then jump on their stomachs to force the water out. In addition, many of the victims of Japan’s brutality were civilians. Please feel free to pick up any of the number of books written about the Japanese during WWII. I recommend:

Guest of the Emperor: The Personal Story of Ex-POW Frank O. Promnitz, USMC (it’ll cost somewhere between $200 – $800).

or just get a copy of Horror in the East for about $30.

@Flavor Country:

You are telling me that the memo that supposedly exist that stopped that attack on the Library Tower was thwarted due to water-boarding, that the Bush administration would not have released this info?

Are you laboring under the delusion that the gov’t has the responsibility to tell the American people about each and every planned attack that is thwarted?

The release of classified, or otherwise sensitive information was not routinely divulged by those in the Bush Administration.

That task was handled by members of the Dim Party and the media.

Who if anybody other than those wackos at the ACLU would say we should not have done this?

Ummm…..the Democrat Party?

That’s my problem with this.

Then stop voting Dim.

Cheney is suppose to be this big patriot yet kept quiet when president Bush was attacked from the left. Yet now when he has no more power to prove anything he says, he blabs all over the place.

As to Cheney’s silence, perhaps he was asked to remain relatively silent while still in office. President Bush didn’t do much to defend himself so it’s not a far stretch to believe that he would ask those around him to take the same sort of approach.

If water-boarding is not considered torture. why did this country sentence men to death for doing so over the years?

Myth purveyance.

This country never sentenced anyone to death for waterboarding.

If it’s not torture why did we lie and say we were not doing it?

Allowing sensitive information regarding interrogation techniques to get into enemy hands is not helpful.

Acting to prevent sensitive information from falling into the hands of those who have no need to know is not indicative that anything illegal or improper is being done.

There’s not much I wouldn’t do to keep America safe, but either we are a nation of laws or we aren’t, which is it?

Waterboarding is not torture. We perform that exact technique on our own soldiers as part of specialized training.

What laws do you say were broken?

@Flavor Country: “You are telling me that the memo that supposedly exist that stopped that attack on the Library Tower was thwarted due to
water-boarding, that the Bush administration would not have released this info?”

There are at least TWO memos according to former V.P Cheney.

And President Bush DID discuss the issue here:

http://mikesamerica.blogspot.com/2006/09/bush-terrorist-interrogations-have.html

As for the waterboarding by the Japanese, it’s an entirely different matter:

The Japanese “water cure” was to “waterboarding” as practiced at Guantanamo what rape at knifepoint is to calling your secretary “honey.”

The Japanese version of “waterboarding” was to fill the prisoner’s stomach with water until his stomach was distended — and then pound on his stomach, causing the prisoner to vomit.

Or they would jam a stick into the prisoner’s nose so he could breathe only through his mouth and then pour water in his mouth so he would choke to death.

Or they would “waterboard” the prisoner with saltwater, which would kill him.

How many of the THREE TERRORISTS WHO WERE WATERBOARDED DIED???

Flavor #13, I sure wish that historical truths traveled thru the media and blog world as fast as the myths…

This will be at least the third thread where we’ve had to go back and remind people of facts vs Dem mistruths and media lies. So you can catch up on the Torture Works thread INRE the truth of the Japanese “waterboarding” convictions….

Hint… not only did the Japanese not “waterboard”, it was not the only charge but for two. Of those, only one was convicted of water torture (not waterboarding), and that was primarily because it was done to a civilian, not a POW. You can find his story in an ensuing comment on the same thread.

CORRECTION: Aye’s original post on the Japanese stated the “civilian” part, while Morris was a USMC soldier. The three others? Not sure of their status. However what Asani did was *not* US waterboarding. END CORRECTION

~~~

INRE Cheney and your comment about “big patriot”… he is not instigating this divulgence of “need to know” information. Nor is he an advocate of putting the US citizen in a “need to know” security classification because it risks our service men and women, and our intel ops.

Cheney is instead *responding* to Obama’s voluntary release of intel operations that should have never been released.

The ACLU was demanding it, but a POTUS and CIC could easily hold that up in the courts for quite a long time as classified material. Obama chose to circumvent those court proceedings… maybe he’s just too tired from fighting releasing those classified birth docs and other stuff he’s never bothered to supply.

So instead he chose to release just what would rile up the O’faithful which stated the waterboarding of three detainees, but refuses to release what was gained from the intel operations. All of the sudden he has a conscience about exposing intel methods to the public…

too little, too late

Everyone makes good points, and I appreciate the dialogue. Also wanted to say thanks for not getting all wing-nutty and cussing me out or calling me every name in the book like on other sites.

Take Care, God Bless

And we appreciate the same from you, Flavor.

@Flavor Country: I hope you learned something from the exchange. A lot of the folks on your side seem locked into a permanent brain freeze whereby the facts of what happened during the Bush years are pushed aside in favor of left wing talking points.

And as President Obama now adopts similar versions of the Bush policies he so recently derided, it must be very difficult to continue with the same talking points.

Do come back anytime and feel free to engage.

On Sept 12, 2001, I remember crying at pictures of people jumping from the twin towers, at the picture of the US flag+US Marine flag+Bible that remained untouched, but surrounded by burned rooms and debris at the Pentagon. I remember on Oct 7, 2001, I visited the Shanksville crash site. I remember a month after the towers fell, there was a story about rescue dogs that had worked since 911, and were exhausted-clearly suffering because if they don’t find a survivor…vets say the dogs actually feel the loss more than human rescuers. I cried at all of those reports. I cried at the flags that flew, at the families, the funeral footage. I cried innumerable times-often with sadness, sometimes with fear, and sometimes with patriotic pride.

For my money…KSM, Bin Laden, those guys deserved what they got and a 3000 times more.

People have forgotten

Now it’s more pc to feel for the terrorists than to want them to burn in hell or get scared in Gitmo.

You guys have some serious research power. Mike, I’ve never heard of the Japanese putting sticks up prisoners noses and pouring salt water down their mouths. Not that I don’t believe it happened, they did like to experiment. I know covering a prisoners mouth and forcing salt water up their nose did the same thing with an added bonus; it would flood the sinus cavity with salt water. Very painful.
It always amazes me that the Japanese want the U.S. to apoligize for the A-bomb, yet they refuse to even admit to their atrocities during WWII. The Philippine occupation was particularly heinous. Reports of rape and torture were incredible. Some reports recorded Japanese soldiers playing a game in which they tried to see who could toss and stack the most babies on a bayonet.

@Aqua:

The things that the Japanese did during WWII were unbelievable.

I just finished reading “Some Survived” a book about the Bataan Death March.

It was written by a gentlemen who was from the county that I grew up in and the things that those guys endured were brutal and inhuman.

Everything from being shot or bayoneted simply for stumbling or falling behind to starvation. When I say starvation I mean that 10 men were given one teaspoon full of uncooked rice (with bugs) to share amongst them.

Another example was when the prisoners, approx 1,100 of them, were crowded into a fenced tennis court, naked, and forced to stay there in the hot, direct sun for several days before being loaded into the hot, crowded, unventilated, horse manure filled hold of a cargo ship.

While on the ship, the prisoners died at a rate of 30 or more per day.

The suffering that these POW’s endured went on and on and on for the duration of the war.

Manny Lawton’s captivity lasted for more than three years. Less than 1/3 of his fellow prisoners survived the ordeal.

It was one of those books that I had to hurry and finish because the sensation of fear, dread, and suffering was overwhelming to me, the reader.

@Aqua: The big lie that Democrats have been pushing is that we punished Japanese soldiers for waterboarding as if what the Japanese did was the same as what our guys did to THREE TERRORISTS.

It’s an absurd comparison, but the lefties do like redefining reality to suit themselves.

I can’t find actual testimony from the trial of the Japanese soldier who is widely cited in this case, only a summary:

http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~warcrime/Japan/Yokohama/Reviews/Yokohama_Review_Asano.htm

Which states: “Specifications:beating using hands, fists, club; kicking; water torture; burning using cigarettes; strapping on a stretcher head downward.”

Our own troops at Abu Ghraib were prosecuted for far less.

Again, I want to repeat that we waterboarded JUST THREE TERRORISTS. If Dems had spent a fraction of the time they have caterwauling over this doing something like reading legislation before they vote on it we would all be better off.