Michael Goldfarb points to a question posed by an e-mailer that I suspect has occurred to many observers: Given the capture of an apparent Al Qaeda operative who claims knowledge of a planned campaign of attacks, how many people would be in favor of waterboarding him rather than letting him watch cable TV in a warm cell enjoying his right to remain silent? Goldfarb and his correspondent suggest that 65% or so of Americans would vote for waterboarding.
I’ll add that I believe, if a campaign of attacks actually occurs, that percentage would quickly hit the 80% level or higher, even and especially if you worded the question to include techniques to the “right” of waterboarding.
UPDATE:
Comments 69
I’m guessing only about 50% would vote to waterboard him. But those would mostly also be with me and vote to send him to his virgins the day he’s all talked out and no longer of use.
December 28th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
@ Sully:
Actually, Sully, I wouldn’t be surprised if, apprised of the fellow’s claims and threats, the number wouldn’t already be well north of 65% for harsh interrogation if necessary. My recollection from the time of the Cheney/Obama dueling speeches was that even then, just as a mainly abstract question, large majorities were with the former VP.
As for shooting him once done with him, that might remove motivation for future captives to talk, talk early, and talk generously.
December 28th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
If we’re going to fantasize about how to handle him we might as well fantasize to the max. In reality we all know he’s soon going to be a celebrity defendant with a million apologists and a clamor of lawyers seeking to represent him.
December 28th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
@ Sully:
That’ll sit really well with the public. And if a plane goes down, it could be the end of the Obama Administration – seriously.
Tell me why that’s wrong.
December 28th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
You left out throw him to the lions or nail him up.
Will there be free bread for the voters?
December 28th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
I say put him in a steel cage with Cheney and torture Cheney until the bomber weeps with compassion and admits everything.
December 28th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
@ fuster:
The poll concerns his interrogation. It would be hard to interrogate him while he’s being torn limb from limb by the king of beasts.
How did you vote, Mr. Cluck?
December 28th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
I vote for shredding the Constitution, soaking it in gasoline, and having Addison and Yoo rendered into hot gobules of fat to be used to baste Cheney so that he mistakenly resembles a warm-blooded creature as he’s sent into the circus.
December 28th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Seems that the poll left out the “allegedly” verbiage. I imagine that would be good for a point or two in the other direction.
December 28th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
@ nokarmahere:
Hey, dude, ltns.
Abdulmutallab can sue me.
December 28th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
There’s no way President Obama is going to send him to Guantanamo which means he will be here in the U.S. How can he be denied the legal process that bearded freak is getting?
Come to think of it I want a circus. The more Mohammedan killers free to spout their genuine and heartfelt religious beliefs in the courtrooms the better.
If a plane goes down the media and the administration will hem and haw the way they did about Major Mohammadan, or whatever his name was, and the public will yawn. The only way a terrorist on a plane can make a real impact is to crash it into the White House or Mount Vernon or Sleeping Beauty’s Castle or some such.
December 28th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
@ fuster:
No surprise there. You’re right in line with progressive thinking since the turn of the 20th century.
The actual document is already a dead letter, so I can’t see where there’s a problem with shredding it a bit more. If the majority of nine justices rule something constitutional it is constitutional no matter the document.
December 28th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
@ Sully: see Plessy
December 28th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Zero interest in waterboarding Abdulmutallab, but it’s clearly time to think about regime-changing Nigeria.
December 28th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
I’ll go with the Enhanced Interrogation if:
We televise the results unexpurgated during primetime &
scrupulously follow up on all disclosures so we can determine the effectivness of the eits. Wasn’t the section of the FBI that dealt with interrogation of enemy combtants very skeptical about eit efficacy?
December 28th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
@ rex caruthers:
They weren’t at all skeptical, they said flat-out that it was bull.
One of them said it in print.
December 28th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
@ J.E. Dyer:
Can you really want to risk soldiers and potentially court a massive long term responsibility in preference to roughly interrogating one clear potential source who clearly set out to create a catastrophe?
Seen that narrowly the constitution does indeed become a suicide pact.
December 28th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
@ fuster:
So we know to whom and what you’re referring, and what remarks you’re characterizing, why don’t you provide references – a name, a link, etc.? There was one interrogator, though IIRC he was Army, not FBI, who hit all the shows arguing against EITs. However, his speciality was not primarily related to extracting intelligence from and regarding terrorists of this type.
If we’re just going to vouch for whatever the heck we believe we’ve heard, then I assert that lots of people in the know have said the EIT were critically useful. The facts as we know them comport with such testimony, in particular regarding KSM’s trip down waterboard lane.
December 28th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
@ fuster:
So, because Plessy was a bad decision it justifies all subsequent bad decisions?
I like the logic. Waterboarding is constitutional because Plessy was constitutional.
December 28th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Look up ex parte Merryman, Milligan, Quirin, Eisentrager, just because this court chooses to ignore precedent, doesn’t mean
we have to, that’s with regards to Gitmo, where at least two of the planners, Al Harbi and Al Sahri came from
December 28th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
@ Sully:
Jeepers no, Sully. I was, obviously in a too-condensed manner, suggesting that there’s at leastone way that a SCOTUS decision isn’t permanently constitutional law.
Your remark about whatever the nine declare constitutional law to be is law, is mostly the case. I was just trying to offer you hope that someday all these restraints being imposed on the torturers may not forever constrain them.
Of course, I would point out that heroes such as these should go right ahead with torture because it’s good, efficient and sometimes vital.
They should be willing, in the name of the greater good, to be imprisoned and/ executed in turn.
If it’s worth it, then it’s worth it.
December 28th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
@ Sully:
No, I wasn’t serious about that. Neither Nigeria nor Yemen has a government that’s knee-deep in terror sponsorship.
However, we need to be clear that it is not “shredding the Constitution” every time someone does something that some members of the American citizenry are uncomfortable with. I don’t cede that rhetorical definition to Smidge to begin with. He can say “shred the Constitution” as often as he wants; doesn’t make it an accurate characterization.
The actual legal facts to date are that waterboarding has not been held to be either the torture that is prohibited under the US Code, or the cruel and unusual punishment prohibited in the Constitution itself.
None of that means I favor waterboarding. But it’s specious and sloppy to say waterboarding is “shredding the Constitution.”
December 28th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
As usual, ‘Kermit’ you use words with no indication as to what they mean/ Plessy was an abomination, in part because it was taken in spite of the horrible cost in lives that a similar decision, Dred Scott, had caused the nation. For that reason, I think that
Hamdi, Hamdan and Boumedienne may yet be seen in the same light, on the other edge of some great unseen atrocity
December 28th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
@ narciso:You need to re-read Milligan, narc.
December 28th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
@ fuster:
Puzzle me this fuster.
President Obama (like many former presidents) clearly believes he has the constitutional authority to order attacks on foreign folks in nations with which we are not at war on the basis of intelligence indications that they may present a danger to this country.
By what logic can he not have the authority to order harsh interrogation of a foreign fellow who is a demonstrated terrorist and may have information that may allow more precise targetting of those attacks?
December 28th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Sully wrote:
@ fuster:
Puzzle me this fuster.
President Obama (like many former presidents) clearly believes he has the constitutional authority to order attacks on foreign folks in nations with which we are not at war on the basis of intelligence indications that they may present a danger to this country.
By what logic can he not have the authority to order harsh interrogation of a foreign fellow who is a demonstrated terrorist and may have information that may allow more precise targetting of those attacks?
The Fly in the Ointment on this logical show piece is that Congress is supposed to Declare War,not the President,I admit,Congress is perfectly happy to avoid their responsibility in this regard. What Obama believes is irrelevant;Congress declares war.
December 28th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
They’re very rusty at that, REx, since 1941 why even try, the AUMF was the closest thing to that, and they walked away from the implications of that. Now if we could just have a war declaring
commission we would be all set
December 28th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
@ rex caruthers:
OK, but we should prepare ahead of time by having an American Interrogator reality show where contestants for the privilege of interrogating such captives get to demonstrate their worthiness and skills.
I’m fairly confident you’d have to turn away the volunteers.
I’m not sure, however, how good the ratings would be on the show.
Oops – complication: We probably wouldn’t want the bad guys to know what we found out. That might tend to reduce the value of intel rather significantly.
Real world-wise, I’m all in favor of a strictly controlled, supervised, audited regime: One of the best arguments for legalizing enhanced interrogation is to control it, discouraging voluntarism and excess, and refining methodologies.
December 28th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
@ Sully:
First, explain why you believe that he believes that his authority is based on inherent powers and not on legislation.
December 28th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Now the fellow you are referring to, Ali Soufan, turns out he misrepresented the nature of the intelligence that was received
from Zubeydah, before and after the waterboarding, fancy that
December 28th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
The art therapy that these poor benighted Gitmo chaps ended up
going through reminds of this:
http://www.montypython.net/scripts/armyprot.php
December 28th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
@ Sully:
Oh yeah, don’t listen to Dyer about water and torture. Police officers using water to semi-choke prisoners get time in federal pens.
December 28th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
They’re very rusty at that, REx, since 1941 why even try
A lot of the Constitution is in a state of under utilization;Do Conservatives really yearn for its comeback?,or do they only want the retuurn of those parts that they like. I like the fact that it is Congress that declares war,not the “Unitary” CIC. Korea,Vietnam.Desert Storm,Afghanistan,and Iraq,no Congressional Declaration,but Ironically so called Conservatives aren’t in a lather about all that.
December 28th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
It should be something kept in mind, strictly regulated, but available for special circumstances, like KSM, Zubeydah, Al Nashiri
December 28th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Didn’t catch my sarcasm, did you
December 28th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
@ fuster:
“Police officers using water to semi-choke prisoners get time in federal pens.”
The charge isn’t torture, Smidge, it’s assault.
But you need to list the federal pens in which such officers have been incarcerated. Link, please. “Police officers” on federal charges? They would be handling local and state prisoners, and any mistreatment would be a matter for state law.
No credibility for you on this one unless you give a citation.
December 28th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
@ fuster:
You’re the legalist fuster. I’m just a simple sort of fellow who just reads the plain language of things and often has problems with what judges seem to have made of them for what often seem questionable reasons.
I’m simply stating that in specific situations your president clearly has and uses the power to order the killing of foreigners even in situations risking the deaths of innocents without a declaration of war; yet you seem to have a problem with him ordering the harsh interrogation of a foreigner. I’m asking you to puzzle that out for me.
December 28th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
@ J.E. Dyer:
Sorry, Kid. I’ve given you the citation several times over the last year.
I can’t remember the cases at present.
I do kinda remember thinking that you, again, are wrong about the charges being assault. That’s pretty much silly.
Cops don’t get hauled into Federal court and get bunches of years in prison for assault.
One of the cops turned and testified against the chief and the chief was sent up for twenty(IIRC) under 18USC2340
I’ll link again if I can find it.
December 28th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
@ Sully:
Well, Sully you can’t kill ‘em all. Sometimes you capture them.
Sometimes when you capture them, they get a field interrogation.
Sometimes, some of those get brought back alive.
They get disarmed and rendered helpless, caged captives.
What you do to them after they’re bagged and helpless, sorry to say, has become a matter of interest over the last couple thousand years, and all sortsa nosy Parkers have put their two cents worth of opinions into it.
Among these buttinskys have been lotsa churchy/lawyerly types and they’ve managed to convince our betters that their stinking rules and ethics and laws and stuff matter.
December 28th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
You’ve just described the entire Administration, from the law lecturer who didn’t really teach law, but Alinsky power dynamics, the Atty General whose firm probably represented some of these
folks, et al
December 28th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
@ narciso:
Isn’t it sad that we don’t still have the last administration which featured an entire OPR without more than one or two persons knowing either law, ethics, or shame.
December 28th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
@ fuster:
You do the same thing in all of your arguments on this subject: You remain obsessed with the scene of interrogation, as though that morality play is the entirety of the issue. That’s what makes it possible for you to equate bad cops abusing suspects with military interrogators whose captives may possess information on which the lives of conceivably thousands may turn. It also leads you to ignore Sully’s main question, even after he repeats it: What’s the moral worth of all of the innocents who will die, not just in future acts of terrorism that aren’t averted, but in attempts to pre-empt or punish those acts? Your fastidiousness doesn’t extend to their rights to life and liberty. They have no place in the equation for you at all. They’re non-persons. The decision you favor not only puts our own fellow citizens at risk, something that a society dedicated to Gandhian precepts but not to individual rights and collective security might at least pursue with moral consistency, but in addition sacrifices countless others whose only crime is proximity to foreign suspects – far enough removed not to be available for interrogation. The moral question seems to exist for you only when presented directly, in person as it were. That to me is a lower morality, and a kind of cowardice. It makes you feel guilty to violate the person of someone you can picture and name, but for some reason you don’t experience a second thought if you’re relieved of such burdens. Your gaze is focused so obsessively, so pornographically, on the identified captive and your eroticized view of your own moral superiority, that no rationale, no pragmatic argument, no alternative moral framework can even be allowed to exist. Merely to suggest the possibility turns anyone into an even worse enemy than the individual ready to sacrifice his life merely for the sake of killing you and people like you.
December 28th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
I’m sorry CK. but you don’t get to assume that torture is going to save thousands of innocent lives.
You prove that first before you can use it to attempt to overturn the legal and ethical assumptions of the Western world. ( awfully hard for me to invoke tradition, despite my innate conservatism,but it’s there).
December 28th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Provide a link, Smidge. The BS flag is thrown, but it might be retrieved if you come up with a link.
Czar — now the “Reply” option is missing for me in the comments section, along with the tool bar for the comment entry template.
December 28th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
JED – I’m experimenting with various plug-ins, hoping to find a combination that will allow both reply/quote and some simple comment-formatting commands to co-exist, both in regular threads and on the Big Wall thread and on other “Page” threads, and across browsers…
I’m also trying to persuade one or another plug-in author to make it all happen in one terrific package…
December 28th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
Tell you what, Kid.
I’ll dig out the case when you get around to owning up to your bs for agreeing with Beck that Van Jones was a convicted and imprisoned felon.
It’s not like I haven’t previously given you the link to the case on the deadContentions site.
I do think that I remember that one of the guys that got the water treatment was an undercover FBI agent.
December 28th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
fuster wrote:
It’s my post and I’ll assume what I want to.
Notice how Mr Cluck seizes upon the “t” word. Fuster, you don’t get to assume that all interrogation methods that you don’t like are “torture,” and all other treatment of prisoners/detainees/captives/enemies/bystanders isn’t.
I consider the word prejudicial: Torture is whatever you decide it is. As I’ve argued at no doubt wearisome length at other times, I would prefer that we strive for maximally humane application of force, taking the entire moral context into account – including the lives of innocents, both our own civilians and the the civilians over there in Yemen, Afghanistan, or anywhere else who inevitably get killed and maimed in large and anonymous numbers when we lash out hoping to deter or interdict.
We’re at war, and, when we fight, we violate every conceivable “civil right” of our enemies and of collateral victims. In the process, we adopt a set of definitions of what is and isn’t justified, and write them up into Rules of Engagement – then for the most part stop questioning.
I don’t see why we should be obligated to remain silent on those issues – especially when being lectured and condescended to by people who happen to disagree with us about the morality of treating a creature like Abdulmutallab differently than we would treat a petty criminal or uniformed combatant.
As a citizen without access to the interrogations, the evidence, or the minutes of the last Al Qaeda board meetings, I have to go on credible reporting, which suggests that Mr. A nearly succeeded in bringing a jetliner down over Detroit. I further have heard that he has claimed to have some 24 or 5 comrades ready to do similar or worse things. I cannot test the credibility of the latter statement, but I think it should be tested.
Other credible reporting suggests, in my view very strongly, that the interrogations via waterboarding of KSM likely saved many thousands of lives. In that number I would include the direct victims of the terrorist acts that were planned, the direct victims of the other acts that captured or killed terrorists would have committed, and the victims of the likely massive retaliation that an enraged American populace would have demanded.
Nor do I accept for a moment that treating a citizen under suspicion of crime differently than we treat a captured surreptitious enemy combatant engaged in gross violations of the laws of war “overturn[s] the legal and ethical assumptions of the Western world.” The Western world has been around for a very long time, and the conventions of war, and also of civil rights, have changed greatly over time, and not always in straight-line positive evolution.
December 28th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
A word of advice to all American anti-terrorism investigators, interdictors, and so forth: Proceed as if the 300 passengers on Northwest 253 are all dead.
Let that sink in and act accordingly. Otherwise, resign.
December 29th, 2009 at 6:24 am
Enhanced interrogation, of KSM and Zubeydah, prevented two attacks on the Library Tower in LA, along with many other instances. There have been many close calls, there were two attempts on the London underground before 7/7. This is the third major plot in as many years, the JFK and TransAtlantic Flight one
December 29th, 2009 at 7:06 am
@ CK MacLeod:
CK, if we’re not talking about torture, what’re going to argue about?
What’s the point of discussing impolite questioning? There’s no argument in that, that’s barely a quibble.
I think that different methods of interrogation work differently on different individuals. I thought that your little joke box of questions pertained to the idiot with the explosive undies.
As such, I was sure that you realized the stupidity of “roughing up” a fool who was too stupid to do any damage and, from all reports, was bragging to the cops about his friends and his importance.
If you want to discuss the larger, universal question, that’s another thing.
If you start with the desirability of employing restraint in the use of force, on ethical grounds, as you say that you do, that’s a very nice starting point.
This allows the avoidance, I would assume, of making a case for routinely applying cruelty when we’ve no reasonable grounds for expecting to reap anything important.
December 29th, 2009 at 9:37 am
No, you are trying to characterize those techniques as torture, which is designed to shut down the discussion.
December 29th, 2009 at 9:39 am
fuster wrote:
Unfortunately, the foolish braggart was quite uncomfortably close to killing hundreds of people, or more, on Christmas Day. Clearly, the foolish braggart had accomplices. Quite possibly, the braggadocio and threats were or are intended to maximize the impact of the attack, which, as other observers have pointed out, was quite effective in a number of ways, despite its failure to achieve the apparent ultimate objective. Among the purposes served by the foolish braggart’s hilariously foolish attack has been concrete intelligence on how we actually will treat and react to attackers, and how effective the particular laugh-riot of a device is.
The next attack might be a lot less funny.
I appreciate, however, your openness to the particular policy question that you expressed as follows:
You assume correctly. Routine or excessive cruelty would be totally counterproductive. If our leaders weren’t so busy striking a voguish pose over “torture” and “detainee abuse,” we could instead focus on the actual problem as it’s taking shape before our eyes, with a view to future contingencies. We would put in place procedures that put us in the best possible position to limit loss of life, protect the rights of all concerned, and dispassionately examine the full range of ethical, moral, and technical issues that attach to the apprehension of enemy operatives, whether on the so-called “battlefield,” on American soil, or anywhere else.
Instead, as I’ve expressed elsewhere many times, I think that we may be setting ourselves up. I’ll cut and paste here a summary that I just left at the HA GR thread: If a terror campaign of some sort materializes, the pressure to enact emergency measures, of which critical parts would likely become permanent features of the law, will be immense. Unless the terrorist threat evaporates, we have condemned ourselves to undergo both devastating attacks and a subsequent overcompensation. In trying to turn the Constitution into a suicide pact, liberalism at war seeks its own destruction, with unnumbered American civilians (and foreign innocents “collateral” to eventual retaliation) the accompanying ritual sacrifice.
December 29th, 2009 at 10:33 am
@ narciso:
narc, if you were addressing me, I would say that you’re mistaken.
I call some things torture but I recognize that there’s all sorts of stuff that are different within the torture grouping, and I also hold that there are all sorts of stuff that’s short of torture.
No attempt to shut down the argument was being made unless you regard asserting that using water to interrupt somebody’s ability to breathe while you’ve got the person strapped down constitutes torture is an attempt to shut things down.
I don’t see that shuts things down at all, and have had pretty lengthy debates result from making the claim.
What I was attempting to do was to move the discussion to what I consider the core issue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g0RLyxP13o
December 29th, 2009 at 10:41 am
You make my point, for me, these are the rules of the Chicago way, and that hasn’t changed in 70 years
December 29th, 2009 at 10:54 am
@ narciso:
I wasn’t trying to deny the point, narc.
I’m open to the idea that normally criminal behavior might be considered for use at times.
I call it war.
But I don’t think that war and its actions can easily be invoked to defend actions that even during war are still regarded as repugnant, unethical and criminal.
I think that it may be possible, but I’ll stick to saying that it’s not easy to defend that s–t and the effort shouldn’t be made without there being a huge and highly probable payoff.
December 29th, 2009 at 11:03 am
@ fuster:
Nonsense, fuster. I wasn’t wrong to believe Beck, or to accept his assertion in responding to your question about it. The difference between you and me is that I actually did the research when you challenged Beck’s assertion about Van Jones, and my acceptance of it. I even posted links to what I found. I heard this month that Beck said he was wrong about Jones actually being in prison. Beck did HIS research too, after being challenged.
I’ve never seen you do this much.
December 29th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
@ J.E. Dyer:
Dyer, please link to where you admitted that you erred and agreed that Jones was not a convicted, imprisoned felon.
I will be extremely happy to request your forgiveness.
December 29th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
@ fuster:
I didn’t say I agreed Jones was not a convicted, imprisoned felon. There was no positive evidence for that at the time of your challenge. Since Beck has come out and said his assertion was incorrect, however, I’m prepared to agree to it now. Consider it done.
December 29th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
@ J.E. Dyer:
anything you want me to review?
December 29th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Oh boy. Am I late to this party.
I notice today that TGL managed to get a shave in before he ho-hummed through the obligatory too-little-too-late 3rd time’s the charm “We’re weawwy weawwy sewious. All this stuff I’m telling you has been in the news for 3 days, but I’ll make it sound like I’m breaking the news because I just got the briefing at the 19th hole and it’s new to me!” news conference. Anyone notice a pattern here? this is what this administration always does. Send out a secretary who says stupid sh*t, get Baghdad Bobby Gibbs to read from the same SS script, and sit back while a) the American people rise up en masse and say, “Do you think we are morons?” and b) Marc Ambinder double dips into the enhanced KoolAid stash to come up with an explanation about why this serial insesitivity/detachment/stupidity is some kind of super-genius strategy to show the world that stuff like this doesn’t cause The One break a sweat.
So, Czar, can we have a poll that reads, “Would you like to see Janet Napolitano waterboarded?”
Just heard: prosecutors are going to fight for remand of the Knicker Bomber because he “poses a flight risk.” Well, hindsight is 20-20.
December 29th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Barbara wrote:
In all things, Barbara, your wish is my command – er, so far, and except this one. I was suprised to see the poll got over 1,000 responses, so I now have a reputation to protect. I’m afraid that the prospect of seeing Janet Napolitano under any circumstances, wet, dry, or moldering, would be too much of a turn off. We’d be lucky to get 10 responses – and that’d serve no scientific purpose at all.
“poses a flight risk” – very good. Also, I think you may have the BO rinse cycle down down pat.
December 29th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
btw – if you ever want to do a poll, you can go to polldaddy.com and follow the easy sign-up. Needless to say, this one got goosed bigtime # of respondents-wise by having been at the HotAir GR. On the other hand, I did some polls earlier this year there and got only on the order of 100 votes. This was obviously a much hotter topic. Still interesting to see how many lurkers there are.
December 29th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
@ Barbara:
fuster will blow a headgasket if we seriously propose waterboarding a minor figure who clearly doesn’t know anything significant.
I want Janet Napolitano dipped in warm fudge, liberally coated with chopped fodder and provided as an all day sucker for elephants and giraffes.
December 29th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
@ Sully:
I’ve certainly no reason to oppose privately contracted, consensual waterboardings, particularly if the contracting party employs sex workers reasonably close to the statutory age of consent this time.
Sometimes, however, a second option might be employed to avoid burdensome and unnecessary expense to the public.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/1008072scuba1.html
December 29th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
You are not really as juvenile as you seem, Sfrog, the burden that the likes of Keith Martinez (revealed by the Times) and Kirikaou is hard to imagine, they didn’t relish doing what they did, but they understood the consequences if they didn’t get the information they needed. Some understanding of that should be appreciated.
Jack Bauer is a fictional character, but that haunted expression that he bears, is common to those who have seen death up close and even had to mete it out at times, for the greater good. You forwarded that clip of the UnTouchables not understanding what it meant
December 29th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
@ narciso:
narc, you nutjob, of course I think that I understood what it meant.
It’s quite possible that, my understanding of Christianity being less than an inch deep, you can supply some info for me.
I had the idea that in the clip Ness argues for the staying within the laws margins to protect the innocent and yet by accepting the old guy’s partnership he assumes responsibility for
How about you explain what you wish me to understand narc and I’ll try to respond.
December 29th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
And his team get’s annihilated almost entirely because he is too fastideous about the law, against an enemy that doesn’t care for it entirely. Remember the satchel bomb, planted in the drug store
that blows apart the child who tries to return it to it’s rightful owner?
December 29th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
@ narciso:
I hadn’t remembered.
Is the bag filmed so that you can clearly see that it’s made of s(k)in?
December 29th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
Smidge, you still haven’t documented your assertion about police officers being incarcerated for torture.
December 30th, 2009 at 9:07 am
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