Today's edition of "Meet the Press" featured a segment on the chairman of the two parties, Michael Steele of the GOP and Tim Kaine with the Democrats. The issue of waterboarding came up, and Michael Steele was clearly ill at ease and in my judgment evasive as host Dick Gregory probed on whether waterboarding is torture. Some Republicans, especially last fall's GOP Presidential nominee John McCain, a former POW who was physically abused and tortured by the North Vietnamese, have held it is. Tim Kaine, like Nancy Pelosi and most Democrats, simply engaged in what we in philosophy refer to as the logical fallacy Petitio Principii (more popularly described as begging the question or circular reasoning). They assume that all forms of waterboarding meet the general criteria of torture, and that the technique was applied arbitrarily and unnecessarily.
Most Americans, including myself, believe in giving intelligence professionals wide latitude in doing whatever means necessary to get time-dependent actionable intelligence, not from foot soldiers out of the loop of operations planning, but high-value targets. When former CIA heads and operatives like John Kirakou say that they had gotten nowhere with more conventional interrogation techniques (and I'm sure that they were using their most able interrogators on high-value principals), but got information only when waterboarding was a viable option (and I'm not going to get into hairsplitting over the timing of the gleaned information, e.g., if the target broke at the scene of waterboarding before technique was applied, but no new information after it was used), I listen and find him credible, especially when he expressed some misgivings over the technique.
The disingenuousness of the political argument becomes apparent when we recall in 2006 Ted Kennedy introduced an amendment voted down 53-46 which explicitly fines waterboarding and other techniques as torture in reference to section 2340(2) of Title 18. (The said code lists 4 prohibited practices: severe mental pain; severe physical pain; death threats; and threats against others.) One could argue with whether the vote was partisan, but the fact that there was a separate vote on waterboarding in 2006 is an implicit admission that there was no consensus, unlike what Democrats like Kaine imply, that the version of waterboarding applied to the 3 terrorists constituted torture. I do agree that waterboarding, like some other legal interrogation techniques, involve unpleasant, uncomfortable aspects which most people would not like to personally experience. Whether this technique fits under US code as written above as "torture" is a matter of legal opinion and judgment, not fact. In my view, it does not meet the threshold as specified, and it is very clear that there was no government mandate, particularly in the aftermath of 9/11, to tie the hands of our intelligence community to do whatever it takes to get actionable information in proactive attempts to save innocent lives. As for the liberal Democrats and international jurists screaming over the alleged abuses of the human rights of three war criminals held at Guantanamo Bay, cry me a river... The real abuses of human rights occurred on 9/11. These terrorists were not signatories of international treaties, nor did they abide by them. That must never happen again.
A liberal blogger, Kirsten Powers, posted an entry in October 2006, apparently no longer online but which has been widely reposted elsewhere on the Internet, and I quote in agreement:
[Waterboarding] is the interrogation technique that has been at the root of the claims that the United States is torturing people at Gitmo. I oppose torture, but I don't consider waterboarding torture (though it is considered such by plenty of smart people...we just disagree). To me torture is amputating limbs or digits, ripping out fingernails, drilling holes in feet, starving people...you know, the things Iraqi insurgents and the Hussein clan do/did to people).Pro-Lifers and Former Military Listed as Potential Domestic Terrorists
The Gallup polls recently tracked those Americans calling themselves pro-life at over 50% for the first time since the distinction was first tracked in 1995. The Department of Homeland Security distributed a 9-page report called "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment" to local law enforcement back in April, suggesting that a deteriorating economy and distrust of federal authority might contribute to radicalization of single-issue groups (e.g., pro-life or immigration) and that discharged veterans as a potential recruitment target of terrorist groups.
Secretary Napolitano, who initially stood by the report and admitted she had been briefed on its contents, now is claiming that internal procedures were not followed in a premature release of the document and it is being rewritten.
I cannot underscore how deeply this type of smear offends those of us whom consider ourselves pro-life and/or have numerous family members and relatives whom have served our country during times of war. We share a general respect for life, even those of heinous late-term abortionists. The national media tends to focus on isolated acts by certain vigilantes. If you know pro-life activists, you know that they are some of most loving people you could ever hope to meet. One of my little sisters, the mother of 6 extraordinary children (the first 4 boys have all attained rank of Eagle Scout), has done volunteer abortion counseling work for years; she is a sweet, beautiful, petite woman with an upbeat personality. I may talk the talk, but my sister walks the walk, and I am very proud of her. It also would have been very easy for Governor Sarah Palin with everything else she was doing to agree with the 90% of mothers of unborn Down Syndrome babies choosing eugenic abortion. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that she is an honest, loving, sincere, principled woman, and I applaud her decision to choose life. And if you hear her speak, she makes it clear that she thinks she's the lucky one to have such a beautiful, loving little boy.
The Curious Case of Nancy Pelosi: Madam Speaker, Resign!
Last week I watched one of the most bizarre news conferences ever as Speaker Pelosi disputed accounts from the CIA on when and how she was briefed. She is desperately trying to find some nuanced interpretation of how she ignored instances of "torture" on her watch. She insists that the applied version of waterboarding is "torture", but she thought they were just thinking about using "torture" but didn't actually do it. Let me get this straight, Madam Speaker: If the CIA told you they were going to use (or thinking about using) one of Saddam Hussein's trademark techniques (say, applying electrical shock to the target's genitalia or amputating a limb), you wouldn't say simply at the same news conference, "Oh, you know, that's just CIA talk: their bark is worse than their bite. I didn't believe for a minute they were actually being serious about doing it, so I didn't say anything about it at the time."
I've described in other posts how I assess reliability and validity of political beliefs, which is similar to the approach used in applied psychological measures. I could be able to to see evidence of that hypothesized relationship confirmed by relevant facts. Either Pelosi believed at the time waterboarding was torture or she didn't. If she did, there should be corroborating evidence--notes taken at the meeting of her objections, a memo written to the CIA, a public statement, the introduction of a bill to ban waterboarding, etc. If she didn't do these things, the most likely explanation is that she is trying to use the Bush Administration or the CIA as a scapegoat to explain her silence on the matter.
I personally believe that in the aftermath of 9/11, leadership of both parties were focused on trying to stop a follow-up attack. The Angry Left agenda on portraying 3 terrorists as "victims" of CIA "torture" became an issue as dissatisfaction with the Iraq occupation grew. As the controversy grew, questions naturally arose as to what did Pelosi know and when did she know it...
I applaud CIA director Panetta for having the integrity to stand up to the powerful Speaker attacking the professionalism and integrity of CIA personnel. Speaker Pelosi, I believe that your inability to accept responsibility for your actions/inaction upon being briefed and your unprovoked attacks on the integrity and professionalism of CIA employees have undermined your credibility and worthiness to serve as Speaker, and I'm calling on you to resign.
