Mehgan McCain had some good advice to the old Republican guard today on The View - maybe even Boehner needs to take her advice! -Kevo

No truly free man would want to be "kept safe."

No free man would be kept at all.

"Home of the Brave" my ass.

The cognitive disconnect here is that representatives of the GOP, like Boehner, do not think torture is wrong. They do not understand that it is abhorrent in an ethical, moral society (as well as unreliable and very bad in terms of actual intelligence). They like it so much they don't care that it is against clear, long-existing US law and tradition. They also think suspicion equals fact, as the exchange with the reporter shows. Maybe this all has to do with how they were raised, but like racism it seems ground in pretty deep. They have to learn a different way, but nobody seems to know how that might be achieved.

"Alleged" terrorists? Since when did they allow dirty f-ing terrorist lovers into press conferences? Next thing you know, someone might suggest there's some presumption of innocence for these haters of humanity, based solely on lack of any evidence. Yet, there's only lack of evidence because we can't torture it out of them! Hypocrites!

Go back to ths 60's, hippy! And take your damn pre-9/11 attitude with you! We're at war, peacefreak! Hugs will not be effective!

Doctor Biobrain, sounds like you need a hug

Yours Truly,
Dickâ„¢

"Last week, they released these memos outlining torture techniques. That was clearly a political decision and ignored the advice of their Director of National Intelligence and their CIA director," Boehner said

Oopsie

It's hard work keeping this tangled web of lies.....I mean set of RNC talking points together.

That's what these morons keep glossing over: we have used these "torture techniques" on innocent people. And usually the all-too-compliant media lets them get away with it.

So now we know that people with potential information on the "CIA Database of Arabs Recruited to fight for the Afghan Mujahadeen" (or "Al Qaeda" for short) were being tortured to make a false link between Al Qaeda and Iraq.

So what was the excuse for mistreating the Iraqis arrested after the American invasion. Abu Ghraib was just a part of the US detention system. The US imprisoned tens of thousands at a time. 90-95% were quickly known to be innocent but were still kept in detention for months.

The most likely explanation I've ever seen is that the USA wanted to rebuild a Secret Police network. They needed humiliating photos of as many citizens as possible so they could blackmail a large number into becoming informants.

Freud me once shame of me, Freud me twice, and a we won't get slipped again.

The story the corporate MSM should be in a frenzy over right now is how these chicken shits let our military men and women take the fall for their bullshit policies.

From Wikipedia:

Between May 2004 and September 2005, seven soldiers were convicted in courts martial, sentenced to federal prison, and dishonorably discharged from service. Two soldiers, Specialist Charles Graner, and his former fiancée, Specialist Lynndie England, were sentenced to ten years and three years in prison, respectively, in trials ending on January 14, 2005 and September 26, 2005. The commanding officer at the prison, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, was demoted to the rank of Colonel on May 5, 2005. Col. Karpinski has denied knowledge of the abuses, claiming that the interrogations were authorized by her superiors and performed by subcontractors, and that she was not even allowed entry into the interrogation rooms.

Why isn't this plastered all over the news. Why the hell is FOX allowed to control the terms of the debate over the whole media spectrum?

The people that authored the memos need to go to prison. The soldiers, if Obama is serious about his rhetoric "not pursuing prosecution against CIA agents", should be pardoned.

The soldiers did wrong, but they did so under orders. Nothing is more weak more or more disgusting than letting someone else take your fall. Bushies I'm looking at you.

"Boehner paused. 'Let me take a deep breath here,' he said. 'We're talking about terrorists who are hell bent on killing Americans. All right?'"

Torture does not obtain useful information, therefore if you want to torture you should give up the pretext of that you are using it for informational purposes. To pararpharse George Bernard Shaw:

"If you torture for pleasure, avow your object frankly, and play the game according to the rules, as a wolf hunter does ... No hunter is such a cad as to pretend that he hunts a wolf to teach it not to eat cows, or that he suffers more acutely than the wolf at death. Remember that even in torture there is the sportsman’s way and the cad’s way."

If torture works then why did they never torture Saddam? Consider what that tells us. This past week, a parade of former Bush Administration hacks, such as former NSA Director Hayden and VP Cheney himself are going around telling us "torture works". Nonsense, of course, but if they truly believe that (and it appears they do), then what does the fact they never tortured Saddam Hussein tell us? If they REALLY believed all that crap about Saddam's WMD's and ties to al Qaeda (if not 9/11 itself), why didn't they torture him to reveal, "What did you do with the weapons of mass destruction?" and "what was your involvement with al Qaeda?". Think about that for a moment. Saddam was captured just months after the invasion of Iraq, when the possibility that "stockpiles" of WMD's they insisted existed pre-invasion may have simply been moved or hidden prior to the invasion. Yet, they never tortured him to find out what he had done with them. This tells us they they NEVER believed the WMD's ever existed. Nor did they torture Saddam to find out what contacts he had with al Qaeda. In fact, quite the opposite: clearly, because they already knew none of it was true: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32LnjWJTHcg

@SF

The cognitive disconnect here is that representatives of the GOP, like Boehner, do not think torture is wrong.

Agreed. When you're world view can only be black or white, without shades of grey - how can your actions/thought process be wrong when you are on the right/positive side of every situation? It shows that you care little nor thought about the consequences of actions. Denigration of the United State's reputation is a direct consequence that Boehner will not accept or acknowledge. This is a huge character flaw in my book; however, he's still on the forefront policy shaping and a lead player in the GOP, so his constiuents must like what he has to say. And that is quite a scary thought.

NOte to Boner, Dick(less), and the rest of you thugs:

YOu invaded Iraq and captured and effectively killed Saddam b/c he was a 'bad man', a bad man who imprisoned people on the slightest whim, a man who murdered and tortured people, and well, we just can't have that. The U.S. to the rescue! Then, under a cloak of secrecy, you and your ilk imprison people on the slightest whim, render suspects to be tortured, torture and abuse prisoners, and kill thousands. Now, using your own logic and behavior as a template, ALL OF YOU should have your personal space invaded, you should be imprisoned, tried, and sentenced to death. What the hell is the matter with you people? C'mon. Get real.

The soldiers did wrong, but they did so under orders.

That's certainly why those giving the orders should be punished, but, to quote the Convention Against Torture which the US has ratified, "An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture." (Art. 2, § 3.)

They have to learn a different way, but nobody seems to know how that might be achieved.

My money's on "Years of successively more humiliating electoral losses." Aside from the fact that it appeals to their screwed up notion of virility, their only other motive to be pro-torture is because they still think it plays well with their base.

We have used torture on human beings. It does not matter what they are innocent or guilty of.

"Alleged terrorists," noted the reporter.

No. Oddly enough, every suspect we've tortured has confessed to being hell bent on destroying the US.
Not an innocent one in the bunch. Dodged THAT bullet.

There are more than a few problems with the GOP's defense of "enhanced interrogation techniques."

The one big, glaring one that keeps slapping me in the face is when they argue, as Liz Cheney did this afternoon, that what happened at Abu Grahib is "awful" and "terrible" without recognizing that much of what happened there are *exactly* the "enhanced interrogation techniques" that they claim (pretend) aren't torture?!?? The brain, it hurts.

If waterboarding isn't torture then I want to see them all waterboarded-- 183 times in one month. Then tell me that isn't torture.

Now their latest response is um, well, Nancy Pelosi knew about it!!!! We told her!!! Which is basically the GOP playing a big game of chicken-- we DARE you to investigate this because if you do we're taking EVERYONE down with us!

Such devious, evil motherfuckers.

Feith (a torture architect) was hell bent on proving Iraq was linked to al Qaeda.

Do you suppose he cherry picked statements made under torture to enhance his case? If so, I would say that discredits the future use of torture.

While major internet news outlets continue to use euphemisms such as "approach to intelligence gathering" to describe the Bush administration's harsh interrogation tactics, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) used a more succinct term Thursday: "torture.

If I recall correctly, GW used to take pleasure in blowing up frogs in his youth. I wonder if Boehner enjoyed picking the wings off flies?

Putting aside the moral depravity of torture itself and how it diminishes us as a nation (and that Boehner is basically an idioit anyway), what proof positive is available of its success? What is the proveable success rate vs. the abject failure rate? How frequently is totally useless information given up that doesn't pan out? How many have been subjected to it that have absolutely nothing to offer of value? Do innocent people subjected to torture count in the statistics? I guess to Boehner, none of this is important since anyone picked up and labled as a terrorist qualifies for treating anyone so labled simply as vermin.

As a poster points out above, if the CIA interrogators are immune from prosecution, it is only logical and fair that Obama pardon all the soldiers who were convicted for Abu Ghraib and are as of this moment rotting in jail.

Obama may have a good game, but in many respects he is quite disappointing.

It's become clear now that the GOP is the Party of Torture (or PoT).

Make that a plank on their platform for 2010!