And this is exactly WHY torture is wrong, and illegal. Once you start justifying it for one situation, it starts seeming OK and you start using it for other things.

It was more than an agenda. These guys were trying to justify the fact that they blew it on 9/11. Saddam had to have WMD. He had to be in league with Bin Laden. There had to have been a conspiracy. Otherwise they had been warned, they ignored it and 3,000 people died.

After watching Rachel last night my TV channel was still on MSNBC. Scarboro & Co were on such a breathtaking vitriolic rant against Nancy Pelosi, I have never heard such garbage, they had Kit Bond (Repub) enjoying every minute and joining in. I now think Scarborough is unhinged, I don't think I will ever be able to watch him again. Wonder if anyone else saw him.

Of course, as the administration had been told by SERE program personnel extracting false confessions was exactly what the torture techniques borrowed from the Nazis and Soviets were designed to do.

Why are we even talking about this crap. If Bushit and Darth had robbed a bank they would have been arrested by now. Why? Because robbing banks is against the law. Torture is against the law. Period. No if ,ands, or buts.

Let's cut the crap. If what they did they did for altruistic ends, let the courts show them mercy. No hanging, Just life in prison...

Cthcheney will scuttle in front of a camera and declare Wilkerson is not a Republican in 5...4...3...

"Wonder if anyone else saw him.
Posted by: JS on May 15, 2009 at 8:03 AM"

JS,

I saw Scarborough this AM too. He is an apologist for torture, in my estimation. And, I think, he would be "willing to also accept 'extracting false confessions' as a reasonable justification (for torture)?", as asked by the author of this post, Steve Benen.

Much of the public discussion of this issue in the last few weeks is yet another example of the bizarre and seemingly cultivated amnesia of the MSM that we witnessed all through the Bush years. Let's concede for the sake of argument that at the beginning of the Bush administration it made sense to grant initial credence to serious public pronouncements by Bush, Cheney and their people. But it's folly to continue doing so after what we've learned about them over the last eight years. Cheney, for example, has a record, and it's a terrible one. We know he is a bloody minded fanatic, who believes what he wants to believe and is perfectly willing to lie in the service of his aims. While in office his paramount aim was to push as hard as he could and by means of lie after lie for an unnecessary and immoral war, which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and wreaked untold devastation. He has forfeited the right to have his claims seriously and with respect.

"Scarboro & Co were on such a breathtaking vitriolic rant against Nancy Pelosi, I have never heard such garbage, they had Kit Bond (Repub) enjoying every minute and joining in. I now think Scarborough is unhinged, I don't think I will ever be able to watch him again. Wonder if anyone else saw him."

I saw it too, JS, but had a slightly different take on Joe. Over the past few months he's been returning to the Dark Side with increasing frequency and fervor. I see it as a ploy on the part of MSNBC managment to attract some lunatic eyeballs from Faux News.

Mika, the drug addled Lefty with the foreign name vs. All American Love it or Leave it Joe.

Confrontational TV increases ratings.

So sad. A year ago Morning Joe was a faint reminder of what the Salons of Paris were, with Gertrude Stein holding court to the Lost Generation.

Sadism is also a motivator if you judge by comments on public threads.

Torture killed numerous American soldiers by serving as a recruiting tool for insurgents in Iraq. Every time I hear someone claim that it "saved lives" I wonder whether they appreciate this blindingly obvious point.

If someone was occupying your country and torturing people in dungeons - might that just inspire you to attack their soldiers?

Seems to me that politicians will gravitate toward the suggestion that BushCo initiated torture before asking for legal cover, rather than that they used torture for finding a link to Al Qaeda, as the conduit with which to prosecute.

Anything else is 'backwards-looking,' and 'prosecuting a previous Administration for policy differences' as they like to say.

No, that wasn't a ticking time bomb scenario, but if such a scenario were to come up we would want to know that our torturers have had plenty of practice.

Who says torture was used for morally defensible ends?

Whatever one thinks of the efficacy of “enhanced interrogation techniques,� the fact is, although large fractions of the public are disturbed by the details, these same folks are tempted to look away if they think that these methods did, in fact, “save American lives.� Those of us opposed to torture need these people’s support if our views are to prevail, and so we need to challenge this notion head on.

We need to continually point out, as forcefully as possible, that torture has never been used to elicit truthful information. Not ever, not from anybody.

Throughout history torture has been used either to drag out whatever statement was expedient at the time, to terrorize the population, or to satisfy the hidden lusts of the torturers themselves. Whatever dark chapter dark chapter one chooses: The Spanish Inquisition, Salem witch trials, Europe’s anti-Semitic pogroms … Can’t find enough witches? Try a little torture. Can’t find the hidden cabals of Protestant heretics? Throw in a little torture. It doesn’t matter what you’re looking for. Space aliens, running dog lackeys of American imperialism, fifth columns of hidden subversives, or hidden connections between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. If you’re having trouble finding enough demons in this demon-haunted world, try torture.

Recall that the American program was modeled after the SERE program (Survive, Endure, Resist, Escape), a program developed by the military in the mid-fifties in order to prepare American pilots in case they were captured during the Korean war. The North Koreans were using “enhanced interrogations� to elicit false confessions. In short, it was modeled after a system whose purpose was to generate lies.

To those defenders of the Bush regime: Show us one example in all of history where torture has been used for morally defensible reasons.

We cannot allow the Right to define the debate around the efficacy of torture without directly challenging their central claim that torture was used exclusively for honorable ends, the saving American lives. The more we dig in this particular patch the more apparent it will become that the crime of torture was in service of an even greater crime, the war in Iraq.

No, that wasn't a ticking time bomb scenario, but if such a scenario were to come up we would want to know that our torturers have had plenty of practice.

exactly. an insufficiently trained torturer is worse than no torturer at all.

I am absolutely opposed to torture regardless of the situation; but am I the only one who finds it odd that if the purpose of the torture was to elicit false confessions and everyone seems to agree that false confessions are what you usually get with torture,that there were no confessions linking Saddam to 9/11?

Scarboro & Co were on such a breathtaking vitriolic rant against Nancy Pelosi, I have never heard such garbage, they had Kit Bond (Repub) enjoying every minute and joining in.

I missed joe, but caught the second act via Matt Lauer on the Today Show. His softball questions to Kit Bond were nauseating and allowed for uninterrupted feigned outrage over calling our "terror fighters" liars.

I liked how Matt set up the piece by saying "and now to our serious news", then proceeded to read the script I presume Kit had faxed over for him. Did Matt ask if Bond knew of any other democrats with this EIT info? Did he then ask if Bond had been previously briefed on the info? Psht...right.

If it can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that members of the Bush Administration had people waterboarded in an effort to find a 9/11-Hussein link...

then yes, I believe this is wrong.

so you'll support war crimes trials? wonderful. welcome back to the USA.

actually, the Pelosi angle on this is fortuitous; makes it easier to argue that congress can't be trusted to investigate. special counsel, the only way.

RE: Mourning Joe and his band of fools. They all seem to think that they are all soooo important and that anybody gives a shit what they think. I used to watch but as mentioned above, he has become all negative all the time. He seems to think reasoned commentary is getting that old fart Pat Bucannan all riled up while dimbulb Mika makes goo-goo eays and goes Oh! Joe....His browbeating of her reminds me of Hannity and Colmes ...take that you LIBRUL scoudrel.

I'll only condone waterboarding in an attempt to save innocent American lives from a terrorist attack.

So effing stupid, this statement.

Consider. You're part of a terrorist cell, connected to other cells, however tenuously, and directed by a deliberately amorphous group of planners and leaders. At every step in the communications chain, there are cutouts. All of your colleagues are well-practised in hiding out, changing identities, moving locations, adjusting tactics.

Your little group might be charged with committing a violent act. You've been given a target, along with only enough details, personnel and funding as is needed to get the job done. Your leaders, who you've never met, whose whereabouts are unknown to you, have many possible targets for consideration. An almost limitless number, you might say. If your particular plan gets discovered, if you or one of your group gets captured, Your project will be cancelled and your leaders will simply fade. You will be sacrificed and they will begin the work of selecting a new outrage to commit.

So what will you, little footsoldier, be able to tell your interrogators when you're strapped to the waterboard. Almost nothing of value. All you know about is your target, which, of course, is no longer a target. This is how your leaders wanted it.

Torture has no investigative value. Its purpose was, instead, to send a message to the Islamic world. Something like, "See? See what we're capable of?" Simple vengeance, with the side benefit of satisfying the bloodlust of pseudo-tough guys.

Good solid police work, with international cooperation, is the way to root out terrorists.

But you knew that already. Defending torture is just another neo-con political dodge.

"There was no 'ticking time bomb,' but there was a political agenda."

Of course there was a ticking time bomb. There were elections coming up in the U.S. The problem is there is always either a mid-term or Presidential election coming up, so there is always a ticking time bomb for an administration that wants political justification for its actions.

Is there a word that's worse than hypocrite to describe a cynical, amoral mentality that cloaks itself in righteousness? If there is that's what the bushies are. They knew that torture elicits false information. They used it to get a confession that wasn't available through legitimate means because it was a lie.

All this jives perfectly with a conversation I had with a good friend of mine during the Christmas holiday of 2001. He's an intelligence analyst for the NSA with more than 25 years of experience. He said [and I quote], "It's bullshit. Ever since 9/11, all anyone in this administration wants us to do is find a link between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. It's unbelievable! And the fact is, there is no link. We already know that. But, they're still hounding us to find one." I remember it like it was yesterday.

Then he made an ominous prediction: we'd be at war with Iraq before the summer of 2003.