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Ok, so you're saying you're entirely comfortable that the Bush administration's policy on torture is entirely ethical? That Comey was just being a wimp when he resigned because he felt Gonzalez' uncritical endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the CIA was an irresponsible legal position? That the general turmoil over torture policies among the White House legal counsel is just political maneuvering?
You think it's reasonable that we denounce other countries when they have secret detentions and coercive interrogation, but then do the very same things ourselves?
The White House had one of their legal lackeys provide them with a memo saying that no interrogation technique was torture unless it produced "pain equivalent to organ failure or even death". You're comfortable with that?
The administration has decided that the CIA is exempt from the provision of the Convention Against Torture that prohibits "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" treatment - despite international law and treaties to the contrary. You're good with that?
When Congress passed a law prohibiting torture, Bush attached a signing statement that said he'd ignore it if it interfered with his constitutional powers. You're on board with that, too?
Sorry - this administration has spent a tremendous amount of effort to dismantle the checks and balances built into the constitution. All of the discussion we know has gone on over which interrogation techniques constitute torture and which don't says to me that they're committed to torturing anyone they damn well please and they really just want to know which ones they have to hide.
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Worthless, Brainless, Truthless Partisan Crap
Okay, right off the bat this op-ed loses any semblance of credibility by stating "By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are practicing torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since photographic proof emerged from Abu Ghraib more than three years ago." Except for that whole judicial punishment of everyone involved including the general in charge thing. Notice how this intellectual giant does exactly what he accuses the Bush administration of doing: refusing to define "torture." He gives a brief mention of "hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation." Granted, I (and most people) would consider hypothermia torture-- but that is a long way from cold rooms, meant to make a prisoner miserable without causing actual harm (that or I've been "tortured" working on the interstate setting concrete barriers at 2 a.m. in January.) And I'll consider the last two "torture" if Amnesty International begins to come down on US military basic training, college fraternities, and airline flight. Seriously.
"We can continue to blame the Bush administration for the horrors of Iraq — and should." As usual, Saddam and Al Queda get a free pass. Dude must have seen Fahrenheit 9/11 with the kids flying kites in Baghdad. The rest of this op-ed is so full of exaggerations and out-right lies that it's almost a parody of leftist mindless claptrap. He hits all the notes: Abu Gharaib (these people must have danced a jig when those pictures were made public,) Blackwater, Bush Lied, Darfur, taxes. And he finishes it off with comparing the hardened, Paradise-seeking Jihadist with high ranking Nazi officials in terms of interrogation. Because I'm sure the Jordanian picked up in Iraq after a failed suicide bombing attempt is completely amenable to a friendly game of ping-pong with the infidel. Frakkin' A, there is a world of gorram difference between the Germans of WWII with the terrorists of today, and if the idiot writing that op-ed is too stupid or morally bankrupt to be able to tell the difference...
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