The American Spectator

Although I will not repeat them, his enhanced interrogation techniques make waterboarding look like a child’s game in comparison, and waterboarding appears to be the most vicious technique we have used.

No outcry from our media. No outcry from bleeding hearts in the U.S. No outrage from the Obama administration.

There’s an even more important lesson here. In the worlds of terror, piracy, and threatened national annihilation, we are facing people who respect only strength and ferocity. They laugh at our timid, over-introspective, and legalistic approach to them.

We threaten prosecution. We “catch and release” pirates. We negotiate.

They behead.

I’m not at all suggesting that we adopt their enhanced interrogation techniques — just that we stop weeping copiously and flailing our backs in penance, and stop threatening to prosecute our own citizens for trying to save our country from terror attacks.

I’m also suggesting that we treat pirates like enemy combatants and start using force to reply to force. How many times do you think we’d have to show them that we will sink their boats on sight before they get the message?

Have they ever heard a .50 caliber machine gun rattle in their direction? A 5-inch gun? One of those and they’ll understand.

As it is now, the pirates are in a win-win situation. If they get away with the ship, they make money; if we catch them, they get released with a finger-wagging “no, no, no.”

Bullies thrive on weaklings. They perceive us as weaklings.

With good reason.
— A. C. Santore

NONE DARE CALL IT TORTURE

Waterboarding, sleep deprivation,
Celine Dion 24/7.
Bugs in a box, cold floors and no socks,
Pork pie for lunch. Great Heaven!

All these and more our military endure
In their training to defend and protect.
(I even saw a newsman go burbling under
Yet nobody seemed to object).

When the good guys on our side
Test these crucial methods out,
None Dare Call It Torture.
Their comfort’s not in doubt.