The American Spectator

Big J| 5.12.09 @ 7:14AM

Toddard, Paine and others spewing left-wing talking points on the evil of Bush, torture and O'Reilly in

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Melvin| 5.12.09 @ 7:20AM

Is Spain even a Country any more?

moranec| 5.12.09 @ 7:38AM

Excellent reporting! Don't think I would read such a well-documented article on the Spanish prosecutorial mis-steps of Mr. Garzon in the main media. While they are applauding his mis-steps, Mr Lord has given us a great understanding of all the international facets of the Spanish cabal.

10,000 Paine-iacs| 5.12.09 @ 8:24AM

Spalding Smails: Turds.
Judge Smails: Spaulding, how many times have I spoken to you about your language?
Spalding Smails: Sorry grandpa I forgot.
Judge Smails: Oh Dr. Beeper, Bishop Pickering this is my niece Lacey Underall. Lacey's mother sent her to us for the summer.
Dr. Beeper: Must be a nice change from dreary old Manhattan.
Lacey Underall: Yes I was really getting tired of having fun all the time.
Judge Smails: Ah. Ho ho. Ha ha ha.
Spalding Smails: Double turds.
Judge Smails: *Spaulding*!

Big Head Toddard&The; Monsters| 5.12.09 @ 8:29AM

Otis B. Driftwood: Let's go in my room and talk the situation over.
Mrs. Claypool: What situation?
Otis B. Driftwood: Well, er... what situations have you got?
Mrs. Claypool: I most certainly will not go to your room.
Otis B. Driftwood: OK, then I'll stay here.
Mrs. Claypool: All right, all right, all right! I'll come, but get out.
Otis B. Driftwood: Shall we say, uh, ten minutes?
Mrs. Claypool: Yes, ten minutes, anything. But go!
Otis B. Driftwood: Because if you're not there in ten minutes, I'll be back here in eleven. With squeaky shoes on!

Paul DeSisto| 5.12.09 @ 9:13AM

Dear Mr. Lord: Fine reporting. But Pinochet was leader of Chile, not Argentina.

Respectfully,

Paul DeSisto

Doorgunner| 5.12.09 @ 9:19AM

Where did he say Pinchet was the leader of Argentina? Can't find it.

Paul DeSisto| 5.12.09 @ 9:22AM

Dear Doorgunner:

Please see second page: "He had an arrest warrant issued for ex-Argentine dictator Augusto Pinochet over the alleged torture of Spanish citizens..."

Cordially,

Paul DeSisto

Doorgunner| 5.12.09 @ 9:31AM

Oof.

Thanks. I think I was surging on the leash a bit as read through.

Jeffrey Lord| 5.12.09 @ 9:32AM

Paul...

You are right, sir! My bad! After all the research I had Argentina on the brain! Chile it was! Thanks!

Doorgunner| 5.12.09 @ 9:32AM

... as I read through.

Decaf, maybe?

Tim| 5.12.09 @ 10:15AM

Bill O'Reilly ... I'd be visiting my 80 something old dad who watches the O'Reilly Factor in his recliner. O'reilly would get fired up about something and my snoozing dad would snort, wake up and point at the TV: " See that? That's the Irsh in him!" Then back to sleep.
Dad's proud of you Mr. O'Reilly, for what it's worth. Godspeed.

Big J| 5.12.09 @ 10:27AM

The trolls are going to prove me wrong this morning? I would say it's a disappointment, but it's not. I have noticed a pattern. When there is an article that cannot be twisted into their sick sense of logic, the silence is deafening.

....crickets chirping

Congratulations, Mr. Lord. I consider the fore-mentioned fact the indication of an excellent article! Other than a minor syntax error, of course. Combined with the fact that it IS a great article, nice job!

(Of course the day is still young.....)

Bob Alou| 5.12.09 @ 12:21PM

Mr. Lord, fine article. Please don't ever use the expression "my bad" again.

Jeffrey Lord| 5.12.09 @ 12:42PM

Bob Alou...

Promise.

How about: "What an idiot I am!!!" ????

NavyBrat| 5.12.09 @ 1:21PM

Nice to see that the hypocrisy of the lefties is INTERNATIONAL. Now I don't feel so bad about the miscreants we have running OUR country currently. Great article, Mr. Lord. I always forward your articles to everyone in my adress book, & this is no exception.

NotAnObot| 5.12.09 @ 2:03PM

I guess Spain is the new France.

Heroh| 5.12.09 @ 3:17PM

You might point it out as hypocracy, but doesn't somebody SOMEWHERE have to stop the torture? Just taking sides about and furthering the arguement doesn't actually solve the problem of the innocent people being tortured to death, nor does it absolve those Bush 6 (and others) who are responsible for their own contributions to said horrors. I'm confused how people can see this article as a 'win', unless life is just about point-scoring and not actually about following through when injustices occur (no matter where, or by whom).

Charles Martel| 5.12.09 @ 3:23PM

Heroh, what we did was not torture. What Garzon oversaw was. Let him indict himself.

+++

Doorgunner| 5.12.09 @ 3:40PM

Two points, Heroh:

In 1981 at Parris Island Marine Corp Recruit Depot the technique for training non-swimmers was still to push them to the bottom with the long pole and wait for the big bubbles (believe me, you 'll know them when you them). Then, retrieve recruit, turn upside down and knee him 'til he drains. Throw him back in and repeat procedure until recruit can swim well enough to evade the pole. It works.
For three months, I was punched, knee'd, kicked, run 'til I dropped, and, beat with an old oak, barely padded pugil stick.
On 19 June, 1981, when the "Dismissed" command was given, I, and most other recruits from plt. 3023 would have repeated the three month process if that was what was necessary to proceed.
Nothing yet described to me as EIT amounts to torure, you damn Sally's.

Secondly, if anyone in the administration actually wanted to employ true torture, why would they seek clarification from DOJ? Everything you do in government, and the military, creates a paper trail. It seems to me that that was exactly what was wanted; a documented defense against scurrilous charges.

Marc Jeric| 5.12.09 @ 3:59PM

First - the treatment of those beasts of prey (not humans) at Gitmo was not torture; torture is pulling nails, cutting fingers, shocking with 100,000 volts. Those mass killers of civilians enjoy the tropical paradise there, read their personal copies of Kuran, are served 3 excellent meals a day, and receive the best health care available any where in the world.
As for boycotting Spain - I would boycott any country under a socialist tyranny: Spain, Great Britain, whichever, whether they are indicting Americans or not.

CARDINAL XIMINEZ| 5.12.09 @ 4:01PM

Fetch...THE COMFY CHAIR!

2 Guns, AZ| 5.12.09 @ 5:09PM

Hey, Garzon,

If your sooooo sure of the torture of your so called Spanish citizens at Gitmo, why get your arse over here and file suit in Federal court.

What, you afraid you might lose? Come on, show us some of that Spanish moxie, you loser.

Daniel_H| 5.12.09 @ 5:49PM

Torture is only torture when anyone excepting the US does it. Then it's persuasion or pressure or simply a character building intervention.
Yee-haw - the cowboys are back in town: lock up yer ladies 'cos rape ain't rape when we're having our fun

acmejack| 5.12.09 @ 5:55PM

Doorgunner on what, and where? If you were floating at the bottom of a pool at Parris Island in 1981, you're just another gyrene with a gung-ho name. Ain't been a true doorgunner since since 71 or so. Or maybe I should be asking whose door you shot? I'll give you credit for serving, which is more than most of your badass crowd dares to do, but defending the open violation of international law (which we were instrumental in creating and enforcing, as we self righteously hung everyone in sight for) is unbelievable, even for tough guys like the crowd that was, until recently, running DC. A team of combat hardened killers like you folks, would naturally gravitate to a serial lying, draft evading gaper like O'Reilly. May you all be waterboarded stressed and sleep deprived-after all, it isn't torture. But it is indisputable that you are liars!

I am always amazed by you tough guys on the Right. Never seen it, don't dare participate, but you are all charter members of the 101st Keyboard Brigade. You're just so sad...

Aaron| 5.12.09 @ 6:40PM

acmejack-

Moron, Door-gunners are defending your right to free speech this very minute and most of them went through SERE training and were (GASP!), water boarded!

I am always amazed by you pansy-assed freaks on the left who don't have a clue what you are talking about.

BTW... Great article Mr. Lord!

Len| 5.12.09 @ 6:51PM

Can we just let Spain have John Yoo? Not for his advice concerning tortue, but his tortured misconstruction of the Constitution. The man once cited himself as a source concerning Constitutional understanding fer cryin' out loud.

bob montgomery| 5.12.09 @ 9:03PM

This is what will happen to the "transformed America" Obama thinks he is creating. Atlas will shrug. We are going to take our ball and go home.
We will not go there. We will not play. The list of "tenth Amendment" states will grow.

Doorgunner| 5.12.09 @ 9:17PM

acmejack,

I have been queried here before: I am former USMC who currently serves full-time guard. I am a UH-60M crewchief (that's an enlisted crewmember mechanic/loadmaster/gunner), I use a M240H, and I also must carry a M-4 and M-9.

In my battalion, there seems to be about two conservatives for every liberal; we all get along fine. Perhaps because we all think O'Reilly and Olbermann are both pretty gay.

And the 101st (Screaming Eagles) are a division, not a brigade, Mr. Poopy-Pants.

Karmakaze| 5.12.09 @ 10:32PM

A few questions for the retarded right:

If waterboarding is NOT torture, why use it?

Seriously, if it doesn't hurt, lasts only a few seconds and has no long lasting effects, how is it supposed to coerce a possible suicide-bomber type into talking?

Secondly, if the people at Guantanamo and elsewhere were NOT being tortured, why the denial of counsel and a public trial before their peers? Why CAN'T these people be tried in normal courts? Mass murderers get tried all the time, what makes these guys different?

In fact, why does the CIA have to send people all over the world? Is the CIA too incompetent to ask questions? So incompetent that they have to get Egyptians and Syrians and the like to ask the questions for them?

You right wing retards are too stupid for words, and I only hope that one day you get to feel the joy of waterboarding by someone who intends to fuck you up or kill you if you don't talk.

By the way, it turns out that the author of this article is misleading us about the Argentine case. Irisondo's extradition wasn't declined because of torture, it was declined because the judges ruled that his crimes were carried out before treaties between Spain and Argentina came into force and that under Argentine law happened too long ago for him to be charged there.

In other words the Argentine statute of limitations for the crime had run out - NOT because they thought he would be tortured. Good try though.

Nick| 5.13.09 @ 12:08AM

Karmakaze,

Bleeding heart liberal girly-men aren't supposed to use terms like "retard" anymore, didn't you get the memo? You are being very un-PC. You might loose your ACLU card.

To answer your stupid questions, water-boarding scares the hell out of the subject, that's why it was used. Just like the caterpillar. And unlawful combatants aren't entitled to public trials, just a military tribunal and then execution.

I know this way above your ability to comprehend or intellect. But I feel sorry for all our poor citizens who went to public school and can't think for themselves.

William| 5.13.09 @ 12:13AM

Gitmo torture . . .

It is not as if a bunch of kids in a church had exit routes blocked by government armored vehicles, shortly before the building was set afire while the government agents looked on.

Now, THAT would be a crime!

William| 5.13.09 @ 12:15AM

"You right wing retards are too stupid for words, and I only hope that one day you get to feel the joy of waterboarding by someone who intends to fuck you up or kill you if you don't talk."

Ah yes, peace and love, Fauxshevik style.

your-name-here| 5.13.09 @ 1:05PM

All of this macho posturing and bullshit ... doorwanker (gunner?) and company - really. Defending our right to free speech you dumbshit, get a grip on your own sense of value and contribution to the world. You Yanks are fat, lazy, self-absorbed slobs who are herded around by the corporate world and their lapdogs, such as fox and so on, and still think that you can rule the roost. Your empire is coming down, man and you are blissfully sitting there thinking the world shines out of your haemorroidal assholes.

Enemy combatants was yet another bullshit-Bush term created for the sole purpose to avoid international scrutiny and to create a legal loophole 'cos even that fuckwit knew what he was doing was illegal. Most of those at Gitmo can't even be charged with anything more grievous than hating the US, and there are plenty more who despise what the US represents.

You speaking of having been waterboarded, well - y'know, it's too bad that more of you don't die as a consequence. That would make the world a better place. I guess that you also were forced to be naked together and to be intimidated by dogs, have your religious values scorned and dissed, be dragged around, sleep deprived, and on and on. It is torture - plain and simple, and just 'cos you stoopid yankee dog soldier gung ho military wanks refuse to see it, doesn't mean that the rest of the world can't and - in fact - does. If not Spain, then France, or Germany, or the UK, or even Canada or just the UN with the world's backing. We've had enough of the US bullshit. In the past you may have had reason to be proud. Now you should just hang your heads in shame and repent for your travesties of justice and human values.

Many of us are going to be toasting weenies on the smouldering rubble of the US empire when it collapses - watch it ... it has already begun to crumble.

theroc5156| 5.13.09 @ 1:45PM

your-name-here:

Funny that you think you'll be roasting weenies on the destruction of America when it's your country who is being taken over by militant Islam and their sympathizers like the mayor of London Ken Livingstone. I find it laughable that you would think we care about a weak-willed organization like the UN coming after us. Your unfounded opinion that all of us Americans think we are so macho and tough just shows us how envious you are about how we carry ourselves. Trust me, your country will have already been established as an occupied state long before America is even threatened to becoming ruins.

William| 5.13.09 @ 4:22PM

"You speaking of having been waterboarded, well - y'know, it's too bad that more of you don't die as a consequence. That would make the world a better place."

Ah yes, the New World Commissariat displays once again its refined moral compass. Charming.

Scott A Joseph, MD| 5.13.09 @ 5:00PM

These were, I believe, the same Spainiards who gave the "Brave Sir Robin" impersonation when danger reared its ugly head in Madrid?

Sometimes, people ask me why I don't think we should give a...darn about world opinion. It's because, with the exception of Israel and Australia (and Britain's Armed Forces) the world is a cesspool filled with nittering idiots. In short, it is full of Obama supporters, and that which Obama supporters make, which Norman Mailer would have referred to as...

Roy| 5.13.09 @ 5:49PM

Re:Heroh: That's one of darn few principled statements I've heard coming from that side of the argument, and would of course be my viewpoint if I agreed that what was going on here was unjustifiable "torture". Unfortunately, what I have in fact seen is a huge mass of point scoring and ranting, eg, every other lib poster on this thread.

There is a danger here that I can already see. Let's say waterboarding is the outer limit as the Bush admin seems to have honestly believed. The left howls and yibbers that they are "war criminals". This is raw horse waste, as most Americans instinctively understand; the picture of Bush most Americans have is of a fundamentally decent, incompetent man. So I am guessing(hoping?) that that argument won't get far.

But now we hear about this behavior on the part of the Spanish government. Instead of just condemning it it gets sucked into discussions of "hypocrisy". This could result in a dangerous defining down of deviancy(alliteration unintended). It need not if we are careful to draw distinctions, but it could.

Jeff Berg| 5.14.09 @ 10:01AM

The hypocrisy of Spain is all too real it is however irrelevant. As a result so too is the entirety of this rather nicely written bit of guileful misdirection. What is relevant is whether or not the U.S. is a nation of laws. Whether or not it is following its own laws and the laws it has chosen by treaty to adopt from the international community. On this score it is beyond doubt that the Bush Six would be convicted if U.S. laws were applied as written. It is almost equally doubtless that there is no chance that this will ever happen. This however, like Spain's hyprocrisy, is not relevant to whether or not they broke important laws. It merely means that the U.S. justice system has less standing than the do the most powerful. Aka. Rule by man and not by law.

melvin polatnick| 5.14.09 @ 5:46PM

School yard bullies graduate into the big time when they gain a position of power in the workplace. A sadistic boss can make the lives of his employees miserable by constantly threatening to fire them. But unfortunately some bullies get absolute power when given the job of torturing prisoners of war. Their first job is to make sure their victims are well fed and kept healthy. This gives them the opportunity to interrogate them endlessly. Confessions of guilt do not end the torture. The sadist stays with his victim until there is no resistance. A broken prisoner is of no use to the grown up school yard bully

cheneywatchorg| 5.14.09 @ 10:25PM

"within days Spain suddenly ducked and backed away"

But this whole article is false. Baltazar Garzon did not back away at all and the Spanish courts are still investigating. Jesus, do your homework before you write such drivel.

O'Reilly had no impact on the Spanish prosecutors deciding they didn't want to investigate and they do not have the ultimate decision anyway. Baltazar Garzon and another Spanish judge are still investigating. Do your homework before writing this again.

cheneywatchorg| 5.14.09 @ 10:28PM

"Baltasar Garzón that he will ignore the Spanish government's decision"

This is false. He isn't ignoring the "Spanish Government"...he's a part of the government. You don't understand Spanish civics apparently. He does not need the prosecutors permission to continue to investigate. So your whole article is nonsense.

Please, learn what is going on before you write this stuff again, you look like some foolish O'Reilly clone.

O'Reilly loves thinking he can make Spain change some policy, but that is hogwash and you know it. They don't give a damn what Bill O'Reilly threatens.

cheneywatch| 5.14.09 @ 10:33PM

More nonsense from this writer:
"MSNBC quickly jumped on Baltasar Garzón's bandwagon with the following headline on its website: "

Yes, but CNN scooped it first. We record all the networks simultaneously and CNN aired the Spanish court decision before MSNBC. Thus...are you now going to rewrite your article to make CNN appear "leftist"?

You're whole premise is on some faux right wing view of the matters, and you piece your garbage together with convenient ties that make you look pragmatic and "leftists" look loony. But you can't keep your facts in order and most of them are easy to confirm with a small amount of research. It isn't too much to ask that you know what you're talking about in this case before you write about it again, is it?

Nick| 5.15.09 @ 1:51AM

I'm really going to listen to someone who goes by the moniker "cheneywathch".

You are a lefty loony.

mimi| 12.15.09 @ 12:10AM

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