The American Spectator

Bob| 4.24.09 @ 10:27AM

While I don't know if it is true, I heard on cable news yesterday that an FBI interrogation source said that most of the information from KSM came BEFORE he was waterboarded. As I've said before, I was involved in interrogations in Vietnam and torture then was not very productive or accurate. The techniques then were much more heinous than the techniques used by the CIA however. Like John McCain, given that experience and the problems with local villagers that ensued, I don't think we should do these types of techniques at all.

Tim| 4.24.09 @ 10:36AM

Bob, what's your position on actually shooting people on the battlefield? A bullet through the head is not a pleasant experience. If we can't interrogate the bastards there is no incentive to take them alive.

NavyBrat| 4.24.09 @ 10:45AM

Bob. I've heard differently. I heard that when asked about what pending attacks were in the works, KSM replied, "you'll see soon." I think that if we had to pour water in his nose 183 times in order to get him to give up the goods, which he did, then it was time well spent. Check this article out on American Thinker, complete with video clip, of you can stand to watch it. It details REAL, honest to G*d torture:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/04/theres_torture_and_then_theres_1.html

Bob| 4.24.09 @ 10:56AM

So, Tim, how far would you go? Would you put a bullet through the head of one person in order to get another one to talk? That was done in Vietnam -- often. I don't remember taking very many prisoners. The problem was that when the villagers saw our behavior, they were less likely to help us and even if we got a few tidbits from those we captured, we lost a whole lot more we could have obtained from the villagers.

Tim| 4.24.09 @ 11:58AM

How far would I go? I don't know. I do know that I am not debating Vietnam. Here's another rhetorical question : Is it moral or ethical to let an innocent man, woman or child die when, according to our best information, simplyputting water up a guy's nose might save them?
Would you risk your life or your child's life trying to take him prisoner knowing that it was solely for his benefit? I wouldn't.

kmichaels| 4.24.09 @ 12:19PM

Klein's logic continues to sound childish and well, immature. He is saying now that you cant have an urgent situation called a ticking time bomb if you have to take a month to break a terrorist and get him to tell the truth about a pending attack.

KSM was broken and waterboarding and other stressful techniques are what broke him.

The other day Klein was implying that 12 months to plan another attack may not be long enough to get the job done but now 1 month does not constitute a ticking bomb situation.

Klein is hellbent to play a role of a thoughtful person worrying about waterboarding. He ends up looking like a naive kid that had a lot of stupid assumptions in the firstplace and because his assumptions turned out stupid that somehow waterboarding was no longer a good idea.

Well, waterboarding did the trick in less than a month and that, in this arena, is a rather short period of time.

And LA was saved hundreds if not thousands of lives.

Next time you want to consider torture Klein, then discuss what a human baby must go through when its brains are sucked out. And consider it one of the forms of torture that Obama does support.

Mary| 4.24.09 @ 12:52PM

Senator Thompson -who should be President, right now. He's Washington material, George Washington, that is- just said on his show that the ACLU is now chomping at the bit to internationalize this hunt for Bush administration officials.

If so, this will be a good test for Obama's new strategery of "just be nice to the gentlemen, Fancy, and they'll be nice to you."

Cheney baited Obama but good. And I can't imagine that Cheney sees a document dump as harmful to him or Bush. I always liked Cheney, and no matter how unpopular, he's like E.F. Hutton when he speaks, people listen. O/T but it's sweet to read of his daughter and him working together on his upcoming book.

I don't know if Iraq was a good idea or not. I don't know if torture diminishes us or not. Slavery didn't diminish us, in the end, because we paid a dear price to overthrow the institution.

I can't imagine that roughing up our enemies began in earnest with Vietnam. Whatever our sins, our magnanimity outweighs them all. History didn't begin with the suffering of blacks in America.

There's a river that runs through the province of my birth called il Sangro: the blood.
So called because when the Romans came against us, we fought valiantly, but they slaughtered us and the river caught our blood. We overcame though because we knew history didn't begin with our suffering and oppression.

There is no construct yet, that supercedes Country. Without a love of Country, warts and all, they way you love your Father, what lies ahead is ruin. La Patria is eternal.

Golda Meir said that while Egypt and Syria could always retreat to dry land, Israel could only retreat into the sea. I'm glad Bibi is in charge because it's likely he'll do what we may refuse to do for ourselves. If current period is really one of America's self-loathing; it's only just begun.

Tom Paine| 4.24.09 @ 1:50PM

Does anything about that number -- 180 -- trouble anyone?

If water boarding is so "effective," why did it need to be used so many times on this prisoner?

If we lose our ability to be shocked that the national conversation has devolved to our contemplating the utility of torture, our moral debasement will have been complete.

Tom Paine| 4.24.09 @ 1:54PM

Mary --

Your praise of love for the "fatherland"....

Seems I've heard that somewhere before.

To steal a line from Molly Ivins, I think your post would have sounded better in the original German.

NavyBrat| 4.24.09 @ 2:46PM

T. Paine. That number doesn't bother me in the least. If that's what it took to get this wretch to sing, then good. It worked. If we HADN'T gotten this info, & the attack had taken place, I think the tune you've been singing would be one of "Why Didn't We DO SOMETHING?!"

Tim| 4.24.09 @ 2:57PM

To steal a line from Doctor Zachary Smith: " Oh the Paine, the Paine..."

Tom Paine| 4.24.09 @ 3:42PM

NavyBrat --

The news on this is coming out at a rapid clip. You can't be blamed for not being able to keep up everyday.

However, reports now suggest that KSM gave up all useful intelligence BEFORE he was water-boarded.

The point is, he did NOT "sing" because he was water-boarded.

Tom Paine| 4.24.09 @ 3:44PM

My question is this:

Why are you people so fearful? Why are so convinced of your weakness and impotence?

Why do you want your government to act like a bully and a brute?

Why don't civilized values seem worth the slightest risk to you?

People praising the use of torture sound like impotent, trembling poltroons.

Chin up, boys. You're Americans. Torturing people in dungeons is just not how we do business.

Mary| 4.24.09 @ 6:40PM

I’m not going to address this to Jeremiah; that seems pointless. How many threads did he let fly with the accusation of fascist and racist? Not a huge deal, really, except that his high dudgeon is laughable.

Normally, I don’t really feel the need to defend what I write because I’m aware of the sentiments that motivate it, and the inter-lacing thoughts that inspire and produce it.

I have two Fatherlands, Italy and America. It wasn’t my destiny to possess just one, because Patria e Pagnotta! Nothing sinister in the word or sentiment. Nothing at all.

Both of my parents are survivors of WW II. My father was 17 and my mom was 11 when the German occupation took place. German soldiers ordered an evacuation of their village so they could garrison their soldiers in their homes.

My mother lost all her hair due to an infection that was the result of unhygienic conditions. My father, along with many other young men, was ordered to travel several miles from the lean-two outposts he and they called home for a year. Their mission was to help dislodge a piece of artillery than had gotten stuck. En route, the box-car my dad was in was strafed by an American fighter pilot. One young man died on the spot, but my father escaped unharmed.

When the war finally ended and everyone was allowed to return to their homes, they found small piles of ashes where tables and chairs once stood. They had so very little to begin with. But in pictures taken a few years after the war, you see very lean but very happy faces. Faces that have hope. Think of our own ease and then think of that.

When I was 8 years old, my parents bought their first home. We had a big back yard and a hand mower. Those who had owned the house prior to us had left the grass to grow to a decent height. Not a problem for an electric mower, but a lot of effort needed to be expended when using a hand mower.

Our next door neighbor, Dan, was a tall, hard-working German. It was June of 1964. My dad was working and my mom didn’t want the grass to grow any taller as it was already a decent sized problem, so my brother and mother and I began taking turns on the project. Dan saw us struggling, and offered to mow the lawn himself. My mom accepted thankfully.

A few weeks passed, and my mom made pizza and sent some over to him and his wife, Norma. Norma was a crusty Irish woman with a heart of gold, but you would have never known that upon meeting her. My mom and her became the very best of friends.

One day Dan was recounting his bombing missions in Italy, and my mother jokingly implied that it may have been his bombs that her and her family had fled from in panic.

A couple of years passed and my younger brother, who was two at the time, had to have his kidney removed. My mom stayed in the hospital with him for 10 days. My parents didn’t drive. My father was working varied hours so Norma took me and my older brother in for those 10 days. She washed and braided my hair with the same precision she used for her own daughter. She set the table at night for breakfast, and I can still remember that juice glass being turned upside down and waiting for me.

I never forgot the experience and in 1992, nearly 30 years later, I sent her a dozen roses with a note that was signed from the little girl you treated as your own. I didn’t know she was sick at the time, but about 6 months later she died in a nearby hospice ward, a bit of an unhappy soul who kept nearly everything inside.

Any fair reading of my prior comment on this thread can’t possibly interpret it in such a way as to declaim me either too stupid to know, or too venal to admit, that I’m a Nazi.

Jeremiah’s incapacity to practice what he vociferously preaches is SOP, and has a long history that Andrew Klavan rightly sums up as “you’re a Nazi; shut up.”

You know, not excluding myself, commenting on a blog is a near perfect exercise in solipsism.

Signing off with an homage to Eastwood’s Gran Torino:

The French language is like a woman making love to a man. Italian is like a man making love to a woman, and German is like a boy talking to his stable horse. :)

Tom Paine| 4.24.09 @ 7:20PM

Mary --

I appreciate reading your story. However, your previous post is full of some ideas that I find reprehensible.

The notion that "love of country" should come before all else is -- frankly -- not a very strong strand in traditional American thinking.

And we have no tradition whatsoever of referring to "the fatherland" -- and with good reason.

One the aspects of American culture that makes us much less vulnerable to the tribal insanity of fascism is uprootedness: there aren't many Americans who would be swept up in a "blood and soil" movement.

You seem to assume way too easily, as well, that somehow criticism of the government is anti-American.

My country is not my father; it is not remotely like a father to me. There are things I love about it, and things I don't.

I see no reason to believe that Obama is trying to "make nice" with terrorists. This is a hackneyed, tedious claim made endlessly by fools on Fox News, but I see no evidence for it. There are two pirates we might ask -- but they're dead. Another will have his say soon in a court of law, before being incarcerated for the remainder of his life.

Again, your story was very interesting to read. One thing I do love about this country is that we are a nation of immigrants.

Mary| 4.24.09 @ 7:44PM

Jeremiah,

Stop with the solipism and the faux-outrage of a man -young or old- who is no position to call anyone out on anything.

Fatherland means patria to me and it doesn't replace my father, but it's my land and it doesn’t bother me that you don’t agree. It will never be my Country right or wrong, but I pray that rough men will always be willing to commit violence on our behalf, so that we can sleep soundly at night, and those who continue to miss the point can continue evermore in peace and tranquility.

I don't assume what you say I assume, but in your solipsistic little world, there's no room for allowing for that. No room whatsoever.

I don't give a damn whether you find my story interesting or not. I didn't write any of that for your benefit, but to defend myself from your defamation.

Mary Louise

Tom Paine| 4.24.09 @ 8:34PM

Mary --

I didn't express any outrage -- real or feigned. And I'm not sure how I earn the charge of "solipsism."

Our security does depend on the military, there is no question. However, all displays of force and violence are not necessarily in the country's best interests.

Torturing prisoners is most certainly not in the nation's interests because it damages the men who carry it out, generates bad intelligence, undermines our law, strains our alliances, frustrates our attempts to negotiate with hostile nations, endangers our own troops who may be taken hostage, inspires young men to join terrorist organizations, and jeopardizes our moral authority.

Basil Plumley| 4.25.09 @ 12:12AM

Tommy Pain/Jeremiah--You are an insufferable jackass. You have no humility and the shallowness of your logic is transparent.

Do you realize how foolish Mary made you look?
She addressed Jeremiah and Tommy Pain responded. Whooooops

Whatever you want to call yourself; you are still dishonest and a liar. I guess you can run Tommy/Jeremiah ...... but you can't hide.

Internet high-five to you Mary. I enjoyed your story very much. The assimilation of immigrants into this country made this country great. You and your family should be praised not pitied.

Mary| 4.25.09 @ 10:55AM

Basil, thanks for the thumbs up; I am Roman, too, after all. :)

Check this out.

Where do you think this is all headed? No citizen thinks America is a virgin; we just prefer to judge her overall history and most of us have decided that virgin or not, she is dependable and her soldiers, for the most part, are to be really feared in battle, but not so in surrender.

The ticking time bomb is a really bad “what if” argument, because it doesn’t have to stop with waterboarding. If that doesn’t’ work, how about raping the suspects wife in front of him? How about peeling his child like an onion? The argument is dangerously bottomless.

But this is not a new subject, is it? If we’re going to search for truth, justice and a true, new American way then let’s unravel history and not pretend that America comes to her own self today. That’s nonsense.

Since we lost our moral bearings in these last 8 years and since History begins today, the Republicans had better understand what’s headed their way and they had better be ready to defend the total of American history, without compunction and without dishonesty.

In C.S. Lewis’ book The Four Loves, he touches upon patriotism. He speaks of it as the love one feels for their home or their home town. This is a book everyone should own.

Here’s a taste, beginning with two lines from Rudyard Kipling.

If England was what England seems
‘Ow quick we’d drop ’er. But she ain’t!

Lewis continues:

Love never spoke that way. It is like loving your children only “if they’re good,” your wife only while she keeps her looks, your husband only so long as he is famous and successful. “No man,” said one of the Greeks, “loves his city because it is great, but because it is his.” A man who really loves his country will love her in her ruin and degeneration -“England with all thy faults, I love thee still.” She will be to him “a poor thing but mine own.” He may think her good and great, when she is not, because he loves her; the delusion is up to a point pardonable. But Kipling’s soldier reverses it; he loves her because he thinks her good and great -loves her on her merits.

Lewis goes on to say that this soldier’s reversal will result in that kind of patriotism “that sets off with the greatest of swagger of drums and banners and actually sets off on the road that can lead to Vichy.” Moreover, Lewis points out what we all know, and that is that “when natural loves become lawless they do not merely do harm to other loves; they themselves cease to be the loves they were -to be loves at all.”

Moral Authority; who has it? President Barack Obama? Please! He believes that a baby born alive is a temporary life fit neither for consolation or burial. He has none; he sat in the pews of a bombastic preacher who accused the US of creating Aids to infect and control the black man. He took his kids to hear that rubbish. What do you suppose they think?

It did my heart good when Wright went after the Romans and called Italians "garlic noses." He looks Italian to me; wood pile and all of that. Sweet! Just sweet!

The Catholic Church is hated but immensely under appreciated. Does she have moral authority right now? Did she lose her moral authority, an authority that built Western Civilization with many a sin along the way? Can she speak to the error of Notre Dame knowing that young people who were in her care were not sufficiently protected from the depredations of perverted priests and negligent Cardinals? She has lost her ability to speak to some issues without people rolling their eyes, but she still draws converts to her who see with more acute vision that her moral authority remains.

The same is true of the United States.

Again, from Lewis’ Four Loves:

It will be noticed that the sort of love I have been describing, and all its ingredients can be for something other than a country: for a school, a regiment, a great family, or a class. It can also be felt for bodies that claim more than a natural affection: for a Church or (alas) a party in a Church, or for a religious order. This terrible subject would require a book in itself. Here it will be enough to say that the Heavenly Society is also an earthly society. Our (merely natural) patriotism towards the latter can very easily borrow the transcendent claims of the former and use them to justify the most abominable actions. If ever the book which I am not going to write is written it must be the full confession by Christendom of Christendom’s specific contribution to the sum of human cruelty and treachery. Large areas of “the World” will not hear us till we have publicly disowned much of our past. Why should they? We have shouted the name of Christ and enacted the service of Moloch.

If our recent History truly marks a departure from who we have always been, then write such a history as Lewis suggests. Convene, with truly bi-partisan desire and people, a committee to study this in private, and to study it historically. And then let us know what you’ve found.

Because right now what looks to be occurring is a collusion between Spartans and one or two of the Thirty Tyrants. And I say, Anathema sit!

Basil Plumley| 4.25.09 @ 10:36PM

Have you ever noticed that the Left either hates History or bastardizes it. The Left does not feel it needs to be constrained by History or reality.
This administration and its fellow travelers believe the power of personality overcomes reality and precedents. They are sorely mistaken.

Releasing memos and pictures is probably only half of the story. Unfortunately, it is the worst half and demoralizes the folks on the front line in the War against Terror. Nitwits like Bob and Tommy Pain/Jeremiah will assume the mantle of moral relativity. There will not show themselves if/when this country gets hit by another terror attack. They will likely dump on the folks they are currently dumping for not "connecting the dots".
Ah ...... the price we pay for an over priced education.
Bob and Tommy Pain, like many who revere education, see intellect as an end in itself, and see the world as a kind of intellectual game. They do not seem to understand the real-world consequences of his actions and words. They cannot fathom how other people can disagree with them. To Bob, Tommy Pain/Jeremiah, as well as Obama, intellectual concepts are all. To Abraham Lincoln, they were simply the first building blocks of action and governing.

I recall the famous story of Vice President Lyndon Johnson leaving the first Cabinet meeting of the Kennedy administration, and telling Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn about all the Harvard and MIT professors who'd been there. Rayburn, it's reported, leaned back in his chair and responded, "Lyndon, I just wish one of them had run for sheriff." There's a real-world experience that is lacking in the Obama Administration.
Bob and Tommy Pain/Jeremiah celebrate this naivete. It is too dangerous a world to get comfortable.

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