FU - FairAndUNbalanced.com

In response to Burr Deming's
Real Emergencies and Enhanced Interrogation

I agree in principal with your statement, Burr.

That said, I would submit that water-boarding does not rise to the level of torture. Indeed, some of our own soldiers and interrogators have been on the receiving end of this technique for training purposes. Not something that would typically be done to our own, if it were indeed an act of torture, wouldn’t you agree? The technique, even by former CIA Director Leon Panetta’s own testimony, has yielded a treasure trove of actionable intelligence. Indeed, the amount of other terrorists captured and plans thwarted by using water-boarding on Khalid Sheik Mohammed likely saved thousands of innocent lives.

Now, I don’t think hooking up electrodes to genitalia or beating the bottoms of prisoners’ feet with paddles like Saddam’s folks did is ever warranted, but I have no problem with water-boarding of certain high-value enemy combatants that have no sense of human decency in their wanton killing of innocents and showing no intention of abiding by the admittedly ironic laws of war.

These enemies are deserving of not being tortured when captured out of the sake of our own humanity, if not theirs, but affording them constitutional rights that are guaranteed to citizens of the United States of America is equally unwarranted. I don’t cry for the “civil rights abuses” that are claimed by the ACLU and progressives of our prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Indeed, they are fed Islamically approved foods, they are provided Korans, they are provided all of the necessary items needed for basic human survival and decency. That is far better than the beheading sword we would receive if we were to be captured.

I think our decency and humanity should never be compromised, but I do not think such enhanced interrogation techniques as water-boarding rise to the level of torture and thus do not violate those standards. Indeed America is better than that, and I think we have worked hard to abide by those standards accordingly. Demagoguery in defense of human debris is unhelpful and unproductive in protecting our nation, particularly when no torture has been enacted upon those inhuman scum.

T. Paine writes his own entertaining and informative blog, almost always from a conservative point of view.

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