From last night’s “All-Stars.”
On the release of Bush administration memos on interrogation methods:
I think it does harm the United States. It gives away a lot of our techniques.
And I disagree. I don’t see it as a dark chapter in our history at all.
You look at some of these techniques — holding the head, a face slap, or deprivation of sleep. If that is torture, the word has no meaning.
I would concede that one technique, simulated drowning, you could call torture, even though the memos imply that legally it didn’t meet that definition. I’m agnostic on the legalism….
But let’s concede that it’s a form of torture. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to use it in two cases, that the ticking time bomb, if an innocent is at risk and you’ve got a terrorist that has information that would save that innocent and isn’t speaking. That’s an open and shut easy case.
A second case is a high-level Al Qaeda operative, a terrorist, who knows names and places and numbers and plans and safe houses and all that, and by using techniques to get information, you’re saving lives.
If I have to weigh on the one hand the numberless and nameless lives saved in America by the use of these techniques, and we had a CIA director who told us that these techniques on these high-level terrorists was extremely effective in giving us information.
If you have to weigh on one hand that the numberless and nameless lives saved, against the 30 seconds or so of terror in the eyes of a terrorist who is suffering this technique, I think the moral choice is easy.
It’s not a dark chapter in our history. It is a successful one. We have not had a second attack, and largely because of this.
On Janet Napolitano’s apology to veterans over the DHS report:
I love the way she says “I don’t want to offend or castigate all veterans,” as if she wants to offend or castigate some veterans, meaning the right wing ones or the conservative ones.
And then she goes ahead and cites Oklahoma City as an example, which I think is at demonstration of the paranoid style of thinking on the American left.
At the time of Oklahoma City, it was attributed widely, implied that that was a result of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, the angry white male, the `94 Republican revolution, and that somehow when you get those developments, particularly at the grass roots, it’s an indication of insurrection or treason or extremism.
That’s absurd. At the time, they were warning us about the Michigan militias, remember, who were going to come out of the hills, lay waste to American democracy. That was a decade and a half ago, and I’m still waiting for that Michigan militia. It’s that same mindset all over again.
Look, at a time when Al Qaeda is out there, there are terrorists out there, jihadists out there who really want to get us and who have attacked all over the world since 9/11. When you worry about tree hugging environmentalists or soldiers returning who might end up as right wing extremists, I think your priorities are completely wrong and skewed.