Conservative response to torture: predictable
August 25th, 2009Easy enough, pick the most innocuous item in the report and repeat it ad nauseam for your readers to give the impression that it accurately characterizes the alleged misdeeds in the report. In the case of the CIA IG’s report on improper interrogation techniques, we have Michael Leeden blowing smoke:
And not just to foreign terrorists, but to friends, family, dinner guests, fellow bridge players, and even professors. Very rarely I deliberately forced smoke into their faces, but only very rarely, and then only when I was really, really annoyed.
In my own defense, I insist that the cigars were invariably very good ones. Before Kennedy banned the Cuban cigars, they were almost always from the island. More recently, they’ve come from Central America and sometimes Miami.
If it can be demonstrated that the cigars in question were cheap cigars, crappy cigars, then I think the redacted interrogators should be prosecuted with vengeance. Otherwise, they’ve got an invitation to come over for dinner and I’ll provide the cigars and limoncello.
Leeden’s parties must be a blast… if I’m going to get smoke blown into my face until I vomit, it must be top quality:
Powerline thinks that only two bad things happened, and they weren’t by one of our guys so it’s OK:
As a threshold matter, it is important to note that the allegations that have been reported in the press are just that–allegations, sometimes based on hearsay. The CIA’s Inspector General singled out two incidents for special investigation, both of which involved the same debriefer–not a trained interrogator.
Never mind that many of the incidents are described by people who participated in them or directly witnessed them. The debriefer in question here thought threatening someone with getting shot or drilled in the head was OK because he had already participated in interrogations with CIA agents in which mock executions were used to terrify detainees. This confirmed by numerous witnesses and participants:
And Powerline’s lying about there only being two incidents under further investigation. There’s also, you know, beating someone to death:
Oh, and as far as torture being OK because we do it to our own guys (to teach them how to withstand torture)… apparently that wasn’te enough:
And never mind that there are whole categories of torture that are redacted here and we still know nothing about. 63 consecutive sections are entirely redacted including the 9 or 10 section headings.