Former attorney general Michael Mukasey has responded to the assertions John McCain has made over the past few days regarding the effectiveness and legality of torture. McCain had claimed that Mukasey had wrongly stated that waterboarding and other such interrogation methods had led to the killing of Osama bin Laden, implying that Mukasey was dishonest or misled. Mukasey fires right back :
…and the Law of Unintended Consequences : “Former President George W. Bush has declined an invitation to join President Barack Obama at a New York City ceremony later this week marking the death of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, NBC News reported on Tuesday.” The – ‘ostensible’ is too strong a word; ‘primary’ probably works better – reason is that former President Bush chooses to not emulate Jimmy Carter’s horrible example by insinuating himself into national affairs; but there’s certainly speculation as to what the secondary reasons are. Allahpundit’s suggestion that Bush desires to avoid what AP didn’t, but I will, call a Wellstone funeral-style campaign op makes a certain amount of sense. Then again, so does Instapundit’s commenter’s observation that perhaps Bush didn’t feel like being insulted to his face by President Obama, in much the same way that Obama went after Rep. Paul Ryan and the US Supreme Court in venues where they had to sit there and take the hits. I favor the latter as being the secondary reason. And that’s where the Law of Unintended Consequences kicks in. It is actually very likely that President Obama has no intention of listening to the fools on his side who want to use the event for Bush-bashing, if only because it’s not the antiwar movement that the President needs to woo right now; even their protesters are committed to voting for him*. Obama needs independents and the disaffected portion of his 2008 vote, and those two demographics like seeing their Presidents take the high road. So you’d think that he’d take it, right? But we don’t actually know that the President is going to be that smart (more accurately, that he’s going to be that not-dumb); tomorrow’s speech could possibly be yet another endless exercise in tedious sniping and dull hyper-partisanship. And if Obama isn’t going to be that smart, and Bush had gone… well. That would have been the last straw. I know that this is incomprehensible to many on the Left, but more people than the Left thinks still like George W. Bush – and watching him have to sit there silently while his successor tries (unsuccessfully) to bully him would touch them (us) off. And that would be bad for the President, because by and large the people who still like Bush have been holding back a bit on going after Obama hammer and tongs on national security. Again, is it high probability that Obama will be stupid tomorrow? …Again, no. But because it isn’t zero probability, it’s too risky; which means that Obama’s feel-good bullying attempts have pretty much eliminated a chance at a nice, bipartisan celebration that would have given him some credibility with independent voters on national security. Karma. It’s what’s for dinner. Moe Lane ( crosspost ) *Even though they’ve just validated waterboarding as a valid technique in the GWOT .
See the original post:
Bush, Obama, Ground Zero…
Download audio here Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets , Brad Jackson is joined by Pejman Yousefzadeh and Elizabeth Blackney to discuss the importance of Osama bin Laden’s death photos, and why waterboarding is an important tool in the war against terrorism. We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates . If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show. Related Links: Closer look at bin Laden’s compound White House Weighing Release of Bin Laden Photographs from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Deck of Aircraft Carrier ‘Cheney’s assassination squad’ just killed bin Laden Pej: Means To An End Republicans note harsh interrogation helped bin Laden operation Follow Brad on Twitter Follow Pej on Twitter Follow Elizabeth on Twitter
Excerpt from:
Why Waterboarding Works: Osama bin Laden’s Gruesome End
[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here . Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.] That’s not a quote, obviously, but well, how else do you interpret this ? CIA Director Leon Panetta stomped on the White House’s political script when he told Tuesday night’s broadcast of NBC Nightly News that the waterboarding of jihadi detainees contributed information that led to the location and killing of Osama bin Laden. “We had multiple series of sources that provided information with regards to this situation… clearly some of it came from detainees [and] they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of those detainees,” he told NBC anchor Brian Williams. When asked by Williams if water-boarding was part of the “enhanced interrogation techniques,” Panetta simply said “that’s correct.” So, um, can we stop claiming that waterboarding doesn’t work? I mean let’s back up a little. Just about everyone opposes hard-core torture, like ripping out fingernails and electroshock (except maybe in a ticking bomb scenario). And only a few loons want us to limit our interrogation to name, rank and serial number. The question is when does interrogation become torture, and one thing you can say for certain is that waterboarding is close to the line. It might be barely over it, or barely under it, but it’s clearly a close call. So I completely respect anyone who says it is torture even if I disagree. But the most ridiculous claim is that it supposedly doesn’t work. Now of course pressuring anyone in any way to get a mere confession is of dubious value. Torturing a guy to say “I did it,” is unreliable. But if they are telling the truth, they can tell you things that are objectively verifiable. Consider, for instance, this classic scene from Dirty Harry: The context of the clip is this. The psychopath had buried a girl alive and claimed he would give the location of the girl (giving them the chance to save her) if they paid a ransom. They paid, with Eastwood delivering it, but the man refused to give the location, and so the torture in that scene followed. So it was a “ticking bomb” scenario. Also, alluded to and not shown, they find the girl where the psycho said, but she was already dead. If memory serves she never had a chance of being saved in time. Now if that hypothetical went to trial, the confession would be excluded from evidence (and in theory the body might be, too). Why? Not because it was unreliable. Even in isolation the mere fact he knew where the girl was buried was highly incriminating. But instead all of it, including the fact he knew where the body was, would be excluded on the theory that even then torture is not justified, and thus they wanted to remove an important incentive to police to engage in such conduct. So let’s please stop the childish claim that waterboarding—hell, even torture—cannot be effective. And let’s instead have the adult conversation about whether we as a people believe it is morally justified and if so, when. [Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]
Here is the original post:
Leon Panetta: Okay, I Admit it. Waterboarding Gave Us Some of the Information That Led to the Killing of bin Laden
In some ways, John Yoo’s argument (” Antiwar Senator, War-Powers President “) is almost… superfluous. The basic point is straightforward enough: President Obama, just like every other President since 1973 , has come to the conclusion that the War Powers Act is in fact an unconstitutional and onerous restriction on the executive branch’s constitutionally mandated oversight of military affairs. This conclusion follows the usual evolutionary arc: as Yoo helpfully points out, Senator Obama and Candidate Obama had a fairly different view of unilateral action than does the (theoretically) better-educated and (theoretically) more experienced President Obama. Couple that with the further detail that the usual Democratic suspects will not be trying to repeat with Libya their largely ineffectual push against the liberation of Iraq ( Kuchinich and Dean , to give just two examples, have already been effectively whipped back into place), and one is left to conclude that there was a lot of deliberate lying about motivations being made over the last decade by the Democratic party. Again, this is almost superfluous. John Yoo is arguing on Barack Obama’s behalf. His major complaint is that Obama’s doing a worse job than George W Bush did*. John Yoo . The guy who did the waterboarding memos. There are antiwar progressives asking themselves right now, Were we really this stupid? Did we really let the Democratic party shake us down for money and time and effort and votes, just so we could have it rubbed in our faces that they cared less about our beliefs than they would a used tissue? Are we really this easy to manipulate? – and the answer is, of course, “yes.” They’re also quite abysmally stupid. And the best part? They still have no excuse for not anticipating this. Even the abysmally stupid should have seen this coming. That they chose not to is an ironic testament to the power of human delusion. Or possibly it’s just funny. I can’t quite decide which. Via Instapundit , who is enjoying putting the boot in as much as I am. Moe Lane ( crosspost )
Continued here:
President Obama defended by John Yoo.
