The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld Fallacy

So does Petraeus think that we fell down on the job because German spies were executed summarily during WWII? Or what about the "do as I say, not as I do" convictions of Germans at Nuremberg for unrestricted submarine warfare?
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It's easy playing Jeopardy at home. Petraeus didn't have to make decisions about trying to get actionable intelligence from animals like KSM and others.
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Waterboarding and the insect in a box just ain't that big a deal. Gotta love the left, more worked about the waterboarding of KSM than they were about Iraqi soldiers/guerrilas feigning surrender and then killing US servicemen.

Michael Scherer and the press releases writers which Scherer dutifully cites from the "Senate Armed Forces Committee" think that merely threatening to place a harmless insect near a committed terrorist is "torture". They also think that placing a pair of panties over the head of a terrorist is "torture". They also think ....

The pro torturists on the right are going to drive their party right off the rails. The ironic thing is they will now label Petraeus as a flaming liberal because he is against torture after worshipping him for the last two years because of the surge. It doesn't matter with the pro torturists who you are or what kind of credibility you have on the issue. If you are against torture then you aren't a patriot in their world. A world where they are afraid of their own shadow. I can't wait till we get more light shined on this sorry era of our nation's history.

Petraeus didn't have to make decisions about trying to get actionable intelligence from animals like KSM and others.
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It's nice to see MR GI Joe Spongebob second guessing the Commander of the U.S. Central Command from the comfort of his armchair and accusing the general of "Playing Jeopardy at home."
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I think my irono-meter just pegged......

It's easy playing Jeopardy at home. Petraeus didn't have to make decisions about trying to get actionable intelligence from animals like KSM and others.
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No, spob, he and others just had to live with the results . . .
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I'm going to ask the same question I did in a previous thread, spob.
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Have you EVER had ANY of your own skin in the game WRT war at ANY time, spob?
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To paraphrase what you said above, it's easy playing "Jack Bauer" at home, jerk.

Gunny,
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Wherever your are, I tag off to you to take a shot at these two clowns.
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It's really too easy . . . but it does raise my blood pressure a tad too much to do so.

I've always thought it's ironic how the right claims to have the morally correct view on social issues, but then they go and abandon all ethics when it comes to warfare and domestic criminals. They adopt this macho no-mercy take-no-prisoners approach, and if you disagree then you are a weakling p*ssy. It makes them (and spob and textee) seem like schoolyard bullies.

Human dignity is a right, not a privilege that gets revoked as soon as you make the tiniest (or even not so tiny) mistake. An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.

The Republican party is now "the party of torture". Thats gotta suck. Try defending that on the election circuit. You bet your ass if your govt. is willing to do this to other citizens, it is willing to do it to its own.

SSG noted
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....The ironic thing is they will now label Petraeus as a flaming liberal because he is against torture after worshiping him for the last two years because of the surge.
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The Right and the GOP are following in the footsteps of the Black Panther Party. The Panthers had period purges of members wo were not true to the cause. At one point, only Eldridge Cleaver and one other member was left in the party.
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The GOP is going to be a historical artifact, like the Panthers, if spob and others have their way.

Perhaps one of the sickest aspects to this is that, apparently, the interrogators, at the urging of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, were actually trying to extract real intelligence using techniques that they should have known were designed solely to terrorize and elicit false confessions.

I gotta say, these guys (Bush/Cheney/Rummy and their ilk) come off like a bunch of ignorant sadists in this whole sorry episode. What a proud 8 years.

shepherdwong,
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Oh, they knew . . . they knew EXACTLY what the methods were designed to do.
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These people didn't just come to the party after the end of the Cold War, they lived through the thick of it. They were VERY familiar with the KGB and Chinese intelligence services and their tactics.
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I've always felt that therre was some admiration on their part for the effectiveness of what their adversaries did with all of this.

The biggest cowards in this whole mess are the torture defenders. The terrorist have you so frightened that you defend and applaud torture sanctioned by our government and performed by agents of that government. And then you call yourselves the true patriots. In reality, you're nothing but a bunch of WATBs with sadistic tendencies...only you're too frightened to perform acts of sadism yourself - because you might get in trouble with the law - so you get off on the fact that our government did it for you.

Being against US government sanctioned torture should be bi-partisan position held by most, nay, ALL Americans. The fact that there is a loud and proud minority out there who think what we did was A-OK is very, very disturbing. And you wonder why the DHS is concerned about domestic extremists?

..come off like a bunch of ignorant sadists in this whole sorry episode...
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spinmd,
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Don't believe for an instant that they were in any way ignorant of what they were doing. You're doing them a favor by thinking that.

spob: So basically what you're saying is ... "General Petraeus or General Betray Us"?
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I love the fact that Petraeus, Gates, Powell, and McCain are WAYYYYYY too liberal for the GOP. Basically the only people pure enough for the party are Cheney and, um, maybe Pol Pot.

I do not condone torture, but on the same hand I also do not condone the "torture" that the Islamic Extremist, otherwise known as the Taliban and al-Qaeda profess upon their own people, and anyone unlucky enough to be taken as a captured prisoner of them. I also do not condone the bombing of the two World Trade Towers where over 3,000 Americans and others lost their lives. I do not condone the beheading of anyone who resists their doctrine or way of life. The rape of their women and children.
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This is a War people. A dirty, lousy war against "un-repentent" extremists, who have professed their "jihad" to "kill the American satan and its people". It is a war where the Islamic Extremists want the total destruction of not only the US, but anything non-Muslim.
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You can play the game of stating how terrible it is to "torture" some deviant and blood thirsty people who want to kill you. You can also use the golden rule as your defense. But, I for one WILL protect my family against these types of extremists. If the interrogation techniques are abhorant to the leftist in our own country, then my stock-pilling of ammo for the day when they do come to our own soil to exact revenge for "Allah" shall be met with my guns and bullets to defend myself and my family.
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May the 12th Iman rot in hell.
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http://www.allaboutpopularissues.org/12th-imam.htm
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And you nutballs want to debate with this?? This is what is un-believeable.

For some reason the phrase bet-wetter comes to mind. Though I can't quite put my finger on why.....
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Related:
Im not sure how much credence to put in the latest McClatchy article. It almost seems too pat. This link is relevant though:
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http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2008/0801.beers.html

Oh, cut the crap, Rusty!
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I'm going to repeat the question I asked YOU specifically on a previous thread that was never answered: Have you EVER had ANY of your own skin in the game WRT war at ANY time?
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Or was that something that just never entered into your "career planning" when you were the right age to do so?
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Oh, and I wouldn't go throwing around the "nutball" label too much, if I were you. We're not the ones shivering under our beds, waiting for the invasion.

Were the States able to not torture people back in WWII when the Germans were putting people in ovens and the Japanese were using people for bayonet practice?

Vietnam dear afguy. VIETNAM. And it was the same limey liberals then, that I see here today that are defending the Islamic Extremists as Jane Fonda defended the communist Vietnamese.
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SO put that in your pot-pipe and smoke your brains out.

Sorry, Rusty, I don't do pot and I was in Thailand during that period. I didn't like what Jane did but defend her right to do so.
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It's what this country is about.

Rusty is less affected by his VietNam experience than he is by his relative isolation in Wetern PA. If you never encounter anyone the least bit unlike you, it's a lot easier to conjure villianous visions of what those scary Muslims must have in mind.
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Rusty should get out more. It would do him good.

Mr. Scherer is on a roll! This is the very best journalism I have ever seen from him! Go Michael Go! Sic 'em!

Dear Mr. Scherer,
I am sorry to be a stickler but I have to point this out.

"This is the sort of paragraph that can be printed on THE tombstone of this entire chapter of U.S. history."

I am sorry, but I can't take any article (or argument seriously) if there isn't proper sentence structure. Sadly, you're not alone. Mr. Klein also makes mistakes, particularly with names of foreign leaders (e.g. Calling Mexico's President "Calderone" instead of Calderón and Israeli Foreign Minister "Barack" instead of Barak). I have yet to find mistakes on Karen Tumulty's posts, so there is still hope.

It might be a good idea to stop twittering so much and focus instead on syntax. I know you're a good journalist, but not having a copy editor and making simple mistakes like the one above seriously diminishes your credibility.

It's still more Vut & paste than it is shoe-lea