Posted by
Always To The Right on Saturday, January 17, 2009 5:58:32 PM
Liberals may be overjoyed to hear Attorney General nominee Eric
Holder unequivocally declare waterboarding to be torture. But will he
refuse to let his president prevent terrorism?
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Protesters present in the hearing room were delighted when Holder
answered the very first question panel chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy,
D-Vt., put to him with the statement that "water-boarding is torture."
When Leahy then went on to ask if he believed that "painful stress
positions, threatening with dogs, forced nudity and mock executions"
were also torture, Holder initially said he was "not as familiar with
those techniques," but proceeded to conclude that "I believe they do"
constitute torture.
What shall we add to the list? A chilly jail cell? A too-hard mattress? No dessert after the evening meal?
It may sound very principled and upstanding to take this supposed
high road while claiming that as head of the Justice Department you
will also "use every available tactic to defeat our adversaries," as
Holder assures us.
It can be summed up as follows: Will we get as tough as possible
with terrorist detainees who have information that will foil plots and
save hundreds of lives — even to the extent of taking them to foreign
locations and doing unsavory things to them? Or will we act always as
if an ACLU lawyer is looking over our shoulder — and thus risk the
consummation of a terrorist operation against the homeland?
The CIA inflicted enhanced interrogation techniques on at least
three detainees, including the mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed. The 9/11 Commission report cited his interrogations some 60
times as the basis for key facts revealed regarding al-Qaida.
The CIA and other U.S. government personnel involved in this nasty
business, along with the officials of foreign governments who acted as
hosts, are heroes, not lawbreakers. As brutally terrifying as
repeatedly being subjected to a drowning sensation is, it is not in the
same league as what our POWs underwent in locales like imperial Japan
and Communist Vietnam, and it should not be classified as torture.
Any 21st century definition of torture should, however, include
another horrifying sensation: the pain of living without a father or
daughter for the rest of your life because they were blown to
smithereens in a preventable terrorist act.
Holder also made it clear to the Judiciary Committee that Guantanamo
Bay prison would be shut and due process rights extended to some of the
enemy combatants held there. The president-elect may end up being very
sorry indeed that he appointed an attorney general more focused on
securing terrorist rights than averting terrorist wrongs.