I think the issue of enhanced interrogation is complicated. Those that were waterboarded were "enemy combatants" and not POWs. The Geneva Convention therefore did not apply to these individuals. That said, the question of whether waterboarding is legal (by U.S. and/or U.N. standards) is a fair one and should be looked into by the attorney general. What should also be examined is whether or not these techniques saved lives. Is it worth causing physical discomfort to a known terrorist to save the lives of thousands? If one answers no, then how many people would have to be sacrificed in order for one to permit waterboarding? Suppose the fate of Mecca and Medina depended on getting information from a rogue Mossad agent who refused to talk? Would one just ask politely and then just give up?<a href="http://anunturi-gratuite.prahova-online.com/"> anunturi</a>
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Memo to President Obama
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The rational policy would be to replace the overblown "war on terror" with what we should have been engaged in every day since 9/11: a war of annihilation against Al Qaeda, an all-out effort to rid the earth completely of the small, lunatic group that attacked us on that day. This is a task we should apply ourselves to fully, at long last. But it is absurd to assign the term "transcendent challenge" to such a band of murderous anarchists, who have about as much hope of achieving their grand dream of turning the Mideast into an Islamist caliphate as scientists have of proving one day that the moon is made of green cheese. Terror cells may be spreading, but their ideology, such as it is, keeps dying every time it is exposed to the open air. Even in the tribal regions of Pakistan, safe haven to the newly regrouped Taliban and Al Qaeda, voters last week turned out radical religious parties because of their ineffectiveness. Al Qaeda and related terror groups are hardly the "heirs" to communism and totalitarianism, as Bush has described them.
Ironically, only if the next president downgrades the war on terror to a far more focused military and policing effort to destroy Al Qaeda completely—winning back all the natural global allies we've lost, placing groups like Hamas and Hezbollah in another category entirely—can he finally achieve the goal of making sure another 9/11 doesn't happen. But to do that we need to rethink the war on terror entirely. Is Barack Obama up to it?
© 2008
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