Our Tacit Approval of Torture

I am sorry my friend, but TORTURE is NOT American policy. W. and Rumsfeld pushed their legal advisors into a corner thru intimidation.

Nice try.

Chip-Sarasota

A person must really be aloof, detached and otherwise lacking empathy for his fellow human beings to say that to not use coersion (waterboarding is NOT torture) against a grand total of three terrorists is worth the destruction of a city of millions.

Perhaps the next discussion will center on Obama's refusal to defend this country. Islam is coming-and when Sharia gets here, you won't have time to opine while drawing on your professorial pipes. Perhaps you aren't aware-but during the second World War, rogue nations and nation less zealots have the ability to garner weapons which can kill thousands and even millions at a shot. We aren't fighting by Queensberry rules here in the real world. I'm sorry to tell you this-it will be the survival of the fittest. Natural selection will decide which culture continues on-and which dies. I'm willing to dunk a murderous killer in the drink 10,000 times to avert the end of you publishing your pap on the internet. It is because Bush used aggressive techniques that you smug righteous appeasers have the luxury of spewing your appeasing dribble. After the EMP hits, or New York is suffering from radiation fallout, I will be excited to hear from those of you who feel saving our way of life is less important than stopping a dedicated America hater from destroying it.

PeaceAtAllCosts

Hey Wisberg,

Stop blaming America you spineless robot! This was not "Bush's torture policy". The same criminals that set your editorial policy and now have you trashing yet another American president and extending this "guilt" to all of America are the ones who caused Pearl Harbor, 9/11 and every modern war. They did it to increase American debt, live off the interest and forward their total ownership agenda.

Nothing happens in the CIA or Intelligence agency circles unless the head of the Foreign Intelligence Committe in the U.S. Senate - Jay Rockefeller - knows all about it and sanctions the action. Why don???t you have the guts to investigate Nazis like Rockefeller, Kissinger, Brzezinski, Rothschild and their fellow ???New World Order??? crowd of criminal buffoons. Their agenda is total control and you are directly forwarding that agenda.

Bush, like you, was robotically sanctioning an agenda that is 100% controlled by these criminals. The last president to openly oppose them ??? JFK ??? got his brains scrambled all over the Dallas freeway. Unlike you, he at least had some integrity.

Fortunately, all Americans are not yet dumbed down and can see through your misdirector which attempts to make us all guilty of your employer???s vile crimes.

Well put.
Congress, including the majority of Democrats, rolled over on this, on the initial bailout, and on Iraq.
So where did they show any backbone?
Oh yes, the baseball steroid hearings.

I'm sorry - I don't agree with this at all. There were those of us who were against torture from the beginning, aghast at what has come out, and have blogged, dialogued, and done what little we could within the realm of the law and the fact that we are not interrogators and live far from Washington. Do not equate being powerless to stop such an evil with complicity - I didn't vote for George Bush, and I railed strongly at anyone who argued the revolting images out of Abu Ghraib were anything other than a vile perversion of our justice system run amok. We wrote our Congresspeople, wrote the president, worried about what was going in our FBI files, but we made our voices heard, or at least tried to. I am cmopletely offended at the idea that none of us opposed this!

That said, justice needs to finally be served. Not retribution, but justice. Your argument essentially says that we shouldn't have punished the Nazis because welll, "everyone hated teh jews." That argument is ridiculous. We hold our elected officials to a high standard. We place our trust in them. Just because they abused that trust doesn't make us any more culpable than blaming a victim of assault for encouraging the thugs to hit them.

I'm sorry - I don't agree with this at all. There were those of us who were against torture from the beginning, aghast at what has come out, and have blogged, dialogued, and done what little we could within the realm of the law and the fact that we are not interrogators and live far from Washington. Do not equate being powerless to stop such an evil with complicity - I didn't vote for George Bush, and I railed strongly at anyone who argued the revolting images out of Abu Ghraib were anything other than a vile perversion of our justice system run amok. We wrote our Congresspeople, wrote the president, worried about what was going in our FBI files, but we made our voices heard, or at least tried to. I am cmopletely offended at the idea that none of us opposed this!

That said, justice needs to finally be served. Not retribution, but justice. Your argument essentially says that we shouldn't have punished the Nazis because welll, "everyone hated teh jews." That argument is ridiculous. We hold our elected officials to a high standard. We place our trust in them. Just because they abused that trust doesn't make us any more culpable than blaming a victim of assault for encouraging the thugs to hit them.

The author paints with far too broad a brush, essentially equating all citizens with morally ignorant dittoheas. In fact, many folks tried to convince such dittoheads that some actions taken by the state are immoral, inherently intolerable and indecent no matter whether they succeed or not in producing "actionable intelligence."

Although that most Americans were not morally intellectually sophisticated enough to grasp the evil of George Bush's and Dick Cheney's policies, that does not mean that those who decried their evil are "complicit" in their evil.

The collective "we" is an evasion of responsibility. It is like accusing every German of having been a Nazi though many paid wiith their lives resisting the regime. Indeed many were victims.

To deny all criminal culpability by those responsible for authorizing torture is to deny that the rule of law has any meaning.

Best, Terry

Mr. Weisburg,
Why do you continually refer to torture of detainees as "Bush's torture policy"? Are you so naive as to believe that Bush was the only president ever to endorse torture to obtain valuable information? Bush was by no means the first, nor will he be the last. What our illustrious and clueless new president has done, is effectively cut our intelligence gatherers off at the knees. It is tantamount to arresting a criminal "in the act", and then handcuffing the police! Understand that our interrogators are truly professionals. They know when they have gleaned all available information from any given detainee. Any further coercion is useless, and unacceptable. For instance, if a person being "tortured" says that he has told all he knows, begs for mercy, and asks his god to watch over his wife and children, whom he loves even more that his own life, I would have a tendency to to believe that he is telling the truth. However, if the detainee constantly praises his god, and in the next breath shouts "Death to America", he MIGHT be holding something back. Ya THINK?! Our interrogators aren't idiots. They know what they're doing, and as long as they can obtain the intelligence needed to protect and defend American citizens and American military personnel, they should be allowed to continue. After all, that's what we pay them for. Like you, and President Obama, I don't think we should have to use these methods to obtain information. I also wish that we didn't HAVE to. But that would be the case in an ideal world, where everyone plays by the same rules, and we don't live in an ideal world. You need to wake up and see things as they ARE before it's too late. Our intellegence gatherers do what they do to serve the PEOPLE, not the press. You can't blame everything on Bush anymore, either. In case you hadn't noticed, he's not the President any more, and the man who is, is a sorry excuse for a Commander-In-Chief. This is how we gave away Vietnam. Well-meaning civilians need to step aside and let our military do its' job. They are the best in the world at what they do, and they will protect and defend us if we get out of the way long enough to let them. Let the "torture" issue die. It detracts from the REAL issue, which is the war on terror. That war is not over by a long shot, and you have to realize that these Islamic extremists ( their choice of religion, not ours) would be more than happy to torture or kill you, or me, or any other American IN A HEARTBEAT! You DO remember 9/11, don't you?

While I agree with this articles jest that the Bush Administration will go down in history as the biggest abusers (and ignorers) of the pricincples of the consitution, I strongly disagree and reject the implication that I now have blood on my hands for "letting ti happen". I've consistenlly voted against the Republican war machine, did not vote for Bush or any of his sock puppets in 2000 or 2004 (and congressmen in between), and spoke out against these things. That's all I could and can do as an American citizen legally. The only other options we don't do as civilized people (such as overthrow our government, line them up at sunrise and offer them a final cigarette, etc). Although now that they aren't in office anymore, it sounds like a fine idea now...

Many Americans stood up against the illegal use of torture by the Bush administration as soon as arguments in favor of violating international laws and treaties began after 9/11. Of course, as was the case with dissent against the Iraq war, Americans who opposed torture and the Iraq war were singled out as members of the "far left," "fringe" types that stand up and oppose government actions which the American people do not support nor consent to. Often marginalized by the MSM, we are the same people who voiced loud opposition to the Iraq war, and have been protesting America's illegal use of torture since 9/11. Perhaps you were too busy defending the war in Iraq and Bush administration war crimes to hear the voices of dissent across the country, but they've been loud and clear for the past eight years. How dare you suggest that the American people are complicit in Bush administration war crimes. Bush and those associated with his administration are the individuals who should and will be investigated and prosecuted for war crimes because the voices of dissent will not be silenced this time by those who would make false arguments to help hold former presidents and members of Congress above the law. Jonathan Alter, Alan Dershowitz, Mark Baldwin and others do not speak for the American people Mr. Weisberg. If you and they feel you are complicit in the war crimes of the Bush administration, that is your moral dilemma, but do not drag those who have fought against these transgressions into your personal hell.

I disagree.... those that have consistenly voted for the guys tha opposed this stuff (Kerry, Obama, Finestine, Boxer, etc) and publicly spoke and posted comments to articles like this made it clear that we did NOT approve of Bush or his tactics. To imply that I have blood on my hands because of the way the Bush Administration and the Republicain party is WRONG.

It wasn't me, man. They need to be prosecuted.

Mr. Weisberg

You article misses the fact that there were many people who decried the torture from the beginning and fought against it. You are right that they were not, in general, the mainstream press which was not only complicit in the fear mongering that followed 911, but was often the source of it.

The left was largely right on this, as it was about Iraq, and it deserves recognition for its perspicacity and judgment. And those of you who got this wrong or were complacent in the face of it, do carry some burden of responsibility for these dark deeds authored by the Bush administration.

So no, we are not all complicit in this matter.

Jim Watson

I for one have nothing to come to terms with as the subtitle says. I am comfortable with the techniques that were used and the people they were used on. Bad guys were captured and if they weren't bad guys, they were hanging around bad guys which they shouldn't have been. American lives were saved in my opinion. I think our country is a great country and in general has very benevolent people. What I wish would happen is people leave us alone, don't attack us, and don't threaten us. If they attack or threaten us, we make them realize the error of their ways by crushing them, thereby discouraging attacks by others who might get the same kind of silly ideas. Would someone in their right mind intentionally walk up to a wild uncaged grizzly bear and give it a good whack with a stick? No. We need to be that grizzly bear. Instead, we are like that panda bear that mauled some idiot that tried to hug it at the Chinese zoo. We can hurt you if there are a very specific set of circumstances but for the most part entirely harmless. We are harmless because many people feel we must show restraint with people who don't understand restraint. When a pitbull goes nuts and mauls a child, do we take mercy on it because it was bred to be the way it is? No. We kill it so nobody else gets hurt. The same needs to be done to terrorists and terrorist supporters.