Sometimes I have a difficult time keeping a civil tongue (hand? keyboard?) when faced with the pointless ad-hominim attacks half of this board seems so fond of, but since I don't want to add to that, I'll do my best.
The "You had to be there, you have no idea what pressure was on us" defense has been used before, and indeed is often the last refuge of an authority figure who has overstepped the bounds of their authority. Perhaps there's even some validity to it. But what it in the end argues is that no decision made by an authority figure during a crisis can ever be critisized, no matter how improper or incorrect.
She further degenerates into stating some irrelevant fact about guantanamo being considered a normal minimum security prison, as if that means anything. She tries to attack the young man's credibility by pointing out bits of information of which he was not aware. The young men were clearly underinformed, but that does nothing to strengthen her position.
The "trials" that the military commissions act attempted to put through were sham trials, which allowed information gathered with the use of "coercive" methods, such as long periods of sleep depravation in stress positions naked for over a week, as evidence. A person in that state might confess to anything to make that treatment end, and that confession could be used to put them to death.
"You had to be there, you have no idea what pressure was on us"
How quickly (conveniently?) you forget. The country was in shock. We demanded assurance that 9/11 would not recur AND retaliation for the terrorist attacks. Congress, including the Loon brigade, were not only willing participants on those issues, they were advocates of them. The GW administration gave us both.
Exactly what bounds of authority did the administration overstep? If you’re going to critique what the SoS said by bring talking points into your argument, how about elaborating on the exact laws that were violated.
She further degenerates into stating some irrelevant fact about guantanamo being considered a normal minimum security prison, as if that means anything.
Guantanamo was a minimum security prison, wasn’t it? In a high security prison the prisoners would have been locked-down 23 hours a day and had minimal or no contact with other prisoners. I’m no authority on this but I recall seeing numerous pictures over the years of those guys socializing in the prison yard.
She tries to attack the young man's credibility by pointing out bits of information of which he was not aware. The young men were clearly underinformed, but that does nothing to strengthen her position.
Jr. (the school boy), continually attacked her with Loon rhetoric and she responded. She made an observation that was correct. You make that same observation in the following sentence of your post. So much for those high standards you blathered about in your opening comment.
The "trials" that the military commissions act attempted to put through were sham trials, which allowed information gathered with the use of "coercive" methods, such as long periods of sleep depravation in stress positions naked for over a week, as evidence.
Finally, you get around to the real point of your attack on Rice.
However, you overlook the fact that the Bush administration used FDR’s “military commission”, established in 1942 to try 8 German terrorists for attempting to blow-up US assets, as his model. Say, didn’t we hang or electrocute those guys?
As to your talking point that information was gathered form the terrorists using what the Bush admin termed "advanced interrogation techniques", I think you've gotten all the mileage you're going to get out of that mule, because nobody’s denying it. The only question that remains is: Was it legal. Rice stated in that video that she believes it was. The onus is on your kind to prove that it wasn’t.
I'm not a fan of using torture to extract information from terrorists, but I'm even less a fan of watching American people jump to their death from the 80th floor of burning buildings that terrorists just smashed commercial jetliners into or Americans having to seal their own fate by attacking terrorists who would have otherwise smashed another commercial flight into yet another building in their effort to kill as many Americans as possible. When I compare the atrocities the terrorists committed to the what the Bush admin did, the scale weighs in on the side of the GW administration.
Perhaps we should give them a simple choice in the future: "Talk, or I kill ya", or how about "Torture or death, you decide"?
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