One on the loose, two others still at "Gitmo" all threats to American safety.
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As the debate on interrogation degenerates into a highly partisan, mean-spirited witch hunt, the American people must consider the context from which this debate emerged and the issues at stake that required the most forceful interrogation possible. The more the public understands what was at stake, the more the current grandstanding, ranting and raving by members of the Democratic party will not only seem like a vicious attempt to mischaracterize the Bush administration, and by extension, the Republican party, but also attacks the entire intelligence gathering and defense operations undertaken in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorists attacks on the New York World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.
The procedure which is creating the most uproar is called waterboarding. A subject is restrained with his/her head inclined downward, then water is poured over the subject’s mouth and nasal passages creating the sensation of suffocation and drowning. Because the subject’s head is directed downward and water does not drain into the lungs itself, it causes no physical harm to the subject. The gagging reaction is reflexive almost impossible for the subject to control. The procedure causes no physical damage whatsoever, but it is, unquestionably, extremely horrifying triggering the body’s defenses as if it were on the verge of death.
While the procedure is difficult to endure, news reporters including a representative from Fox news voluntarily underwent the procedure to be able to explain their experience. Further, some of our nation’s most elite special forces undergo the procedure as part of their toughening preparation in their survival training.
The debate as to whether this constitutes torture is certainly legitimate. In the context of a “lasting harm” argument, there’s no way waterboarding could be considered torture. That is creates intense distress is likewise undeniable. Thus the debate first revolves around whether the procedure constitutes torture. The prevailing view among the Democratic party, the news media, and many Republicans considers that it is torture or at least cruel and extreme. The other part of the debate centers on given the terrorist figures on whom these methods were employed, given the intelligence they possessed, how timely it was, and the threat to all Americans they could possibly reveal, how far can our interrogators go to extract such intelligence knowing they might have inside knowledge of future terrorist attacks and their understanding of America’s weaknesses that terrorists can exploit.
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the highest level terrorist waterboarded. Mohammed was Osama Bin Ladin’s top strategic operative who was responsible for devising, preparing, staging, and directing the September 11, 2001 attacks. Additionally, he had knowledge of other operations under way which included destroying the Brooklyn Bridge in New York and staging a second phase of the 9/11 style attacks on Los Angeles.
The American people need to consider what was at stake. Of what value was that intelligence? How many more American citizens’ lives were threatened? If that is the case, possibly hundreds or thousands of lives, how much pressure is justified against a person responsible for such potential atrocities who already played a critical roll in over 3,000 deaths in the original attacks?
Terrorist captives Abu Zubayda and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri were also reported to have been waterboarded. Abu Subayda served as a senior Bin Ladin official the United States had been following at least as early as 1999 during the Clinton administration. He played a key role in the east African embassy bombings and had plans in various states of development to attack U.S. and Israeli targets in Jordan. He is also implicated in a plot to blowup the international airport in Los Angeles. Zubayda was shown to be the ultimate Al Qaeda insider with knowledge and involvement of the full reach of the terrorist’s organizations schemes.
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri is most noted for his role staging the attack on the USS Cole in the port of Yemen. He was involved in the planning and staging of numerous Al Qaeda plots.
As the so called “torture” debate explodes into a mad frenzy in Washington and across the news media specifically aimed at prosecuting the Bush administration for the actions it undertook and the means by which they determined such actions as legal and justified, what is lost in the discussion is any sense of context and urgency.
That the United States was caught unprepared and uniformed about the extent of Bin Ladin’s terrorist campaigns through Al Qaeda resulting in the September 11th attacks after the attack on the USS Cole and the African embassy bombings would be an obvious understatement. Given that such horrific attacks occurred within the United States itself provided the highest sense of urgency of any threat to the United States eclipsing the entire Cold War and only possibly being reviled by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December, 1941, the President was charged with the awesome responsibility to use the full weight of American power to protect the safety of all Americans and their vital interests.
In this context having just been attacked and responsible for ensuring no future attacks, the President, his defense, legal, and intelligence experts had to act with the absolute highest sense of urgency to secure our country’s safety. The prevailing mindset of the administration was stop at nothing to get the job done. President Bush would dedicate his administration to quickly and forcefully getting the job done on all levels.
How can the integrity and judgment of President George W. Bush be so viciously assailed and even criminalized in the eyes of his critics in the media and Democratic party? Can anyone possibly argue that the President did not act in good faith and was not attempting to use his position to lead the nation’s efforts to protect every single one of us?
In hindsight, one can critic the effectiveness and validity of what the Bush administration accomplished; however, the attempts to vilify the President and his top officials for such agenda driven political considerations is simply contemptuous, unpatriotic, wicked, and blind.
Through the prism of hindsight always being 20/20, some aspects of the Bush administration’s response were off target; however, did anyone including some of the Democrats who are the most vocal critics of the President, have any reason to doubt, for instance, the intelligence about weapons of mass destruction that served as a major factor for going to war against Iraq? That intelligence was verified as valid from multiple sources from both American and international sources. The necessity of going to war in Iraq is certainly the most off target response the administration launched in the whole scenario, but make no mistake about it. The behavior of Saddam Hussein was extremely provocative and dangerous whether it was attacking US and British planes patrolling the “no fly” zone established by international treaties, the systematic torture and murder of Iraqi citizens, and the vicious brutalization and oppression of Kurdish and Shiite citizens in Iraq. Hussein’s overt and clandestine activities including specific materials procured were all consistent of following the steps toward building nuclear weapons. Hussein had already used chemical weapons against enemy factions within Iraq and against Iranians when the country was at war with Iran. Even if the weapons of mass destruction were not found as presumed, at what point does the world community intervene when a murderous dictator is committing so many vicious acts against humanity?
The interrogation of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other murderous Al Qaeda thugs is very different matter. Can anyone possibly deny that the intelligence obtained might very well have saved thousands of American lives? To that end, where does the pursuit of intelligence end for other concerns? What actions are too severe to not be considered with our lives as American citizens in the balance?
As the conduct of the Bush administration is considered with all factors on the table, the “enhanced” interrogation methods were not taken lightly, were not applied in an arbitrary and capricious manner, and were only carried out with the highest level approval with all methods carefully prescribed, supervised, and monitored including having medical professionals at hand during the process.
Over time, more documentation will become more widely distributed of other methods used to taunt captured terrorists into surrendering their knowledge of their operation. Of what has been published so far, none of the methods rise above bullying and rough housing, most of them are what could best be described as annoying the subjects into submission but torture?
The leftist position of defining torture when applied by a Republican administration appears to be anything from raising one’s voice or greater. In other words, anything those under President Bush’s direction that exceeded, “Hello Mr. Mohammed, sir. Could you please tell us if there is anything we might be interested in knowing about that could involve terrorists’ attacks?” Some might consider even that would be going too far as he should be read his rights first and given the opportunity to “lawyer up.” This of course ignores that matters of domestic law enforcement and the application of the Constitution applies to American citizens living within the United States. War is a totally different scenario as is the urgency of obtaining the best knowledge possible on the situation at hand.
We accept the debate on whether waterboarding is torture is legitimate. We also must make perfectly clear the extent to which the Bush administration involved all appropriate officials including Democrats on Capitol Hill on what methods were under consideration. There was no outcry or open attempts to contest the decisions President Bush pursued in late 2001 and throughout 2002 as these issues were red hot. Even some of the Pentagon’s and intelligence service’s greatest critics accepted the gravity of the situation at hand.
While there are legitimate values consideration at stake, the attempts to vilify President Bush and his administration’s efforts that were successful in keeping the United States and American targets overseas free of attack for the entire duration of his administration after 9/11 must be seen as crass, vicious, dishonest, political opportunism especially when figures like Nancy Pelosi were directly in contact with the most intimate intelligence as the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee grandstand with after the fact of measures they consented to when the issue was red hot.
The news media is doing a horrible job of providing context for all issues involved in performing “enhanced interrogation” and establishing what various officials’ stance was then and now. Once again, the media is failing miserably to do its job and is acting in a biased, partisan manner in support of the most extreme and vocal advocates of the political agenda they seek to advance.
One question that has been posed again and again in the so-called torture debate, “If the officials had detained someone who had raped or murdered you’re a member of your family or had knowledge of plans to harm more members of your family, what would you considered justified?” President Bush had to consider the fate of 300 million Americans. What is the moral imperative when he is charged as the elected leader and commander-in-chief to provide for those citizens’ safety and security. President Bush and no one else had the luxury of time to debate all the philosophical and moral values involved in an immediate, urgent situation with lives in the balance. To that end we applaud President Bush and damn his critics in the most powerful terms available.
The conduct of Nancy Pelosi among others is inauthentic, dishonest, self-serving, and dangerous. It borders on treason. These adversaries to our nation’s safety must be held accountable and cannot go unchallenged.
The procedure which is creating the most uproar is called waterboarding. A subject is restrained with his/her head inclined downward, then water is poured over the subject’s mouth and nasal passages creating the sensation of suffocation and drowning. Because the subject’s head is directed downward and water does not drain into the lungs itself, it causes no physical harm to the subject. The gagging reaction is reflexive almost impossible for the subject to control. The procedure causes no physical damage whatsoever, but it is, unquestionably, extremely horrifying triggering the body’s defenses as if it were on the verge of death.
While the procedure is difficult to endure, news reporters including a representative from Fox news voluntarily underwent the procedure to be able to explain their experience. Further, some of our nation’s most elite special forces undergo the procedure as part of their toughening preparation in their survival training.
The debate as to whether this constitutes torture is certainly legitimate. In the context of a “lasting harm” argument, there’s no way waterboarding could be considered torture. That is creates intense distress is likewise undeniable. Thus the debate first revolves around whether the procedure constitutes torture. The prevailing view among the Democratic party, the news media, and many Republicans considers that it is torture or at least cruel and extreme. The other part of the debate centers on given the terrorist figures on whom these methods were employed, given the intelligence they possessed, how timely it was, and the threat to all Americans they could possibly reveal, how far can our interrogators go to extract such intelligence knowing they might have inside knowledge of future terrorist attacks and their understanding of America’s weaknesses that terrorists can exploit.
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the highest level terrorist waterboarded. Mohammed was Osama Bin Ladin’s top strategic operative who was responsible for devising, preparing, staging, and directing the September 11, 2001 attacks. Additionally, he had knowledge of other operations under way which included destroying the Brooklyn Bridge in New York and staging a second phase of the 9/11 style attacks on Los Angeles.
The American people need to consider what was at stake. Of what value was that intelligence? How many more American citizens’ lives were threatened? If that is the case, possibly hundreds or thousands of lives, how much pressure is justified against a person responsible for such potential atrocities who already played a critical roll in over 3,000 deaths in the original attacks?
Terrorist captives Abu Zubayda and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri were also reported to have been waterboarded. Abu Subayda served as a senior Bin Ladin official the United States had been following at least as early as 1999 during the Clinton administration. He played a key role in the east African embassy bombings and had plans in various states of development to attack U.S. and Israeli targets in Jordan. He is also implicated in a plot to blowup the international airport in Los Angeles. Zubayda was shown to be the ultimate Al Qaeda insider with knowledge and involvement of the full reach of the terrorist’s organizations schemes.
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri is most noted for his role staging the attack on the USS Cole in the port of Yemen. He was involved in the planning and staging of numerous Al Qaeda plots.
As the so called “torture” debate explodes into a mad frenzy in Washington and across the news media specifically aimed at prosecuting the Bush administration for the actions it undertook and the means by which they determined such actions as legal and justified, what is lost in the discussion is any sense of context and urgency.
That the United States was caught unprepared and uniformed about the extent of Bin Ladin’s terrorist campaigns through Al Qaeda resulting in the September 11th attacks after the attack on the USS Cole and the African embassy bombings would be an obvious understatement. Given that such horrific attacks occurred within the United States itself provided the highest sense of urgency of any threat to the United States eclipsing the entire Cold War and only possibly being reviled by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December, 1941, the President was charged with the awesome responsibility to use the full weight of American power to protect the safety of all Americans and their vital interests.
In this context having just been attacked and responsible for ensuring no future attacks, the President, his defense, legal, and intelligence experts had to act with the absolute highest sense of urgency to secure our country’s safety. The prevailing mindset of the administration was stop at nothing to get the job done. President Bush would dedicate his administration to quickly and forcefully getting the job done on all levels.
How can the integrity and judgment of President George W. Bush be so viciously assailed and even criminalized in the eyes of his critics in the media and Democratic party? Can anyone possibly argue that the President did not act in good faith and was not attempting to use his position to lead the nation’s efforts to protect every single one of us?
In hindsight, one can critic the effectiveness and validity of what the Bush administration accomplished; however, the attempts to vilify the President and his top officials for such agenda driven political considerations is simply contemptuous, unpatriotic, wicked, and blind.
Through the prism of hindsight always being 20/20, some aspects of the Bush administration’s response were off target; however, did anyone including some of the Democrats who are the most vocal critics of the President, have any reason to doubt, for instance, the intelligence about weapons of mass destruction that served as a major factor for going to war against Iraq? That intelligence was verified as valid from multiple sources from both American and international sources. The necessity of going to war in Iraq is certainly the most off target response the administration launched in the whole scenario, but make no mistake about it. The behavior of Saddam Hussein was extremely provocative and dangerous whether it was attacking US and British planes patrolling the “no fly” zone established by international treaties, the systematic torture and murder of Iraqi citizens, and the vicious brutalization and oppression of Kurdish and Shiite citizens in Iraq. Hussein’s overt and clandestine activities including specific materials procured were all consistent of following the steps toward building nuclear weapons. Hussein had already used chemical weapons against enemy factions within Iraq and against Iranians when the country was at war with Iran. Even if the weapons of mass destruction were not found as presumed, at what point does the world community intervene when a murderous dictator is committing so many vicious acts against humanity?
The interrogation of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other murderous Al Qaeda thugs is very different matter. Can anyone possibly deny that the intelligence obtained might very well have saved thousands of American lives? To that end, where does the pursuit of intelligence end for other concerns? What actions are too severe to not be considered with our lives as American citizens in the balance?
As the conduct of the Bush administration is considered with all factors on the table, the “enhanced” interrogation methods were not taken lightly, were not applied in an arbitrary and capricious manner, and were only carried out with the highest level approval with all methods carefully prescribed, supervised, and monitored including having medical professionals at hand during the process.
Over time, more documentation will become more widely distributed of other methods used to taunt captured terrorists into surrendering their knowledge of their operation. Of what has been published so far, none of the methods rise above bullying and rough housing, most of them are what could best be described as annoying the subjects into submission but torture?
The leftist position of defining torture when applied by a Republican administration appears to be anything from raising one’s voice or greater. In other words, anything those under President Bush’s direction that exceeded, “Hello Mr. Mohammed, sir. Could you please tell us if there is anything we might be interested in knowing about that could involve terrorists’ attacks?” Some might consider even that would be going too far as he should be read his rights first and given the opportunity to “lawyer up.” This of course ignores that matters of domestic law enforcement and the application of the Constitution applies to American citizens living within the United States. War is a totally different scenario as is the urgency of obtaining the best knowledge possible on the situation at hand.
We accept the debate on whether waterboarding is torture is legitimate. We also must make perfectly clear the extent to which the Bush administration involved all appropriate officials including Democrats on Capitol Hill on what methods were under consideration. There was no outcry or open attempts to contest the decisions President Bush pursued in late 2001 and throughout 2002 as these issues were red hot. Even some of the Pentagon’s and intelligence service’s greatest critics accepted the gravity of the situation at hand.
While there are legitimate values consideration at stake, the attempts to vilify President Bush and his administration’s efforts that were successful in keeping the United States and American targets overseas free of attack for the entire duration of his administration after 9/11 must be seen as crass, vicious, dishonest, political opportunism especially when figures like Nancy Pelosi were directly in contact with the most intimate intelligence as the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee grandstand with after the fact of measures they consented to when the issue was red hot.
The news media is doing a horrible job of providing context for all issues involved in performing “enhanced interrogation” and establishing what various officials’ stance was then and now. Once again, the media is failing miserably to do its job and is acting in a biased, partisan manner in support of the most extreme and vocal advocates of the political agenda they seek to advance.
One question that has been posed again and again in the so-called torture debate, “If the officials had detained someone who had raped or murdered you’re a member of your family or had knowledge of plans to harm more members of your family, what would you considered justified?” President Bush had to consider the fate of 300 million Americans. What is the moral imperative when he is charged as the elected leader and commander-in-chief to provide for those citizens’ safety and security. President Bush and no one else had the luxury of time to debate all the philosophical and moral values involved in an immediate, urgent situation with lives in the balance. To that end we applaud President Bush and damn his critics in the most powerful terms available.
The conduct of Nancy Pelosi among others is inauthentic, dishonest, self-serving, and dangerous. It borders on treason. These adversaries to our nation’s safety must be held accountable and cannot go unchallenged.
Who's looking out for us? What elected leaders are truly focused on those forces which threatened our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness? It's time for a wake up call, NOW!!!
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