Tortured By Lefty Comments

Andrew Sullivan and Salon both linked to my post this morning about Mike Huckabee's irresponsible and sophomoric comments about Guantanamo and waterboarding. They did not do this to underscore that Huckabee is not qualified to be a wartime president; rather, they did it to poke fun at those who believe as I do.

Here's the passage they mocked:

You can't be for closing Guantanamo unless you have a decent answer to the question of what you would do with the lovely people who bow toward Mecca from there. Return them to countries that won't have them? Give them trials in the U.S., where their attorneys would exploit our freedoms for the benefit of those who have professed their intentions to kill us by the millions?

And I don't care how uncomfortable or terrifying waterboarding may be to the few who deserve it. It's non-lethal, doesn't bruise the skin, break the bones, starve the tummy, or stretch the skeleton -- yet it can open sealed lips.

Sullivan's comment is so inane it boggles the mind:

Notice how torture is defended as something some terror suspects deserve. And notice no awareness that torture can open sealed lips to give us false information. The point of torture is always torture.

Yes, Andy, the people who are waterboarded do deserve it because they have been party to plots to kill our soldiers, our allies or us, and they don't want to be forthcoming with the information. We don't rush to waterboarding as step one, but if the person has information important enough and they would rather see innocents die instead of spilling the beans, then yes, they deserve it.

Sullivan also hoists up the old cannard about only false information being gained from torture waterboarding. (Sorry, torture to me is still, to paraphrase what I wrote this a.m., lethal, breaks the skin and bones, causes real physical danger, like starvation, or inflicts other bodily harm.) He ignores the fact that the technique has yielded true information that saved real lives on multiple occasions.

If the information is false, what's the result? Nothing happens. So we're supposed to stop pursing information because we're afraid nothing will happen?

If the point of torture were to torture, then Sullivan shouldn't even be asking about the efficacy of process for getting information; he should only ask about its efficacy for inflicting pain on one party and sick pleasure on another. America, of course, does not torture and we certainly are not the sort of country that does the despicable for the sake of doing the despicable. That's why we have the Army Field Manual. Shame on Sullivan for thinking so poorly of his country.

But not thinking well of country is the common demondenominator for this folks, as clearly stated by commentor Chop1:

Anyone can be a suspect for anything, even the writer of this piece, although I assume his blind trust of the government's wonderful intentions and incredible ability to only harshly interrogate those suspects who are actually guilty and deserve it exclude him from ever having to worry about this happening to himself of anyone he knows, so who really cares right?

I really don't have to worry about being waterboarded, and Chop1 doesn't have to either, unless he is an enemy combatant in reality, not just in his head. The Left's worry about diminishment of our freedoms and imminent ill-treatment by government rages without one example to cite. Go to jihad school, raise money under the guise of charity and send it to a recognized terrorist organization, fight on the wrong side in the war on terror and you've got something to worry about. Be paranoid about America and you don't.

The Left's deeply entrenched fear made Sam's comment a real hoot:

Do you check under your pillow for "jihadist/terrorists" every night before you go to bed. I suggest you see a psychiatrist, living in fear every day is no way to live.

I am considerably less afraid than any of these people because I am not afraid of my country. My country has never done anything to me personally to cause me to be afraid of it and I imagine the same is true of Sam and his friends on the Left. Yet they live in terror of bogeymen poised to strap them down in some dank dungeon.

Who needs the psychiatrist?

And who among these would recognize victory? They've achieved it, after all. Here, for example, is ME:

You are also aware that hundreds have been cleared for release because even the US didn't believe they were being held for a decent reason?

Frankly, I'm amazed that you think this argument is about run-of-the-mil POWs. It's not. It's about people who have been abducted by the US government who WEREN'T on a battlefield fighting american soldiers, and are being held without charge, without trial.

Gee willikers. These people who think America is out to get everyone just acknowledged that Guantanamo detainees won the right to have tribunals, and that these tribunals are either dangerously flawed or fair, because "hundreds" have been found worthy of release! Yet they still fear America.

M also thinks that if a general is captured in an air conditioned headquarters building planning an attack, he isn't a POW. Sorry, M, you don't have to be captured on the battlefield to be an enemy combatant.

All of these folks assume I just pull my opinions out of my behind, when in actuality I read their cherished liberal media outlets, NYT and WaPo, regularly peruse the Leftyblogs, read op/eds from both sides courtesy of Real Clear Politics, and admittedly read a lot of conservative blogs.

I therefore know what waterboarding is; I know it's history; I know the results we've achieved through all sorts of interrogation techniques; I know that America does not torture people; and perhaps most important, I know that the Left is trying desperately to redefine the word "torture" so it basically means "interrogation."

They do this because they are anti-war, anti-military, and ultimately, anti-American. Fortunately, they're also anti-convincing.