Sorry Obama, America is just awesome. You hate that? Tough life, Obama!

"The United States of America is awesome. We are awesome, but we've had this discussion" about torture, Tantaros said. She lamented, "the reason they want to have this discussion is not to show how awesome we are;" rather, "this administration wants to have this discussion to ( Read more... )

...Even if your intentions are (allegedly) benevolent: protecting your people, countering extremism, ending terrorism, things like that.

Looks familiar?

Yeah, we've already heard about the Congress report on CIA's enhanced interrogation (fuck PC) torture. It doesn't tell us anything new, granted. It's just an official acknowledgement of what ( Read more... )

From an unsigned editorial in the Wall Street Journal: Egyptians would be lucky if their new ruling generals turn out to be in the mold of Chile's Augusto Pinochet, who took power amid chaos but hired free-market reformers and midwifed a transition to democracy.
The anonymous writers of this piece know perfectly well what they are saying and what ( Read more... )

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/16943268

Canada ordered its intelligence agency to use information that may have been extracted through torture if public safety is at risk, it has emerged.

The directive, obtained by Canadian media through freedom of information laws, was issued in 2010.

It ( Read more... )

Chris Wallace on Fox News:

I’m not asking why it was okay to shoot Osama bin Laden…What I am second-guess is, if that’s okay, why can’t you do waterboarding, why can’t you do enhanced interrogation…

Click to view

So now the argument is that if we’re going to shoot people, we might as well torture them. Apparently Wallace can’t see the difference between ( Read more... )

The argument over torture has two sides ( and I do not mean left and "right" - but that's coming).

( Cut for length and for those who have interest )

Ok, Go George Bush says he thinks torture is ok sometimes. He even says it saved Britain and America from further terrorist attacks. But is it true, I ask myself? ( Read more... )

Apparently GWB's memoirs include an acknowledgement that he okayed torture and attempts to justify it by claiming that it saves lives, British lives in particular.  It also appears that the British are taking some exception to that claim.  Setting aside the intriguing question of whether he's acknowledging war crimes, this points to something ( Read more... )

( cut for length )

Here is a Rachel Maddow segment on a document that is to be released tomorrow (at least partially released, partially redacted ( Read more... )