New AG confirmation

by: Peddler

Tue Nov 06, 2007 at 17:25:24 PM EST

If it is legal and the opposition is stong enough against it, the new congress should introduce a bill making it illegal and send it through.  With the upcoming change in Washington, no doubt it will pass with flying colors.

But before we journey down that road and parrot the comments that have been made about the practive bringing us down to the level of our enemies, we need to look back at WWII and some of the things we did in the name of fighting for freedom.  An excellent article in the WSJ today outlines some of the things we did in order to end a world war and the casualties are astounding in shear numbers.  The article is by Bret Stephens and the following are three paragraphs that are worthwhile reading.

"......In a recent article in Commentary, essayist Algis Valiunas recounts that when war broke out in Europe in 1939, Franklin Roosevelt "issued a plea that all combatant nations do the decent thing and refrain from bombing." And yet, he continues, "President Roosevelt's high-mindedness did not count for much once the action was under way." The Nazis, for whom terror from the skies was no more anathema than every other form of terror they practiced, were the first to bomb civilian targets, beginning with Warsaw and moving on to Rotterdam and London.

Within a couple of years, the Allies were retaliating in kind, which in current parlance would be known as "lowering oneself to the level of one's enemies." At the Casablanca conference in January 1943, Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill promised to undertake "the heaviest possible bomber offensive against the German war effort." Six months later that terrible promise was fulfilled over Hamburg by 700 British bombers. In Mr. Valiunas's telling, it was a scene from the Inferno: "Oxygen starvation and carbon monoxide poisoning killed many; bomb shelters turned into ovens and roasted the persons inside, so that rescue workers days later found the bodies seared together in an indistinguishable mass; the molten asphalt of the streets engulfed those who fled the burning buildings."

An estimated 45,000 people died this way in Hamburg. U.S. and British air forces would repeat the procedure over Dresden, Tokyo, Yokohama, Hiroshima, Nagasaki--cities of real or at least arguable military significance. Hundreds of smaller cities and towns of doubtful strategic value were also reduced to ash and rubble, bringing the total civilian death toll to about 600,000 Germans (including 75,000 children under 14) and a roughly equal number of Japanese. How can this be justified? Does it not greatly diminish Allied claims to moral superiority?....."

There is more to the article but I think these paragraphs convey the horror inflicted on civilians during war time conditions.  I do not advocate killing innocents during a war especially when an immoral dictator uses them as civilian shields.  There has always been loss of life in the civilian sector during any war.  To purposely choose to bomb factories and cities in civilian areas is a bad choice but under the circumstances, it was the choice Roosevelt thought the best of all evils confronting him at the time.

I do not advocate torture as a means of intelligence gathering but when and where do we find a realistic balance between civility and barbarism?  If your enemy is willing to behead a civilian in public and put the execution on the internet, do you honestly think asking them nicely about upcoming operations will actually work?

These issues are ones we must make as informed citizens and determine for ourselves where we stand on them.  I watched some video on a news show and the reporter went through a demonstration of waterboarding and explained how it affected him.  He held out for about 10 seconds or so and that was it.  One of the sheiks who was captured earlier and was a key player in terrorist activities was able to hold out for about 2 minutes.  If you have ever felt like you are drowning, imagine being placed in such a mental state of mind over and over again.

I think I might tell you everything you wanted to know and then some.  I came close to drowning as a teenager when I saved a buddy from drowning and the feeling of panic stayed with me for a long time.  The helpless feeling and sensation of losing control can cause panic if you don't have a strong will.  The adrenaline kicks in and that deep primordial self preservation defense mechanism takes over in an instant.

We played a game when I was a kid where we would blindfold someone, stand them on a board held up at about 3-4 inches by two people.  A third person would stand next to you with your hand on their shoulder.  The people holding the board would start lifting it very slowly while the person next to you would start to bend slowly at the knees creating a sensation of the board actually being raised to great heights.  Then, at the opportune moment, they would pretend to lose control and tilt it to one side.  Believe me when I tell you that you think you are falling and some of the screams evoked from participants was ear splitting.  Some were affected to the point of having a fear of heights instilled when there was none before.

Parlor games or torture methods?  College level fraternity initiation or inhumane treatment of another human being?  One is more severe than the other and most of us has a demon we fear deep inside.  Is tapping this demon a source of torture or is it an effective tool to gather useful information during a time of uncertainty and war? 

The upcoming elections will have an impact on how we conduct future hostilities against an enemy with declared borders or a faceless enemy hiding behind masks and striking at random with no regard for who is a victim or not.  In the interim, the new Attorney General will have a lot to say about our current interrogation practices.