What principle?Here are the opening lines of the Washington Post
editorial: (emp add)
Two for Mr. Mukasey
Sens. Schumer and Feinstein buck the crowd.
THE HALLS of Congress are too often filled with cowardice and groupthink. So it is reassuring when not one but two lawmakers show the moral fortitude to defy party politics to take a stand on principle.
Yet, for the remainder of the editorial,
no principle is identified.
Also, the editorial is sympathetic to Mukasey's refusal to say if waterboarding is torture because
supplying it would have put Mr. Mukasey in conflict with Justice Department memos that likely allow the technique
All hail the Justice Department memo! Written by
anybody there! More powerful than a court decision, apparently. And because it's "likely" to allow waterboarding, well, what more needs to be said?
Of course, the Post Could have just as easily written:
not supplying it would have put Mr. Mukasey in conflict with the country's historical treatment of waterboarding as torture, including prosecution of Japanese who applied it to American and Allies' personnel during WWII
posted by Quiddity at 11/04/2007 02:12:00 AM
Stop panicking Quiddity. No one is going to waterboard you for your ignorant little blog.
RUSHING TO JUDGEMENT ABOUT THE 3RD MRS. P.
So what is this world coming to? A good upstanding cop
Is not allowed to waterboard his wife?
Why such a rush to judgement: why not let the matter drop,
It´s interference in a person´s life!
Perhaps she had some intel that he needed to find out,
(It happens now and then to jealous husbands),
The waterboard´s a method, don´t let anybody doubt,
To get an explanation for an absence.
The waterboard´s effective: anybody underneath
(Go ask the CIA) will have an answer,
And they will spit a hundred names (or more) right through their teeth,
When of "technique" one is a good "enhancer."
We know a man in uniform, if not above the law,
Acting outside the law is still inside it,
So it has been confirmed and even Congress has my awe,
So why should anybody have to hide it?
Except when we discuss it let´s not be explicit, rather
Because that might deliver information
Into the wrong hands: honor as becomes husband or father
Might even take it for a provocation!
If we are "good guys" then we shouldn´t ought to rush to judgement
About an officer who´s serving us´n:
In times of terror information´s full complete dislodgement
Ought be no matter for such puerile fussin´.
The man in uniform may come to feel himself oppressed
When nosy busybodies so beset him
Demanding details--bulletproof is not a good man´s vest,
For he will bleed or tickle if you let him.
Interrogation of a suspect (even if a wife)
Ought not demand a social intervention--
It is not using torture ("look, no hands, ma, nor no knife"),
But merely is enhancement of convention.
Rather the proud upholder of a homeland´s precious law
May be seen--even as Congress has told us--
Both "out" and "in" at one same time without a need to draw
Nefarious wrong conclusions so to scold us.
A righteous and God-fearing man would never act disdainful
When waterboarding: good men´s shock and awe go
Together with propriety albeit sometimes painful,
Though they may wire up privates in Chicago.
