Via the Sullivan borg:
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MATTHEWS: Would you have stopped it? If you had been president at this time, would you have done what President Obama has done and stopped the water-boarding? Because that‘s another thing that people symbolically see as American, well, repression or tyranny or imperialism, whatever the hell they‘re calling it. Would you have stopped the water-boarding?
SCHOCK: I would not—I would not limit our intelligence agencies‘ ability to get information from people. If they have a ticking time bomb or—or some—a critical piece of information that can save American lives, I don‘t believe we should—we should limit water-boarding or, quite frankly, any other alternative torture technique if it means saving Americans‘ lives.
But I don‘t think it should be standard practice.
MATTHEWS: So, you don‘t have a—you don‘t have a principled objection to torture?
SCHOCK: Well, I…
They usually aren’t that blunt, but I just love that he thinks torture should be reserved for special occasions, like a really expensive cocktail dress or a nice cashmere sweater. And he really can’t walk this back, because even if they try the “waterboarding is not torture” nonsense, he went beyond waterboarding and advocated other forms of torture.
Hunter Gathers
I wonder if Meg McCain will lose her crush on Mr. Schock over this. Nah, probably not.
ellaesther
Well, given the gentleman’s party affiliation, I must say, this information isn’t really all that schocking….
/ba dum.
/is out of smart thinking.
licensed to kill time
Jeez, not the ticking time bomb again.
The Populist
In an age where more police are using more unnecessary force than ever, I wonder when the wrong person will be roughed up or abused to wake people up that TORTURE is wrong no matter WHO the victim is.
Are our values that weak kneed that we resort to what 3rd world nations do on a regular basis to their own citizens? I hope not.
Terrorists are scum but we are better than them when we act like civilized human beings and not play on their levels.
arguingwithsignposts
Nym this cat (it’s a female). And yes, I’m trolling until we get some unicorns. Green Balloons, dammit!
gex
@The Populist: Not too long ago there was a local law enforcement group getting trouble for torturing a suspect. I’m too lazy to Google it, and it is no loss, because it will happen again soon enough. Being a tough sadistic shit is a goal in and of itself, results or appropriateness be damned.
El Cid
“…and I like walks on the beach, and alternative torture techniques…”
HumboldtBlue
Well why are you pointing this out? There are major American corporations who are making tons of money killing and torturing foreigners, and if they can’t make any money they’ll go out of business, right? Maybe we should impose a torture tax on all Americans to ensure that these corporations continue to make massive profits because we can’t have them failing, well, actually we can because they’ll get bailed out with our money anyway. I mean, the entire system is built on corporations turning a profit and that’s the way it is so shut up and pay your torture tax!
Sasha
At least he’s honest about it. Perhaps at last the media can stop saying “enhanced interrogation techniques” when they actually mean torture.
The Grand Panjandrum
Jesus! The GOP is still a bunch of bedwetting sissies. Torture! The terrorists are coming! (No shit, Sherlock. Your boy, Bush, guaranteed they’ll be after us for at least a generation.) And he is misleading with the remarks about Sebellius. Yes she asked for information. But Kansas wasn’t picked because they didn’t have the kind of facilities needed at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth and it would have been too expensive and time consuming to build a new facility. The decision was made to find a free-standing and EMPTY facility that could then be upgraded to supermax capabilities.
After a few months in that new prison these guys will be yearning for the good ol’ days at Guantanamo. In supermax they will NEVER see a tree again. NEVER. They will be in an enclosed facilities, with one hour per day in the open air with no view of the outside world except for the sky directly above them. Gitmo will be a fucking resort compared to the supermax these clowns are headed for.
colleeniem
@arguingwithsignposts: Well, I’ll bite, although you probably won’t like this one–Westphalia.
It sounds pretty and feminine, has significant historic and political context, and you can call her Westie for short.
Although I like Tunchlet even better (I forget who came up with that one).
gopher2b
As a fellow Illinoisan, I’ve hated this guy from the moment he won his Congressional seat prize in his little farm town lottery. He’s such a lightweight.
(Though, I laughed out loud when I saw him sitting next to the two bozos during Obama’s inauguration. I knew the country was in safe hands when he’s seen as the next white hope).
Sentient Puddle
It’s also worth juxtaposing this against Matthews’ previous question: would you have closed Abu Ghraib? He said yes right away, and didn’t protest when Matthews cut him off. Then he’s asked about torture…and you can practically tell by his pause and the look on his face that he’s thinking “shit, what are the talking points to obfuscate this again?”
And yes, he does seem to have bungled the obfuscation.
gopher2b
He has some nice Freudian slips in there. My fav was “Chris, your putting words in my mind).
Well, that’s where they start, six pack.
Waynski
@arguingwithsignposts — How about Blanche. It’s French.
jeffreyw
@arguingwithsignposts:
Bea is in use, but I asked if she would mind sharing. She didn’t say no.
MikeJ
Whut? Have you ever checked out policing methods from the 1800s? Hell, up through the 1980s? It was common for cops to just “knock a few heads” to quiet things down. Confessions were coerced routinely.
I don’t like police brutality today, but lets not pretend that it’s new or more widespread.
gwangung
Yup. In Tacoma, the police beat up a heart transplant patient who was walking around with a cane.
Catsy
@arguingwithsignposts: Pixie. For some reason the first thing that popped into my head when seeing that picture is that the cat looked very spritely, in some way that I can’t pinpoint. Just a gut impression.
Waynski
@arguingwithsignposts — Or maybe Britanny. She’s not bright enough to be human. She’s self-absorbed (she is a cat after all) and she’s a dirty white girl.
MikeJ
Name it something with flashing lights and no sound. White cats tend to go deaf.
Longlongshort has a lovely ring to it.
celticdragon
@The Populist:
Maher Arar comes to mind, as does the German citizen we held at Bagram for half a year and worked over even while we knew we had the wrong guy…
I am simply at a loss for the public apathy in the face of videos of police abuse, torturing with tazers, beating people to death in military prisons etc.
Kinda like how old people in Arizona keep voting for Sheriff Joe Arpaio even after the lawsuits against his department started to bankrupt the county.
I think that we have reverted to a sort of protective tribalism mixed with desensitivation and culture war paranoia. We simply don’t give a shit when the police work somebody over because he was mentally disabled and trying to go to the bathroom.
http://jonathanturley.org/2009/07/28/shocking-love-story-police-taser-and-pepper-spray-deaf-mentally-disabled-man-for-not-complying-with-orders/
He had it coming, and we should always deffer to the police…and he has brown skin. His mother probably drinks and is a welfare queen…
You ought to read some of the excuses for this at Patterico or the other law enforcement blogs. Might makes right, and if the police beat the shit out of you and then charge you with resisting arrest, well, you had it coming…
We simply don’t see the outrage today like we saw with Bull Conner siccing the dogs on protesters in Selma or Lt Calley ordering the mass murder of Vietnamese civilians.
We live in a different society now, and we are simply more willing to excuse and tolerate cruelty and barbarity committed by our own agencies. I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
celticdragon
@MikeJ:
The lack of outrage and even support of police abuse is what has changed.
MikeJ
@celticdragon: I don’t think so. It used to be that police brutality was just the way things were. The very idea that the public would “interfere” was laughable. It was the only way that policing was done.
At least now there is outrage. Not enough, but it does make the news when something happens.
licensed to kill time
@arguingwithsignposts:
Mancha is a name used in Mexico for pets with spots.
Ceniza means ash.
Actually, “Nym” itself is kinda neat.
Brian J
If torture was proven to get us somewhere, I’d still probably be against it, since I’d bet that it would still harm us more than it would help us. But at least they’d have something to work off of.
Can they identify any such situations like the one they usually describe–aside from what they’ve seen on “24,” of course? If they can, they we can at least have a “debate.” If not, they need to shut the fuck up. Now.
Punchy
Becuase if they’re evil enough to place a time bomb somewhere to kill a bunch of people, they’re certainly going to be honest and forthwith with interrogators when they apply some pain. Terrorists never lie about bomb locations while under stress and pain.
gopher2b
@MikeJ:
Yeah, but back in those days, you would cap the Sheriff, jump on your horse, head west and be no worse for wear.
In other words, there was a balance.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Is it wrong to hope this cretin gets linked with a plan to blow up a federal building and winds up with his balls wired to a car battery?
Oh well.
celticdragon
@MikeJ:
There was outrage thirty years ago. Police violence would guarantee demonstrations. Now, it is all filtered through the culture war left/right bullshit rubric. If you question why the force was necessary or justified, you are a DFH. Right thinking people know that we always have to wait to the police story to come out etc etc. The media actually goes along with the “controversy” instead of actually reporting that something really incredibly fucked up just happened.m It fly that way in 1963, and Edward R Murrow didn’t have somebody from the Birch Society debating with someone from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) about freedom riders and “illegal” sit ins.
Now, even the most obnoxious POVs are given ample time and seriously reported, while some 14 year old girl has to have a tazer barb removed from her brain.
http://jonathanturley.org/2009/07/08/mad-hatcher-police-chief-tasers-14-year-old-girl-in-head-for-running-from-mother-and-demands-charges-against-the-girl/
Where was the national outrage? Only on the DFH blogs. The law and order types, of course, said the girl had it coming…
No demonstrations. No outrage at right wing blogs for hurting kids or pregnant moms.
Tsulagi
Yeah, I got a laugh when I got to that line too.
But wait a minute. I thought nutters said Beauchamp was lying not only because it was unpossible for a tracked vehicle to run over a dog, but doubly so since it wasn’t SOP. And nobody can do anything unSOP.
But he’s saying torture shouldn’t be SOP. But also saying it should be done. There needs to be a nutter Rosetta stone.
mcsey
I would like point nothing other than that @gopher2b is pretty obviously a Chicagoan and thus not actually from Illinois but rather from Chicago. An unscientific but telling point ask a Chicagoan where they are from and they will correctly respond “Chicago”. Now ask some one not from Chicago where they are from and they will correctly respond, “Illinois” or possibly Whatevertown, Illinois.
To sum up Chicagoan — anyone from Chicago. Illinoisan — any person from the geographic 99.5% of Illinois that is not Chicago.
Oh and it’s nice to see Schock (who would be my Congressman save for a move out of the Peoria area) really step on his own dick. Next he’ll advocate giving nukes to Taiwan or something. Oh hell, he already did that.
flukebucket
Here in the great state of Georgia what he is saying is really not all of that controversial.
MikeJ
In the 1950s? Hell, I grew up in the south in the 1980s. That’s just the way it was. Police beat people up. It was considered part of their job.
You hear more about it now because more people disapprove of it. Which is good.
wasabi gasp
If someone has a loud ticking timex, I wanna throw my drink at them.
Dave
Oh my. What a proud day for the Republic.
Just Some Fuckhead
Torture in the defense of liberty is no vice, if I may torture that old cliche.
celticdragon
Ticking Time Bomb Scenario!!!
There is only one (known) ticking time bomb instance, and that was the sinking of the Austrio-Hungarian battleship Viribus Unitas. (A Tegetthoff dreadnought)
Italian “human torpedo” demolition experts attached timed mines to the battleship, but were captured before escape, they were transferred off the ship into custody, and the mines exploded. The ship sank with heavy loss of life including the Captain in Pola Harbor on November 1, 1918.
burnspbesq
If I had the money, I would buy 30 second spots in the Super Bowl, the Daytona 500, and the Final Four, and hire Kiefer Sutherland to just stand in front of a screen showing clips form “24” while saying over and over, “This is fiction. This is not real.”
Pangloss
Somebody should check the Internets to see how many times Aaron Schock (perfect name, by the way) has been mentioned in the same article with the phrase “the future of the Republican Party.” I live about 20 miles from his district, and I’ve heard it 650 times.
Remember November
So wanting our Intelligence Agencies to act like Stalinist thugs is a good thing?
GReat news for the Birchers!
gopher2b
@mcsey:
What did I do?
gopher2b
@MikeJ:
I was merely referring to the 1800’s. And it was a joke.
wasabi gasp
That fella should be caged in a zoo, just in case monkeys fly out his butt.
Michael D.
gocart mozart
“I would not limit our intelligence agencies‘ ability to get information from John McCain. If he has a critical piece of information that can save Vitnames lives, I don‘t believe we should—we should limit water-boarding or, quite frankly, any other alternative torture technique if it means saving Vietnames lives.”
Press Secretary for Ho Chi Minh
lost in GA
Holy Christ. That burned.
asiangrrlMN
Oh crap. He was born in MN. Damn. And, fuck you, Aaron Schock. Fuck you WITH your ticking time bomb. I am so goddamn fucking sick and tired of the pro-torture people. Though, I, too, am glad he came out and called it torture.
@arguingwithsignposts: Aaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwww! Kitteh! I like Tunchlet. Or Mini-Tunch. Soooo cute!
Eric S.
@gex:
The Chicago Police Department has had an on going scandal with torture. The primary perpetrators are mainly retired at this point.
Cris
If these guys are going to continue to insist on basing their policy positions on action movies, can someone explain to them that when you torture the wrong man, he will give you a war you won’t believe?
smiley
Don’t get me started on Aaron. He’s a pure wingnut. How he won the seat held by Bob Michael and Ray LaHood (both Bradley Univ. grads, as is Aaron), is beyond me. It’s a pretty moderate republican area. I guess it shows how radicalized the party establishment has become. The voters in that area, on the other hand, just vote for the R without knowing much else.
@gopher2b: Peoria is not a farm town (added: and so what if it is?). It’s a manufacturing town, if anything.
The Populist
@MikeJ:
Nobody is pretending here. Even the border patrol is roughing up Canadian citizens and making things up about the guy.
These tactics may not be new, fair enough, but are coming back in a BIG way and are increasing (hence my original point) thanks to the new technologies that blow away anything they had in the 1800s.
The Populist
@celticdragon:
Celtic Dragon, I am whistling in the wind on the topic. Most of my friends lean right unfortunately so when it’s brought up the response is always “what did they do wrong?” What most white middle class suburban types need to wake up and realize is…one day it could be you and it may be something as minor as being pulled over, looking annoyed and the office decides to go Rodney King on somebody for it.
I was pulled over recently in a tony suburb of Los Angeles for rolling through a stop sign. Fine, I deserved the ticket but the cop collected my info and decided to make me wait for 20 minutes while he gabbed with a person he knew who stopped to say hi. He then gave me an attitude about my insurance card expired (which he could easily have looked up since the insurance companies report the info to police databases in California) and asked me to get out of the car.
I was polite, I didn’t do anything to provoke him. He must have been having a bad day. 40 minutes later he lets me go with a ticket and lectures me about rolling through stops.
Now he didn’t crack my skull BUT he did abuse his power by not moving along with the ticket. One day I fear a cop may do more than that if he/she is in a bad mood.
gopher2b
@smiley:
I grew up in a town of 1500 people. I can say whatever I want about farm towns.
This is his district (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IL-18_congressional_district.gif)
It’s pretty rural.
celticdragon
@The Populist:
Yep. Another unaccountable person with a badge and a gun.
You always have it coming to you, didn’t you know?
kommrade reproductive vigor
@Michael D.: Howdya do that?
smiley
@gopher2b: Okay. I wasn’t writing about the district, which is as you say pretty rural. You called Peoria a “little farm town”. I know it isn’t. That’s all. And fuck Aaron Schock. I’ll bet he’ll be going for statewide office or to replace what’s-his-name (ah yes, Burris). His ambition knows no bounds.
gocart mozart
@gocart mozart:
Question, I tried to edit my post because I had a couple of spelling errors and the edit function said I did not have permission to do so. What gives? Has anyone else had this problem?
Batocchio
I’m so sick of these torture apologists casually advocating atrocities, especially since they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Torture doesn’t work for intel, and at the very least, before you advocate something that horrible, you should do some research, talk to some experts, etc. He’s more dumb than evil, though, even if like Rivkins and the Cheneys (shameless scumbags) he’ll claim no one was tortured.
mclaren
Yes indeedy, torture should be reserved for special occasions — like any day that ends in a “y,” f’rinstance.
Arakasi
@gocart mozart:
Ah hell. We don’t even have to go back to Vietnam. McCain announced to the country during his campaign that he had a sure fire plan to catch bin Laden, that he apparently hasn’t revealed to Obama. He’s admitted that he has information vital to this country’s future.
I say we waterboard him until he reveals this super secret plan
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@mclaren:
I heard that it was any month with a vowel.