It’s amazing to watch the right-wing noise machine in action. The bin Laden talking point they’ve settled on is that he was caught because of intelligence obtained via torture. Therefore, we should torture more! Therefore Obama should apologize to the CIA (Bushie March Thiessen actually wrote that today)!
Next week David Gregory will be asking Democrats if they need to apologize for opposing waterboarding. Even the liberal Ruth Marcus and Jonathan Alter will agree that this may have been the kind of “ticking bomb” scenario where torture can be necessary.
There is absolutely no topic they can’t do this with. If conservative elites had decided to rally behind birtherism, David Gregory would have asked Democrats why Obama wouldn’t just release the damn thing.
Steve M.
Nine years = ticking bomb.
I’d say you were crazy if I didn’t know for certain that seemingly sane people will actually say that.
Cat Lady
It’s the only thing they’ve got. Pathetic and disgusting, but that’s who they are, and that’s what they’re running with.
Xecky Gilchrist
I’m curious to see how this plays with the public. And a bit surprised they’re not focus-grouping things like “do you think torture = awesome?” before running with it, because it’s pure politics anyway (though I will concede that anyone who would consider using torture advocacy as a political club is a sick puppy to begin with.)
I imagine they’ll have to walk it back or drop it pretty quickly. I hope so, anyway.
PeakVT
You have to admit that their position on torture has certain truthiness to it.
General Stuck
Forget it DougJ, it’s Tinseltown on the Potomac
Fred
I just laugh at them. Look….if you are that stupid to buy into this crap you will believe anything so what is the point arguing with people like this. Life is too short.
As the saying goes, if you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything. The person who said that had these people in mind.
Emma
Rot is eating away the roots of the so-called “media” in this country. The few people who manage to get it right more than fifty percent of the time are drowning in the sea of their colleagues’ mediocrity. A few are downright evil –because when you’re knowingly spreading lies, you’re not just being mediocre.
It’s horrifying to watch, really.
EconWatcher
The usual problem Democrats have is that our story is complicated (deficit spending during a recession has multiplier effects), and their story is simple, even if stupid (in hard times, families have to tighten their belts–shouldn’t the government do it too?)
On this one, though, the situation is reversed: Bush couldn’t get Bin Laden. Obama did. Simple.
They can go into some convoluted b.s. about how policies in the old administration enabled this, even though they had seven years from 9/11 to catch Bin Laden and couldn’t, blah, blah, blah. I can’t see that going anywhere.
Villago Delenda Est
The stupid. It burns.
The way to deal with Thiessen is to waterboard his vile fascist ass for a few hours, get him to confess to planting the bomb in the engine room of the Maine, and then use that evidence at his trial for his role in the fomenting of the Defenestration of Prague and see how fast it takes to get tossed out of court.
Maude
Why are the Bushies running around trying to justify what they did and went along with. This is like the funhouse mirrors.
After WWII, war crimes were proscecuted and some who were found guilty were executed.
What changed? The laws against torture are on the books. Not only the US but international law as well.
Fred
@Xecky Gilchrist:
Just keep repeating that Donald Rumsfeld who was the secretary of defence at the time said we never got any actionable intelligence from waterboarding.
If they choose to believe Faux Noise over the Defense secretary they are hopeless anyways.
sukabi
is it remotely possible that there is a case coming up here in the US that will openly challenge the legality of Bush’s torture program and that this open push for torture practices is to foment public support to sway the court?
zach
Bush stopped torturing when he got caught (he gave an address explaining that they had tortured a few people who were now coming to GTMO and we’d torture no more). Ergo, Bush and his administration did not think the benefit of torture was worth the consequences, morality aside.
The argument should really end there. The folks arguing that Obama should torture everyone we capture no matter what didn’t torture anyone for some four or five years. They just want someone else to do it so they’re no longer singularly horrible actors in American history.
KG
@Xecky Gilchrist: they haven’t learned. They got away with it for a few years because there was a fictional character on the teevee every week that was showing how well it worked in a fictional world. Now they don’t have that cover, and the notion that it’s the bad guys who torture – not the good guys – is seeping back into the American subconscious… at least I hope it is.
Crashman
Started seeing this idea on various people’s Facebook statuses about three hours after the news broke on Sunday. Amazing how quickly it travels.
gnomedad
This Ed Show clip is pretty good on the topic.
Chris
In a sense, I can’t really blame them. They desperately need to find something, anything, to say “but Bush was still right and Obama was still wrong.” This may be bullshit, it may be a weak straw to grasp, but it’s still the strongest thing they have. Which is a sad commentary in and of itself.
Of course, there’s another way they can win: they can simply say “this is a victory for America, and today we, the President, the CIA, the armed forces and all Americans should stand together and celebrate it,” rallying around the flag as it were the same way Democrats did after 9/11. But they just can’t: that would negate the us-versus-them-athon they depend on to survive in politics, and it’s absolutely vital for them that this be seen as a Republican victory, not simply an American one.
They are who they are. Like I said… you can’t really blame them for that. But damned if you can’t loathe them for it.
Fred
@EconWatcher: I just mess with their heads. They are hopeless to argue with on facts since facts simply do not matter to them.
Bonus points if you can wrap Jesus into the message somehow. That always seems to throw them for a loop. Try “Would Jesus torture his enemies”?
sukabi
@zach: did they actually stop it or did they “off-shore” it?
Mike in NC
@Xecky Gilchrist:
The Wingnut Wurlitzer: Daily Beast sez their new polls indicate death of OBL means Obama remains as unpopular as ever.
FOX News will manage to turn that into a net negative by the end of the week, and John McCain will appear on several Sunday morning talk shows to shake his head over the administration’s “mistake” of killing Bin Laden.
Loneoak
Actually, I think it could be worse: he’ll ask Democrats if they need to apologize for not water boarding more and doing it personally. If only Carl Levin had personally shocked the testicles of KSM, we could have killed OBL three times already.
Obama needs to put Panetta out in front on this and clearly articulate what happened and why torture was unnecessary and often counterproductive. I know Obama dislikes doctrines, but the shift to human intelligence and away from torture is what got OBL. Shrub’s Army failed, so let’s get some intelligent public conversation about why.
Hill Dweller
So the Bushies purportedly had a vital piece of information acquired through torture, but still couldn’t catch OBL. Convsersely, Obama took the same info and caught/killed OBL. Doesn’t that just prove Obama is more competent?
zach
Also, we began interrogations of multiple high-level detainees with torture (as per the DOJ OPR report, the CIA OIG report, etc). The claim that anything gained by torture couldn’t have been gained otherwise as or more easily was never tested. The one somehwat clear case we have with KSM leans against torture working very well.
Jay C
@Xecky Gilchrist:
Welcome to today’s Republican Party! One thing you gotta hand to them: they’re quick off the mark: Osama bin Laden is barely cold, and they’re already desperately thrashing around for something – anything – to take the spotlight off President Obama, and his success.
The really sick thing is, that it’s halfway working: our “mainstream” media has devoted, as usual, a remarkable amount of time and space to GOP deflection and BS – of course, without ever calling it out.
I would hope that, instead of just bloggers, someone in the Administration, someone high-up and authoritative would take the opportunity to slap down the “torture worked” meme once and for all: but so far, I haven’t seen it. Yet.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
This is the type of crap that I’m getting from the wingnuts in my family:
On 5/4/11 9:05 AM:
refresh my memory…
Wasn’t it Obama, who wanted to close Gitmo and other CIA detention centers, stop all methods of advanced interrogation and have his Atty. General prosecute CIA operatives who engaged is such acts.
Even the friggin NY Times had to acknowledge that the name of the courier was discovered through advanced interogation methods.’
But wait a minute, what if instead of water boarding detainees, we made them listen to countless hours of Pelosi and Reids speeches ???
Date: Wednesday, May 4, 2011, 10:24 AM
absolutely correct.
Bush administration created gitmo prison so that they can be prevented from weeny dogooders.
so actually it was the Bush/Cheny system that ultimately resulted in bin Laden’s capture.
seems all the young cum bay ya types forgot that.
remember what happened when they tried to ‘try the blind sheik’ here in the states?
his court appointed A
ACLU (read: ugly and super fat) lawyer was caught smuggling secret messages out to his followers. That was under the Clinton admin. They should have put her in the same cell as him.
The Republic of Stupidity
Why does Diane Feinstein hate America so?
PS
@Fred: Agreed. There are times when ridicule and satire do not work, and then there are times when unrestrained laughter is just devastating. I think this is one of them — we know they’re lying, they know they’re lying, and most of the public knows they’re lying. Add in the fact that Obama’s poll bump is substantial and real (though probably evanescent) and we can point fingers and say (accurately) that the torture apologists are grasping at straws. That’s exactly when ridicule works.
Martin
Even the right-wing Dalai Lama:
I’m sure Joe Beese and Canadian Observer will be along any minute to denounce the Dalai Lama as a bloodthirsty imperialist.
MattF
Ya don’t think they feel a teensy bit, um, guilty about it? That damn itch just won’t go away. And scratching just makes it worse when it comes back.
Villago Delenda Est
@Hill Dweller:
Obama is still Near. He could personally capture and kill every Muslim on the planet, to include Keith Ellison, and he’d still be a Kenyan Islamofascist Soshulist Ghey Near person.
joeyess
The American Media has become sort of a short cut to thinking for the American people. These issues are difficult to digest and most people would just rather have it explained to them in simple, easy to understand terms.
there’s a reason that there are literally thousands of unassembled IKEA desks and bedroom dressers lying around garages of this nation.
AkaDad
Some women say that I’m well endowed. I can’t get them on record to prove it, so you’ll just have to believe me.
Chris
@Crashman:
Shit. One of my yellow-dog Republican acquaintances had it up literally before the speech even started, “I give full credit to President Bush.” She didn’t even have the bullshit excuse at the time, she just knew it was Dubya.
Those people are fucking loons. On the other hand, talk to them before they get their script and all they can do is babble like idiots. Occasionally, it’s funny as hell.
Mary Jane
@Fred
They worship a god who tortured his own son. They can justify anything with their holy book.
eta: Obviously more coffee is needed before attempting to blockquote.
Amanda in the South Bay
I think “fuckwads” would be a good idea for a new tag. Just in case “sociopaths” isnt strong enough.
Mark S.
Marc Thiessen, baby faced torture lover.
Silver Owl
Wingnuts always get seriously pissy when something happens that can be seen as an accomplishment and it does not center around a manly rich white conservative man with a penis 10miles long, shoulders wider than an airport runway, talking like he’s spent his life living a Chuck Norris flick in his head, screaming Jesus and bragging about having 1000s of high powered weapons. Oh and makes the village idiots swoon.
Everything is about the emotional damage of today’s wingnuts.
slag
I’m more and more seeing liberals as a bunch of Stockholm Syndrome victims. Granting concessions we have absolutely no business and no cause granting. Getting the shakes whenever we hear the rumblings of the noise machine engines. It’s easy to see the rationale behind it all. But it’s also easy to see how it just needs to stop. Unless we want to spend our whole lives feeling confounded by this problem, maybe we should change course. And quit clinging so strongly to our persecutors.
slag
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: I hope you’re correcting the record.
Mark S.
@Mark S.:
Oh, and Marc’s argument isn’t that torture produce information, but it allows interrogators to gauge cooperation.
That is such utter bullshit. There is absolutely no reason to torture someone in order to figure out if they’re cooperating. It’s just pure sadism.
BTD
Suppose Gregory says “assuming arguendo, . . .” Will it be ok then?
singfoom
Gah, this meme and the endless discussion on the practicalities of torture are really hurting me. I’ll do anything, please please make it stop!
elmo
@Mary Jane:
Worse than that. They don’t worship him despite that, like it’s a minor peccadillo compared to all the other ways he’s awesome. They worship him because of it. They’re grateful for it.
Here’s a god who makes up a set of rules, and then decides that all human beings have broken them at birth. We’re all “sinners.” So he decides that we should all suffer for eternity. But since he’s basically a capricious, sadistic sonofabitch, he says “Whatever, as long as somebody suffers it’s all good. I’ll torture and kill my son instead.”
And these knobs fall all over themselves to thank him for it, and use it as proof of his “grace” and “mercy.”
Mandramas
@Mark S.: Torture is a weapon of psychological warfare. If you are thinking to become an enemy of US and you know that they are torturing people like you in Guantanamo, you’ll think it twice. Torture is a message to the others, uncaught or potential terrorist “Don’t mess with us, baby”
It is simple as that. All the information gathering is just a side product used to justify it in first place. But really, betrayal and corruption are simply better and more efficient ways to get information.
SenyorDave
Thiessen should be tortured. If we’re going to go back to torture, they’ll have to have a practice subject. I volunteer Marc Thiessen. He should take one for the team.
Rick Taylor
The whole narrative is bad for the G.O.P. Bush failed to anticipate 9/11, failed to catch Bin Laden, and eventually Bush even said catching Bin Laden wasn’t at all important. And now he’s been killed under the administration of the soshulist Democrat who pals around with terrorists. The smart thing for Republicans would be to applaud and otherwise let time pass, but it’s not surprising that can’t resist amending such an uncomfortable narrative, to somehow give as much of the credit as they can to Republicans and Republican policies.
danimal
Lotsa talk about how many predictions pundits get right. I’m pretty sure that Thiessen is always wrong. Especially regarding torture.
In the interests of accountability, any bets on whether I was right? From BJ on June 7, 2010:
We may be in Afghanistan for a long time, but not necessarily. Domestic politics are crucial to understanding our Afghan commitments.
Timeline for Afghanistan withdrawal:
Date X—Osama Bin Laden captured or killed.
Date X+7—New timeline for Afghan withdrawal announced.
Date X+180—Last American servicepeople leave Kabul, shaking the dust off their shoes.
We’re not really doing nation building; we’re conducting the biggest manhunt in history.
Disco
Good thing that no one under the age of 80 watches Meet the Press.
Mary Jane
@elmo: Well said. Agree x100.
Svensker
@Fred:
He’s now recanted and said torture probably did play a role. Think Progress has it I believe.
MattW
If torture works so well, shouldn’t we, uh…legalize it? C’mon Thiessen, cowboy-up and call for the legalization of this critical tool in our arsenal against terrorism. It must sting to know that Bush and company broke the law and still couldn’t get the bad guy. They became war criminals for nothing. Not just war criminals…incompetent war criminals. That’s your legacy, scumbag.
catclub
@Hill Dweller: As I like to put it, the key difference is not in the military or CIA, but in the civilian leadership.
Presumably the military is just as brave and competent now as it was under Bush. The only other possibility is that the military was incompetent under Bush.
Mark S.
@Mandramas:
Then why did the Bush administration keep their torture program secret? They only admitted it when they got caught, and then it was only used on three guys, etc.
MagicPanda
@EconWatcher:
I don’t think the Democratic story is necessarily more complex. My belief is that Democrats don’t know how to say things clearly.
Instead of “deficit spending during a recession has multiplier effects”, couldn’t we say
“we shouldn’t be taking money out of people’s hands until private businesses are hiring again” or
“our first priority needs to be creating jobs”
or something like that?
lonesomerobot
As said on another thread (sorry for the re-run), it seems that one way to persuade others that torture is wrong is to pull back the curtain and ask, “why else would someone want to falsify the facts of how this happened unless they knew their argument doesn’t stand on its own merits?”
Torture apologists literally need to piggyback on the success of other methods to somehow “prove” that their way is the right way.
Mandramas
@Mark S: It was not a secret, c’mon. It was not “official”. A government that official endose torture can’t stand face internationally. It is better to make it a public secret that everyone know but nobody admit. This is one of the oldest tricks in the book, c’mon, don’t be so naive. China, Russia also does, and everyone knows.
Asshole
@elmo:
There are plenty of reasons to dislike Christianity without mangling its theology with erroneous caricatures. The nature of sin and redemption in Christian theology is markedly different from your portrayal of it- for example, they’d say that sin is bad because it’s a voluntary turning away from God, who is love. They’d say that the son of God isn’t crucified by God, but by every human, every time we sin. They’d say that sin and damnation are not God’s sadism, but rather, humanity’s masochism. They’d say that our masochism causes Christ’s torture- and, one could effectively use Christian theology to argue that the people sadistically advocating torture are sinning, and in their sadistic eagerness to torture Muslims are also torturing Christ with their masochistic rejection of God.
Like I said, it’s probably all a bunch of bullshit. But that’s no reason not to be accurate about it even if it is a bunch of bullshit. By way of analogy, one can find plenty of things to dislike about sharia law without saying it’s all about infant cannibalism or something.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@slag:
It doesn’t make any difference with my wingnut relations. This week I’m having fun taunting them.
Shoemaker-Levy 9
That bomb ticked a long time. Eight or nine years.
Are we still dignifying this crap with refutation? Remember when you first learned simple Aristotelean logic and the teacher made up the stupidest fucking syllogism he could think of to illustrate a faulty deduction? “Torture caught bin Laden” is that stupid.
Shoemaker-Levy 9
@Asshole:
No, standard Christian doctrine is that all are born sinful.
Tsulagi
And they will always say it. Birther deathers know the truth. It dwells in the closed airspace between their ears. They don’t hear any heretical facts…
Well shit, that would mean the courier information was obtained through normal interrogation techniques. Since they know the truth, of course only not-real Americans would spread those facts. Like this America hater…
slag
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: I know. But you can also taunt them with their own ignorance, which has a certain charm of its own.
Laertes
The wingnuts are REALLY pissed that OBL wasn’t taken alive. They were very much looking forward to seeing him tortured, and using his case to further undermine the case against torture.
They’re also, obviously, terrified that this’ll lead to a prompt withdrawal from Afghanistan. It’s an article of faith on the right that the War On Terror must last forever.
jaleh
It is amazing to watch these Republican jerks. If it’s the deficit, it’s Obama’s fault but catching Osama, it’s Bush’s victory.
I keep asking my husband(who is a physician) “what is wrong with these people”? and he keeps saying “it’s genetic”…but I go on asking again and again!
Asshole
@Shoemaker-Levy 9:
Yep, because our nature is to turn away from God and do evil things, according to this theology. None of us have ever been born perfect, none ever will. Except Jesus, who was a little bit special. Etc., etc. Still not the inherently pro-torture sadism-religion it’s portrayed as in this thread. However, people in power have always found it a useful tool to justify such actions. People in power can use any doctrine to justify anything. Modern America waterboards people so that we won’t be Nazi-appeasers like Neville Chamberlain. Sophistry’s a bitch.