OK, I'm officially disappointed in my President. It was bad enough that he failed to decisively end Bush's extraordinary rendition program (claiming he'll only make sure it's no longer abused); and that he blocked prosecutions for top-level officials who authorized torture. Now, Obama has decided...
torture
Lots of people are still wasting their breath arguing about how effective torture may be. Now, Joshua Tucker of the Monkey Cage is ruminating about the ethical responsibility of social.
Spencer has some thoughts:And here's how it's problematic for Obama, Blair and Panetta to indicate to the CIA that they'll stand by CIA officers who relied on OLC guidance for.
The Bush administration authorized the waterboarding of prisoners. Waterboarding is torture. Torture is prohibited by the Convention Against Torture, to which the U.S. is a signatory. This treaty requires a state to prosecute officals under its jurisdiction who violated the treaty. The U.S. Constitution makes...
A while ago, Ross Douthat wrote a meandering, self-indulgent post about his feelings on torture, suggesting that while he felt torture was bad, he could also understand why the Bush.
A while ago I read this interesting New Yorker profile of Joel Surnow. As is well known, Surnow's fascination with the ticking time bomb scenario provides repeated narrative justification for.
There's a good piece by Tim Golden in today's Times about the detention center at Bagram, where conditions are even more bleak than at Guantanamo; conditions are overcrowded (the population having increased from around 100 to nearly 700 since 2002), detainees have no access to...
Sully makes a good point:Notice also that this isn't the ticking time bomb case that Charles [Krauthammer] has previously invoked to defend torture. There was no imminent threat to hundreds.
Clarification, please:The president said it was not right for senators to press Mr. Mukasey about interrogation techniques on which he has not been briefed. When Mr. Bush was asked whether.
Silly rabbit; treating your captive as a guest may be more effective at actually getting, you know, intelligence, but that hardly means that it works as effectively at torture. You see, the misconception here is that torture is designed to elicit information. In fact, torture...
Further evidence that a Giuliani presidency would be like Nixon on crystal meth:Ms. Gustitus said: “[Mukasey] said he didn’t know if waterboarding is torture.”Mr. Giuliani said: “Well, I’m not sure.