George W Bush Hillary Clinton supports the use of torture in circumstances deemed suitable by the President of the United States.
LISTEN: http://ia341224.us.archive.org/...
Waterboarding, as a tactic of "Coercive interrogation" is getting all the press these days. In my mind, it is without question a form of torture, it is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and is fundamentally counter to the values of the American ideal.
And so, as we focus on this single tree of brutality, we seem to be losing a focus on the forest of "Coercive interrogation".
HAS HILLARY CLINTON been watching too many episodes of "24," or is she just determined to prove that she really is entirely without principles?
Whichever it is, Clinton hit a new low last week, telling the New York Daily News that the president should have "some lawful authority" to use torture or other "severe" interrogation methods in a so-called ticking-bomb scenario.
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The ticking-bomb scenario has routinely been used to justify the legalization of torture in exceptional circumstances. This is how the argument goes: You capture the terrorist who has just placed a nuclear bomb somewhere in a major American city. If you can't locate and disarm the bomb, millions of people will die. If the terrorist won't talk, should you torture him until he tells you what you want to know?
When you put it that way, of course, few of us would decline to torture the terrorist. In a utilitarian sense, it's surely better to torture one bad guy than to allow the deaths of millions of innocents, right?
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In real life, interrogations are often fishing expeditions. Detainees might have critical information, but they might not. Do you torture or mistreat them when you're not completely sure? How much certainty do you need? How many lives must be at stake before torture is justified: 10 million, 10,000, 10, One?
It was about a year ago that Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, flew to California to meet with the creative team of the TV show "24".
Finnegan, who was accompanied by three of the most experienced military and FBI interrogators in the country, arrived on the set as the crew was filming. At first, Finnegan – wearing an immaculate Army uniform, his chest covered in ribbons and medals – aroused confusion: he was taken for an actor and was asked by someone what time his "call" was.
In fact, Finnegan and the others had come to voice their concern that the show's central political premise – that the letter of American law must be sacrificed for the country's security – was having a toxic effect. In their view, the show promoted unethical and illegal behavior and had adversely affected the training and performance of real American soldiers. "I'd like them to stop," Finnegan said of the show's producers. "They should do a show where torture backfires."
General Wesley Clark, speaking to Democracy Now host Amy Goodman at the 92nd Street Y, applauded the move by Finnegan.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you what you think of the dean of West Point, Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, together with a military interrogator named Tony Lagouranis and the group Human Rights First, going to the heads of the program 24, very popular hit show on FOX, to tell them that what they’re doing on this program, glorifying torture, is inspiring young men and women to go to Iraq and torture soldiers there, and to stop it?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: And not only that, but it doesn’t work. Yeah, Pat Finnegan is one of my heroes.
AMY GOODMAN: So what do you think about that?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I think it’s great.
AMY GOODMAN: And have you been involved in the conversation internally at FOX, which runs 24, to stop it?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, as far as I know, they actually put out a call to all the writers in Hollywood. My son’s a writer, and he was one of them who got a call. They were all told: stop talking about torture. It doesn’t work. So I think it was an effective move by Pat Finnegan.
AMY GOODMAN: So you support it?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Absolutely.
Listen again: http://ia341224.us.archive.org/...
After reading every word, watching every appearance and reading the syllable by syllable analysis of same by General Clark's supporters. I know, for a fact, that General Clark would in no way, shape, or form support such a statement by Hillary Clinton.
General Clark continues
I do know this, that there was a lot of pressure put on the men and women in uniform to come up with intelligence. I remember—I think it was either General Sanchez or General Abizaid, who stated that we don’t need more troops—this is the fall of 2003—we just need better information. Well, to me, that was immediate code words that we were really trying to soak these people for information.
And it’s only a short step from there to all the kinds of mistreatment that occur at places like Abu Ghraib. So we know that Al Gonzales wrote a couple of really—or authored, or his people authored and he approved, a couple of outrageous memos that attempted to define torture as deliberately inflicted pain, the equivalent of the loss of a major bodily organ or limb, which is—it’s not an adequate definition of torture. And we know that he authorized, to some degree, some coercive methods, which we have—and we know President Bush himself accepted implicitly in a signing statement to a 2005 act on military detainees that he would use whatever methods were appropriate or necessary. So there’s been some official condoning of these actions.
I think it’s a violation of international law and a violation of American law and a violation of the principles of good government in America. There have always been evidences of mistreatment of prisoners. Every army has probably done it in history. But our country hasn’t ever done it as a matter of deliberate policy. George Washington told his soldiers, when they captured the Hessians and the men wanted to run them through, because the Hessians were brutal and ruthless, he said, "No, treat them well." He said, "They’ll join our side." And many of them did. It was a smart policy, not only the right thing to do, but a smart policy to treat the enemy well. We’ve made countless enemies in that part of the world by the way we’ve treated people and disregarded them. It’s bad, bad policy.
As a matter of strategic history, it was more than twenty-five hundred years ago that Sun Tsu wrote,
Mix the captured chariots with our own, treat the captured soldiers well.
This is called defeating the enemy and increasing our strength
Moral Strength is what has enabled America to become the "Beacon of Hope".
Hillary Clinton would do well to remember that, with no equivocation.