Hayden won’t talk torture in public

[sabra]

http://www.krqe.com/expanded.asp?ID=15203

Hayden won’t talk torture in public
Source: AP

CAPITOL HILL -- The general tapped by President Bush to head the CIA told a Senate committee today he'll only answer questions about the interrogation of terror suspects behind closed doors.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., wanted to know whether it's acceptable to strap prisoners to a plank and dunk them in water until they nearly drown. Gen. Michael Hayden wouldn't answer it publicly.

Hayden also declined to make a public comments about how long terror suspects should be held without a trial.

Earlier in the hearing, Hayden defended as legal surveillance without court order by the National Security Agency, the agency he used to head. NSA launched that program after the Sept.11, 2001, terror attacks on Washington and New York City.

“I could not not do this,” Hayden said.

[cantstandbush]

1. So that means there was and is a hell of lot of it going on. n/t

[al bupp]

2. Exactly what I was thinking /eom

[Jack Rabbit]

3. If he can't answer that with a simple "No", he shouldn't be confirmed

How low have we sunk that we even need to have this discussion?

[pinerow]

4. Feinstein is going to vote to confirm...this is just

public posturing...:wtf:

[gratuitous]

5. "I could not not do this"

And we slip further down the slope.

In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, all sorts of wild ideas gained some currency, few wilder than justifying torture. And no matter which far-fetched scenario you spin out, all you have to do is legitimize it once. Once the template exists, then it's up to the interrogators to fit every suspect into it. Oh, but there's a ticking time bomb set to go off somewhere! And soon! We have to stick a couple of bamboo shoots under this guy's fingernail, or he won't talk.

Quickly that goes from the "we know there's a ticking time bomb" to "there might be a ticking time bomb." Well, if "might" is as good as "is," what stops "could be" from substituting for "might be"? And if there "could be" a ticking time bomb, well, there's no stopping us from assuming that anyone we bring in has knowledge of a ticking time bomb. In fact, we can't take the chance that there's a ticking time bomb, and we just don't know about it yet. Get out the electrodes, Jack. We have to ascertain whether this wet end knows about a ticking time bomb somewhere.

How could it happen? Could it happen here? Think so? Think no? Gen. Hayden will tell you:

We can not not torture. We must know. What if a bomb goes off, and by torturing someone we'd have found it? Torture passes from an option to an imperative.

[Ezlivin]

7. Let's torture Hayden until he speaks up

These fuckers are just so awful I don't know where to begin.

They don't represent the America I remember.

[RedStateShame]

6. If anyone is allowed to keep things private,

it's not this guy. Doesn't he know that--everybody with me, now--EVERYTHING CHANGED AFTER 9/11??

[struggle4progress]

8. kick

:kick:

[HuffleClaw]

9. this guy is a horror

bush's himmler.

[saigon68]

10. The mother*******r even looks like Himmler