(04-25-2009 11:26 PM)RobertN Wrote: (04-25-2009 05:03 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: I assume you mean conscience.
It has nothing to do with conscience.
Torture is a legally defined term and something either fits the definition or it does not.
The leftist approach that "it offends my conscience so therefore it must be torture" does not comply with the law.
Unfortunately, if this ever goes to any sort of trial, I suspect it will be a kangaroo court before a tribunal that has little concern for the law.
Of course. If a republican gets convicted you already have a built in excuse to not believe the truth.
First, I could care less about the republicans. The last republican I voted for was Ronald Reagan in 1980 (because we HAD to get rid of Jimmy Carter). I'm clearly on record as disapproving what Shrub and his bunch did.
What I do disapprove of is the kind of gotcha partisanship that has led to things like Monicagate and this. The more stuff like this we have, the harder it is for both parties to come together in the enter and give the American people good government. Monicagate was clearly the republicans appealing to the nuts on the far right, just as this is clearly the democrats appealing to the nuts like you on the far left.
Truth or falsity has nothing to do with it. The facts are not in dispute. The facts are pretty clear: Some people analyzed the applicable treaties and international conventions and concluded that waterboarding and certain other practices did not violate prohibitions against torture, and other people relied on those conclusions and carried out such practices. Reasonable, intelligent, knowledgeable people have read the applicable international law and reached differing conclusions on this issue.
So long as those are the facts, there is no crime. Under any legal system that I (or you) would care to live under, there cannot be a crime on those facts. Reading a law and reaching a conclusion about what it means is not a crime just because you came to power and have a different opinion. That is South American dictatorship stuff.
I think Obama realizes this (he is a great constitutional scholar, don't you know?) but has to go along with this charade to keep his left-wing nutcake following in tow. I think the Spanish officials who were considering war crimes prosecution figured this out, too.
What is scary is that the nutcakes like you won't give this a rest any more than the nutcake republicans were willing to give Monicagate a rest. We may have lost our best chance to get Osama bin Laden, and we did lose our best chance to do what was needed to keep the economic boom of the 90s going, because everybody took their eye off the ball to focus on Monica Lewinsky. Of course, if what we're missing out on this time is faster implementation of the Obamagenda, the maybe we need to spend as much time as possible on this stuff.
Robert, you're a left wing nut.
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Dems call for Impeachment of Interrogation Memo author
