Re: Terrorism, torture and US foreign policy
The CIA director was very direct in talking about the torture as having provided us with a lot of useful information. This has been confirmed to me by people who were and are in "the know." That being said, I have the following opinions:
1) The Bush administration made a HUGE mistake (one of among countless mistakes) in stating that non-uniformed, enemy combatants would be treated according to the Geneva Convention and then violated those conventions and tried to hide it behind legalese.
2) The Bush administration would have been much better off by simply stating that these combatants would not be treated according to the Geneva Convention. If our soldiers were caught, they certainly were not provided with those "niceties." Frankly, the "high value" prisoners should have been tortured for all of the information and then tortured to death.
3) This war on terrorism is real and really dangerous. If we are not willing to fight this war to win, then a whole lot of misery is ahead of us. A zealot who is hell-bent on killing us is better off dead BEFORE an act, rather than after the act. If they do not have any civil rules of engagement, neither should we. We need to fight to win by taking out their leadership wherever, whenever, and however it can be done. If torture is a tool to extract information then so be it. If it is a clear sign to them that we will go to any extreme to wipe them off the face of the earth then so be it. They are not going away, so maybe we need to fight to win the minds of poor, disenfranchised Muslims, while at the same time, eliminate the terrorists any way we can, and as fast as we can.
4) We wasted FAR TOO MANY LIVES AND DOLLARS by the Bush Folly in Iraq. Those that advocated for this folly were the ones without mud on their boots! When they had a chance to serve, just look at their records, it speaks for itself.
Marc Abrams
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