Hillary Clinton Wouldn’t Torture A Terrorist To Save Your Life

Ken McCracken • September 27, 2007

Which is actually something of a flip-flop given that she formerly supported the “ticking time bomb” exception for allowing the torture of terrorist detainees.

Senator Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) ended her support for legalized torture at a debate in New Hampshire Wednesday night, splitting with her husband – and with her own recent stance on the charged issue.
“Senator Clinton, this is the number three man in Al Qaeda. We know there’s a bomb about to go off, and we have three days, and we know this guy knows where it is. Should there be a presidential exception to allow torture in that kind of situation?” moderator Tim Russert of NBC asked during the debate held at Dartmouth College.
“As a matter of policy it cannot be American policy, period,” Clinton responded, seconding the clear positions of Senators Barack Obama (Ill.)and Joe Biden (Del.).
But in a pair of interviews with the New York Daily News last October, Clinton outlined the same narrow exception that Russert described, and which had also been floated by former President Bill Clinton in an interview last year with National Public Radio.
“If we’re going to be preparing for the kind of improbable but possible eventuality, then it has to be done within the rule of law,” Clinton said at the time, in a telephone interview with this reporter, expanding on comments to the Daily News Editorial Board that there should be “lawful authority” for torture in some cases.
She said then that the “ticking time bomb” scenario would be a narrow exception to her opposition to torture.

I don’t know what’s worse. The idea that Hillary is now saying that she wouldn’t torture someone in order to possibly save thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of American lives or the fact that she apparently can’t make up her mind on the issue.
Do we want a national leader like that? Especially given her husband’s administration’s limp-wristed, legally-blinkered approach to fighting terrorism that was apparently so bad they had to send disgraced National Security Adviser (and current Hillary campaign adviser) Sandy Berger into the national archives to steal out terror-related documents in his underpants so he could destroy them.
Bush may not be perfect when it comes to national security. I think we could all name at least a dozen blunders he’s made on the issue, but at least he gets it unlike Hillary and the rest of the Dems.

Tags: Asshats, Politics, The Loony Left, War On Terror

http://Array Pilgrim

This kind of moral absolutism is truly scary. A nuke is about to go off, Ahmed knows where it is, and we can’t force him to tell us?

I don’t endorse torture, at least not in the medieval sense, but this is absurd. We doomed.
robert108

The term “torture” in the hands of the lefties has become imprecise. There are two meanings, and the lefties conflate the two, due to their usual ignorance and constant search for smear material.

The medieval(and current Islamic version) is meant to inflict pain and death for no purpose other than the desire to inflict pain and death on someone perceived as an “enemy”. Like stoning a promiscuous daughter, for instance.

The other kind is using physical duress in order to get intel from enemy combatants. It is not designed for disablement or death; in fact, that would be counterproductive. The most popular current method for gathering personal intel, waterboarding, inflicts neither physical pain nor the possibility of death. Instead, it produces extreme fear and anxiety, which tends to break down defenses.
The lefties lie when they speak as if there is no difference.
2Hotel9

This,”If we’re going to be preparing for the kind of improbable but possible eventuality, then it has to be done within the rule of law,”is the money shot. Democrats and their leftarded owners are going to use “rule of law” to engineer defeat and the submission of all human being to Islam. They believe they will be allowed to rule over the dhimmis, when in fact Muslims always kill those who collaborate in their invasion of an area.

History. It ain’t just a channel on the TV.
2Hotel9

Oh, and as for psychiatrists, turn me loose on their ass for 72 hours, I’ll show them how effective torture is. I’ll take all their money and have them ratting each other out so fast it would not be funny.
Bat One

Pilgrim,

Moral absolutism??? Hardly. This is the same tiresome, indecisive cowardice that Democrats are all too famous for. It is beyond comprehension that anyone would regard this as leadership.
Robin Crenshaw

This is why we sometimes sound so dumb to professionals in the psychiatric profession.

Look, torture makes people invent crap and claim anything to make the torture stop.

You want information? DRUG THEM. Cripes, guys, THINK about the track record on torture getting us what we want. Is it inhuman? I don’t know, and who cares? But it doesn’t WORK.

Pump them full of chemicals and you’ll get what you need.

You all read the Khalid Shaykh Muhammad Military Tribunal Transcript right? You bet he was tortured. But he admits to stuff in there that the U.S. military expressed doubts on. And because he took the fall, in SOME of those cases, we’ll never find out who really did all those plots. Al Qaeda isn’t just one guy but to read his transcript he takes credit for everything… I don’t think so. Drug him and keep him drugged for months and get every detail from him.
2Hotel9

Robin, let me try to be as gentle as possible. Torture works. Every. Single. Time. You ask a set of questions. Get the subjects responses. Then you ask another set of questions. Then another. Then another. Then another. Ask any police detective. They will explain it to you.

The leftards now define torture as asking questions. Period. Just asking questions, no physical component, no chemical component. Simply asking a question is torture according to the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party created rendition. That is the practice of sending prisoners to countries that will torture them.

So, the real question here is, why are you not turning your accusatory gaze and trembling, pointed finger at them?
robert108

But it doesn’t WORK.

If that were true, it wouldn’t be used for gathering intel. Since it is(in fact physical and psychological duress, as I have already explained), then it obviously works. You are wrong.
The thing about intel, RC, is that you will never know about it until it becomes unclassified, and that may be never. Again, you are assuming facts not in evidence.
http://sayanythingblog.com robport

Bat, I think Pil’s point was about Hillary taking a position that many on the left share: That there are no exceptions to bans on torture.

That’s an absolute position, and it’s as naive and cowardly as you indicate.

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