Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire An open letter to the Attorney General from a real prosecutor

Left in the hands of folks like you, we would have suffered some real nasty attacks. Lotsa folks killed. Personally I'm real glad folks like you didn't run this war in the early days at least. I don't care if they were subjected to strappado. Attacks were prevented.

Just look at how many members here think that government torture is just fine. You would normally expect that gun owners and hunters would be highly attuned to the risks associated with increasing the level of arbitrary power the central government usurps. As I recall it, that's the way it was ten years ago and earlier.

Actually, the problem before 9/11 wasn't a lack of intel or adequate investigation. The FBI was right on top of these investigations. The problem was that their upper ranks were telling agents to back off their investigations of suspicious Muslim activity. That was the only thing that needed changing. Well that, and getting a handle on the border and our immigration policy, combined with keeping an extra careful watch on Muslims in the United States, particularly at airports. There was no need to institute a Department of Homeland Security. Nor was there a need for a so called Patriot Act. These were merely two examples of central government taking advantage of an opportunity to increase its power and thereby contract the liberty of every American.

"As government expands, liberty contracts." - President Ronald Reagan

You have have framed the conceptual error in this matter clearly. Although we all know murder is illegal, we also all know that not all killing is murder and illegal. So, presuming that all killing is murder leads you to a mistaken conclusion.

The analogy in the case of the harsh interrogation of terrorists (by definition illegal non-combatants) captured on the field of battle is assuming that they have any rights - they don't and are not protected by any international conventions and certainly not by the US Constitution. It is also erroneous to assume that they have been tortured - no evidence of lasting physical or psychological harm - to wit, many of those released returned to their abominable profession, namely terrorism vs. Americans.

As Steve already pointed out, when the National Defense Authority determines that a specific process is legal to eradicate terrorism, there are no countervening international norms that would supercede it. We seem to forget that the overarching responsibility of a national government is to protect the rights of the nation and that no international or supernational (e.g., UN) authority supercedes this obligation.

We wouldn't be having this hypothetical, self-righteous discussion if our fathers and grandfathers hadn't acted in the best interest of our Nation in WWI & II. We'd all be good little Nazis really torturing away without a care. Have we lost our national identity so easily and so quickly?

TRH

Would you waterboard if it would save the life of someone you love?

I guess you would have to label the [bleep] to be released on US soil as "Replacement Citizens" for the ones Massacred on 9/11.

What has happened to my country.

...........or............You know he's right......but our plan will lead for the need....the need for a "Bigger fatter,rights grabbing, gun removing Government ! ..."Oh Yeah"!

Interesting Hawkeye. The FBI has never been on top of ANYTHING I have ever seen and I had plenty of interaction with them on the job. Consider how incompetent they are when they have someone wired,shadowed ,surveilled and damn near tucked in at night. The multiple attempts to successfully prosecute the Gottis comes to mind. They can hardly hit a stationary target.Hell, they couldn't even figure out what the "Beltway Sniper(s) was until the dumbasses literally caught themselves. They don't make a move until they "see" enough to make a prosecution. Anti-terror is pro-active,not reactive and the Freddies miss the boat pretty badly on that count.

This question has been asked and answered by me something like a dozen times already. Do you ever read any of my posts?

Of course I would!

If my dog were missing and someone I trusted told me that you took him so your champion pit fighter could have a sparring partner in preparation for an upcoming match I'd probably break each of your bones in turn, asking each time where my dog was. But in a nation of laws, you have the right to be protected from me in my fit of rage, because you are presumed innocent before the law until after you've been tried and convicted.

Reading them is one thing. Sorting through the nonsensical blather, is another.

Steve,
Thanks for posting the letter. He's dead on. Anyone from the previous administration who cooperates with this one is asking to be scapegoated.

Hawk,
Man, waterboarding ain't torture. We agree on a lot of things, but take it from someone who's experienced it-it ain't torture, especially when applied to non uniformed terrorists who are not protected under any rule of law, since they operate outside of it. The "rights of man" argument won't hold water (no pun) as these people are not innocents snatched from their beds and interrogated for no reason. Each of them has given just cause for their detention and interrogation.

If the Raisuli and his minions want to let all of the tango's go and release them into the states, that's their prerogative, but going back and trying people for things done which were clearly within the law, and every effort was made to ensure such activities were so, is wrong. As Steve has pointed out, that's banana republic behavior-more evidence that we're moving in that direction under the new administration BTW.

You've never been subjected to waterboarding as torture. That was at best a simulation of torture, since it was voluntary and carried out by your own compatriots.Our government is not capable legally of acting outside the rule of law. Whenever it does so, it acts tyrannically and criminally. And, before you say it, warfare is not outside the law any more than I am outside the law when I shoot it out with home invasion robbers. There is no just cause for torture under our system. Can you think of a scenario where I may lawfully water torture you for information? Government only has authority to do things that you and I have loaned them the authority to do from the storage house of our personal sovereign powers. If that sovereign power doesn't exist in us as individuals, we cannot lend it to our government.

We have a basic disagreement about what constitutes torture. What I experienced, whether you choose to recognize it as such or not, is virtually the same techniques used on 3 detainees. You deem it torture, I do not, nor do respected legal minds in and out of the previous administration. We will just have to agree to disagree on this one, as you will never convince me otherwise, and I will never convince you.

If it is not torture, then the English language has faltered and been replaced by something altogether new.

If you have trouble understanding the meaning of severe physical pain or suffering, that's your dilemma,sport. Changing definitions to suit a miserably failing argument is your problem.

Lawyers and judges deal with the interpretation of words and their meanings everyday. Someday, maybe, you'll grasp that simple fact.

Mr. McCarthy has the heading ALL WRONG. There is nothing honorable about Eric Holder. He is another pawn of the liberal left just like his buddy Barak. kwg

Okay. Second question. In that situation would you not waterboard because it is (according to you) illegal?

I already said I would torture someone, given adequate motive.

If the government won't protect the citizens of the United States because of the necessity of using "illegal operations", we better have some new laws defining "illegal" to suit the citizens instead of the terrorists.

Wayne

Well then, assuming you are a moral person, you should recognize that there is a higher law that requires you to act to save someone.

There is a difference between "torturing" for a confession and "torturing" to save thousands pf people, especially when it's arguably not torture. If you don't see that, you are lost in your own argument.