Monday, December 10th, 2007...7:40 am
Yeah, and He Can’t Have Any Opinions on Thumbscrews, the Rack or the Strappado…
I returned from Mass yesterday morning, turned on the teevee and there was Jon Kyl being interviewed by Wolf Blitzer.
Wow, that killed any sort of closeness to God right there.
Kyl engaged in a bit of rhetorical silliness that I still haven’t figured out: he refused to give his opinion on whether waterboarding is torture or not because it would reveal sources and methods.
Eh? Somehow, John McCain isn’t afraid to say that it is. I suppose that Kyl’s homestate colleague doesn’t care about national security or the lives of the troops as much as he does. We’ll see if he says this to him in person sometime.
Folks like Rudy Giuliani seem to almost brag that they would use such tactics, until a reporter asks if they regard it is as torture, then it all of a sudden is a problem to talk about it at all. It’s only a national security problem if you are talking to the press but not if you are talking to salivating Republican primary voters.
Why not take this a bit further? Can Kyl have an opinion on, say, the use of an iron maiden? (the device, not the band) Or would this damage our security?
The silly part about this is the thinking that the al-Quaeda high command is glued to American political talk shows in the hopes of finding clues as to what techniques they should expect. Given that many of these guys come from countries where torture is routine, I have an inkling they already have that covered.
NB - Credit where credit is due: Kyl was critical of the CIA’s destruction of the tapes of the interrogations. He noted that it is possible to have kept the identity of the agents involved in the questioning secret.
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