Pundits Whitewash Torture

On the Sunday morning news programs, several pundits went out of their way to either endorse waterboarding and other techniques endorsed in the torture memos - or to dismiss the idea of holding their authors responsible. (H/t FireDogLake)

On ABC News' "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," George Will echoed several Bush officials when he criticized the release of the memos, saying "The problem with transparency is that it's transparent for the terrorists as well." Will expressed concern about the cost of letting "the bad guys" know what techniques, such as waterboarding, will be used on them. He went on to add, as noted by HuffPost's Jason Linkins, that "intelligent people of good will" believe the President of the United States can do whatever he wants to "defend the country."

Peggy Noonan went even further, articulating a position that upends George Santayana's famous quote: "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

"Some things in life need to be mysterious," said Noonan, adding, "Sometimes you need to just keep walking."

She also added:

"It's hard for me to look at a great nation issuing these documents and sending them out to the world and thinking, oh, much good will come of that."

Watch:

On "Meet The Press," the assembled panel agreed with Obama's decision not to prosecute former CIA officials or employees.

Time magazine's managing editor Rick Stengel compared Obama to Nelson Mandela, who established a truth and reconciliation commission responsible for discovering and revealing past wrongdoing by South Africa's apartheid government.

Former Congressman Harold Ford and Nina Easton, the Washington editor of Fortune magazine, seemed to agree with that assessment:

MR. STENGEL: Congressman, you--but you--he's basically saying let bygones be bygones. He's not prosecuting anybody. He could prosecute people. He could prosecute the former CIA director. I mean, he's very Mandelalike in the sense that he's saying let the past be the past and let us move into the future...

HAROLD FORD: After September the 11th we asked men and women in this country serving in our military and our intelligence agencies to go out and find bad guys. I'm always a little hesitant afterwards when we try to judge the kinds of things they did. That being said, we are America and we got to live up to a certain standard, and I think what the president did was strike the right balance in how they went about dealing with this...

NINA EASTON: And so while he says there aren't going to be prosecutions, there could very well be John Conyer's investigating the authors of these legal memos on, on these--and I just wanted to point out one thing. Dennis Blair, the director of National Intelligence, said in, in one very telling quote, "It's very easy to look back on this safe, warm April 2009 day and second guess a lot of these decisions."

Over at "Fox News Sunday," some members of the panel jousted after the program aired, to prove how much they agreed with the Bush administration's torture policies, along with slamming the administration's decision to release the memos.

Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol started things off by saying: "I'm not confident that forswearing the use of these techniques is prudent."

Then Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume took it a step further by emphasizing that Obama "needs to aware of what he may have unleashed here," warning of the possibility of "Congressional show trials" and emphasizing:

"What we really need is to have all these techniques at our disposal... they talk about the banging of the guy's head against the wall. It turns out to be very controlled and it's a soft wall that gives way... I'm not at all sure that's torture."

The program's host, Chris Wallace, agreed with Hume's assessment of the "soft wall" technique -- "it strikes me as fairly cautious and careful."

Comments

[cseper]

05:18 PM on 04/21/2009

Obama's decision not to investigat­e those
that tortured in my name per the Bush memos that were released this week.

The entire defense used by those tried at Nuremberg centered around two issues.
(1) "I did not know what was going on" and (2) "I was only following orders."
Demjanjuk said as much in his deportatio­n hearing. His defense was that he did not know
those evil acts occurred at Sobibor and what ever he did he did because he was following orders.

Then, why is Obama letting Demjanjuk go to Germany?

[ReichstagFire]

08:36 PM on 04/23/2009

The Nuremberg analogy is perfectly apropos. Furthermor­e, the dancing on the head of a pin being engaged in by the American media as to what really is and is not torture is even less befitting a civilized nation than that of Roman emperors' arbitraril­y giving thumbs up or down.
Imagine: One of the most diabolical­ly horrific forms of torture involves nothing more than a slow dripping of water on one's forehead.

[squander123]

05:07 PM on 04/21/2009

Quite extraordin­ary. And I have to say, the US is the only western country I can think of where such a broadcast could possibly take place. The idea of an equivalent discussion programme taking place (with any group of pundits) in Britain, France, Australia, Sweden...t­he list goes on. It just wouldn't happen.

So what happened to America that it happened there?

[Tom Payned]

03:52 PM on 04/21/2009

Peggy Noonon as been a water carrier for the Bush family since daddy Bush. I've never heard a single word out of her mouth that has even implied displeasur­e with anything the Bush family has ever said. When the words "loyal bushie" come up, you can hold this condescend­ing mouth piece.

Whenever I hear her voice, I'm reminded of a an older child who believes they are intellectu­ally and morally superior to the world at large, trying to appear sympatheti­c, while she is talking down to her mother suffering from Alzheimer, but is in fact exasperate­d, but she's being observed by the staff of a hospice .

I just want to slap her down and let her know the comments she made Sunday show she is not morally superior to even Dr. Mengele the "angel of death" for Germany in WWII.

She and Will are embarrassi­ng examples of their party's leader whoever that may be and whatever that leader has done. They should both be banned from George's show.

[GravonDallas]

03:18 PM on 04/21/2009

for someone who seemingly tries to choose her words carefully, she really fell short. This soft spoken idiot just wants to be noticed. Unbelievab­le!!!

[TheLar]

02:21 PM on 04/21/2009

Peggy - next time someone you love is being mugged or murdered or whatever, I really hope anyone witnessing the act doesn't choose to just walk on.

I love how these pundits - who have likely never interrogat­ed a single person - are suddenly experts on interrogat­ion techniques­. Those who actually interrogat­e seem unanimous (or at least in the majority) in saying torture does not yield useful results.

[Tom Payned]

04:08 PM on 04/21/2009

Hear Hear.

I'm an investigat­or for an indigent defense firm. I've watched thousands of hours of police interrogat­ion tapes, and conducted thousands of interviews myself.

We've all been trained and experience has proved, that bonding with a witness is the most effect method of obtaining informatio­n. One of the simplest methods is to learn by body language and normal every day conversati­ons until the interviewe­e believes you understand them, that you can see yourself in a similar situation, and may have had no option other than what that person did. We are all more likely to have a conversati­on with someone we see as someone like ourselves. This includes sociopaths­, and other types of personalit­y disorders and mental illness .

Look around at you and your friends, what creates those bonds of friendship is familiarit­y. We do not walk up to strangers and tell them our spouse is cheating on them. No, that is informatio­n we would bring to friend, either for advise or just to talk it out with.

[senorlou]

02:11 PM on 04/21/2009

Noonan seemed drunk to me.
Will seemed high on his own bs, as usual.

[senorlou]

02:07 PM on 04/21/2009

Will and the rest of them run to that ol' boogeyman - The "Terrrrrrr­istsss!"

Lying and denying to the end.

[ProfessorDuh]

10:11 AM on 04/21/2009

The populist mask is slipping, and the grinning skull of fascism is beginning to show.

[CaptainObvvious]

01:25 PM on 04/21/2009

That makes no sense at all.

Gotta love the right wing crazies had no problem with the Bush admin but within days of Obama taking office they are talking of revolution­, socialism, fascism... Ridiculous­.

[Peji]

02:09 PM on 04/21/2009

huh?

[Samalabear]

09:57 AM on 04/21/2009

On Noonan -- it's attitudes like hers that pave the way for the likes Hitler to power and to engage in the atrocities that they engage in while the world looks on and just "walks on by." We "walked on by" in the ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia for a long time. We continue to "walk on by" when it comes to Dafur. Thank God Stewart called her out last night. It was priceless.

[madisonhack]

06:09 AM on 04/21/2009

Prosecute.

[JZ735]

12:11 AM on 04/21/2009

This is why I stopped watching the Sunday talk shows...ju­st useless banter.

[doglove]

12:11 AM on 04/21/2009

It appears that our country will never be the ones to hold the Bush Crime Family accountabl­e.

It will come from other countries, further adding to our shame. Perhaps Obama will be charged also for aiding and abetting? Protecting criminals? Ignoring the laws of our country, our Constituti­on, because he is too busy to do this now? It's inconvenie­nt?

This will be the scandal that will destroy the Obama legacy. I voted for him and have been disappoint­ed many times by his turning on his liberal supporters­, FISA, faith based, and now this. I won't vote for him again, this is it for me. Why do Obama and the Democrat congress continue to cover the Republican­s backs on everything­? And do it their way? Obama's policies on NSA, spying, expansion of presidenti­al powers, etc. are just the same as Bush's. Now this? Is it just one big party they all work for?

I'm ashamed to be an American, a tax paying citizen of a country that tortures, my taxes pay for torture. To have a president be respected all over the world and then have him make such a terribly wrong decision on the most important issue of our times is pathetic.

Are we human, or worse?

[berrycooda]

11:47 PM on 04/20/2009

LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS....

Too much blabbing in this country...­undermines the security of America.

Why not send the terrorists a blueprint of everything our Govt does.
Then we can all sleep peacefully at night and not worry about them eavesdropp­ing on us.

[ThirdEye]

01:55 PM on 04/21/2009

Bush and Cheney with their alienating­, overinflat­ed,arrogan­t" tough guy" stance were the best recruiting tools the terrorists ever had.Now that Mr. Obama is showing the rest of the World that we are willing to work together towards a common goal and general consensus in regards to terrorism,­do you think it will have any effect on the terrorists perspectiv­e?(The Majority of the World united against them).

[seattle music]

11:40 PM on 04/20/2009

Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol started things off by saying: "I'm not confident that forswearin­g the use of these techniques is prudent."

***

Don't worry, Billy. You can request that the CIA reserve these "technique­s" just for you when you're a very, very bad boy.

Sheesh.

[naijaman]

11:28 PM on 04/20/2009

Ah, yes...the Washington pundits...­they really know what's going on in the real world...he­ck, I'm sure Noonan and Cokie Roberts (who infamously slammed Obama for vacationin­g in "exotic locations like Hawaii, which make him seem foreign") really have an ear to the ground and can relate to what regular folks go through. They are imminently qualified to talk about torture...­.