Why the GOP has Failed

One of the better reads I've had recently is here. The Madison quotes cited are all similar to discussions I have had before on this site, but hey still bear remembering: “If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.” “It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.” Madison, Hamilton, Franklin, and many other Founding Fathers have utters similar quotables. Condemned to repeat, indeed. The links at the bottom of the afore-mentioned article lead here. This are some of the best reasons (apart form the obvious moral ones) to not engage in torture. As written here, in an analysis of Charlie Savage's latest book, we find this: The torture techniques authorized by Rumsfeld, Bush and Cheney are not just immoral and illegal; they are a terrible threat to our national security. Why? Because they originated as a means to extract false confessions in totalitarian societies, not as a means to gain actual, workable intelligence, i.e. anything we might hope to think of as the truth.... One thing I'd forgotten, of course, is one central case in which torture did give us actionable intelligence: "Al Qaeda continues to have a deep interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction... I can trace the story of a sernior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to al Qaeda. Fortunately, this operative is now detained and he has told his story." The man who spoke those words was Colin Powell at the UN. The "operative", we now know, was Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libbi. He was waterboarded and given Bush-approved hypothermia treatment, i.e. frozen till he could take it no longer. It was only then that he told of al Qaeda's links with Saddam's WMDs. Guess what? Libbi subsequently retracted his confession. According to ABC News, the CIA subsequently found al-Libbi "had no knowledge of such training or weapons and fabricated the statements because he was terrified of further harsh treatment." So I now realize that part of the reason I believed the WMD case for war against Saddam was because the Bush administration had been secretly torturing suspects and got false confessions. The biggest intelligence failure in recent US history - the WMD case in Iraq - was partly created by the torture policy. The damage done by torture techniques is more than moral; it has also - partially at least - driven us into a protracted military conflict in Iraq. So, to the supporters of these techniques, I have only one thing to say - Congratulations, are you happy now?