Well, not really. He doesn’t care if we investigate how, when, or why the United States of America began torturing for (faulty) information. He wants to take a cheap shot at Pelosi. Salt Lake Tribune:
The move by the Utah Republican is the latest turn in a growing political spat over Pelosi’s knowledge about what former President George W. Bush called “enhanced interrogation techniques” and what President Barack Obama considers “torture.”
Bishop’s resolution was challenged by Democrats, who said it violated House rules. That decision was upheld on a mostly party-line vote of 252 to 172. Utah Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson voted to block Bishop’s resolution, while Bishop and his fellow Republican Jason Chaffetz voted to proceed with an investigation.
Bishop argued that a special four-person bipartisan subcommittee should investigate claims that the CIA misled the House on interrogation tactics.
“It is imperative that we try to find the truth of this matter to make sure if it has happened, that it never happens again,” he said on the House floor.
Bishop, and most House Republicans seem to think this is a smart political move. But is it? If you’re a Democrat hoping for a full investigation into the authorization to use torture, it is. The Daily Beast:
[I]n their zeal to score a tactical win, the right has made a truth commission more likely not less likely. Obama wanted to avoid a backward-looking focus on torture in part because it distracted from his legislative agenda. But if we’re going to be looking backward anyway, thanks to conservatives’ insistence on complaining about Pelosi, then the move forward strategy lacks a rationale. And far from forcing a standoff in which Pelosi will abandon her support for an investigation, the right has forced her into a corner from which she can’t give in to moderate Democrats’ opposition to such a move without looking like she’s cravenly attempting to save her own skin.
There’s no sign that Pelosi or anyone else is backing off the truth-commission idea. And, indeed, by suggesting that Pelosi could be a target of an investigation, conservatives have helped cleanse the idea of the odor of victor’s justice.
The Pelosi attacks are obvious for what they are: a distraction Republicans hope to spin into disfavor for Democrats. That they think it will work is nothing short of idiocy, and for one of our own federal delegates to be at the fore-front is just embarrassing. But I encourage more of the same from Bishop, Chaffetz, and those similarly inclined. In doing so, they open the door to investigation, and something tells me no transgressions on Nancy’s part will overshadow the information a full investigation of torture overall will dump into the media cycles.
Go, Rob, go!
UPDATE: One Utah has more on Bishop’s “privileged resolution.”
Cameron, are you implying that the title of “professor” makes a person an unquestionable authority on an issue? Well, by all means, let’s get this guy inside and making our decisions then! Let’s make him Czar of something.
For the more reasonable, though, I’m going to point out that nothing in your argument justifies (or explains the contradiction for “conservatives in supporting) the willingness to hand reproductive choices over to the federal government, or how keeping the option for safe and legal abortions increases the number of abortions (or, conversely, how banning them altogether would reduce their frequency). This guy you quote sounds very intelligent. His opinion still isn’t relevant, nor is mine or yours, when it comes to our personal “attitudes” toward abortion as opposed to how our legal system and system of governance should function.
Again, your logic is absolutist. It claims “a life is a life,” so therefore “life is always a life” in all situations and circumstances. In your chosen logical construct, shooting your enemy during wartime, or a police officer taking out a PCP hyped whack-job with a gun at a public park to protect the innocent are the same “crime” as having an abortion. We constantly redefine that absolute in our relative reality, which makes it not much of an absolute. And that has little, if anything, to do with the importance of Roe v. Wade, and defending our rights against the shifting whims of social norms and mores.
@Jason Williams
““a life is a life,” so therefore “life is always a life” in all situations and circumstances.”
It shouldn’t take the title of professor or even Czar to understand. So do try and keep up.
Let me repeat: In this country we don’t just go around killing people willy nilly because it makes us happy and by golly we’re guaranteed our pursuit of happiness. From capital punishment to war to police action we have set up a series of guidelines and laws to govern the very serious act of taking life.
I agree that our laws allow for the taking of life under certain well defined situations. Your dangerous PCP whackjob is one such situation. Accordingly, a well defined reason is required to take the life of an unborn child. Unfortunately, the reasons proffered by pro-choice advocates also would allow for ending the life of infants and the infirm.
Roe v. Wade is one of those guidelines.
Problem solved.
Roe v. Wade is based on viability. Which is why Sandra Day O’Connor said it was “on a collision course with itself.” For one thing, viability keeps getting earlier and earlier. Also, viability is just another term for independence. Infants, old people, and the impaired are not independent either. That creates a bit of a problem. See, that Professor Singer guy’s not all that dumb after all.
Roe v. Wade is based on privacy, Cameron. And while defining viability can be an interesting debate to have as well, it still has nothing to do with how our legal system or system of governance should intrude in our personal lives. The point your missing is that whether I agree or disagree with you or Singer on these definitions is irrelevant to the discussion of safe and legal abortion being protected by the court’s decision. And in the 19 years between the decision and 1992 (the last big challenge to the ruling), 11 of 15 justices faced with a Roe v. Wade related decision deferred to the decision. Not much of a “collision course” there.
On that note (and to make it easier for those just “tuning in”) let’s move this abortion discussion off of my “Rob Bishop is a Doofus” post here, and onto Tyler’s more recent Abortion post: http://kvnuforthepeople.com/2009/05/27/some-thoughts-on-abortion-and-what-to-do-to-end-this-endless-battle/
What happened Senator?
Senator: “And I do still think that if the results of enhanced interrogations show that it stopped specific terror plots… I really think that the overwhelming majority of Americans will swallow that… I think they would trade the torture of those men for the innocent lives of fellow Americans… Is that right? No… I’m just stating what I think is the truth.”
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=156409&title=Torture-Talk
Yes. Waterboarding has been defined by our gvernement as torture. After WWII, we convicted eight Japanese officers for waterboarding our soldiers, and executed them.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=156410&title=Torture-Test
WOW Quotes from the Daily Show… Good Source… Very Scholarly… Then Punish them! I made no justification under the law… but only in the court of public opinion… Look at 24… Americans love Jack Bauer and all he does is torture people in order to stop terrorist attacks… Yeah I went there… It’s about as real as anything you’re going to get off the daily show
Sorry Senator, I assumed you were able to navigate the ‘Google machine”. My bad.
McCain:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/29/politics/main3554687.shtml
But you are right, after we prosecuted, there is a dispute about whether we executed them or not.
http://www.clusterflock.org/2009/04/did-we-execute-japanese-for-water-boarding.html
As for fictional characters gleeming intel from intel from ‘evil doers’, I prefer Wonder Woman and her golden lasso. Way less homoerotic.
@senator
the polling seems to agree with you.
which i find disturbing, evidently we’ve come to a point in this country where a segment of the population will admit that waterboarding is torture, and still think it’s an ok thing to do. despite the ramifications our troops will see, despite the misleading justifications given, some people still want to see people tortured. that doesn’t make sense to me. even those that consider themselves to be religious approve of torture, despite the fact that it certainly isn’t what jesus would do.
thankfully we have laws against torture, and treaties, we just don’t always follow them.
Ha, how funny, there is an ad for an Ann Coulter book on the top of this forum.
@tim
DUDE THIS IS FROM YOUR OWN SOURCE!
“Mr. Hemingway assumed I was citing the case of Yukio Asano, who was convicted of waterboarding and other offenses and sentenced to 15 years hard labor — not death by hanging. Mr. Hemingway made the assumption that I was referring to the Asano case because in 2006 Sen. Edward Kennedy had referred to it. (Sen. Kennedy accurately described the sentence as hard labor and not execution, by the way.)”
And if you’re trying to quote McCain like he’s some conservative…well you have a lot to learn about conservatives.
See Craig 41 Backed up my claim… I’m not saying it is morally right or legally right. I’m just saying that in the original post Jason talked about this doing some tremendous damage to the GOP… A statement that I believe not to be true.
The real damage to done to a party will happen if Obama and the Dems immediately reverse all of the immoral, illegal, savage Bush tactics… and it results in another attack…Wait and see what the political ramifications are for that scenario…
Bottom line…Americans will swallow a few “tortured” terrorists in a trade-off for innocent American lives. It is really convienient for you to think that Bush caused all this but we had quite a few attacks on Americans before Bush ever took office, before Reagan ever took office… Look at the Iran hostage situation with Jimmy Carter and you’ll see what exactly dimplomacy will get you. I don’t believe Obama can do a single thing to help this situation by diplomacy… Diplomacy works when dealing with sane reasonable people… but with these people and people like mahmood achmadenijad there is no reason… only radical believes for the death and destruction of the infidel (Israel and U.S.) No amounts of bows and iPods are going to change the fact that we are not a Muslim country whose western ideas are the whore of the Earth…
This is the answer… Gitmo isn’t the best recruiting tool for terrorists… Heck THEY CUT OFF OUR GUYS HEADS ON TV! and you think that they are livid because we give them a little torture… We aren’t cutting their heads off! The best recruiting tool for terrorists is a successful attack… the more likely it is to get a successful strike on Americans the more extremists want to join… If they never have a successful attack on Americans again… their numbers will plummet… As a wise man once said,
Peace through Strength
-Ronnie
Senator, even Robert Gates disagrees with you on the glorious example of American integrity that Gitmo is.
Bush didn’t didn’t cause this? Huh? His adminstration was the first to authorize the procedure. How did they not cause it? Until his administration, torture was something every military agency barred from practice, for the simple reason that we had made international agreements to not practice it at wartime, and because it is conventional wisdom that it will lead to our own soldiers being tortured in the future. Oh, that and the intelligence community at large believes it to be a very unreliable source of information, producing mostly false confessions. And Bush was the first to authorize it, as a desperate means to find a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda that simply didn’t exist (we know now).
There is not evidence that it has protected us. There is no evidence that it produced a single piece of viable, useful intelligence. And as for the “hasn’t been an attack since” tripe, well, there wasn’t an attack before Bush either. Have you seen the Simpson’s episode where Lisa wants to sell Homer a “tiger repellent rock”? Homer asks how it works. Lisa says “Well, do you see an tigers?” Homer offers her $50 bucks for it. And Mr. Senator, since you seem gullible, er, I mean in need to tiger protection, I’ll sell you one for $40.
And the fact remains that Rob Bishop has injected the word “investigation” into the debate. If a few more GOPers follow suit, the Democrats can then respond simply with “alright… let’s really look into all of this.” The accountability will be good for the country, but the light shed on what transpired would push the Republican Party further into the woods. Thus, a very dumb strategy for the Congressmen to employ. And I think it is employed because so many on the right are buying into their own manufactured reality. They hate Pelosi soooooo much! And they have attempted to framer her as the leader of the Democratic Trifecta so frequently, they believe it to be true. So they believe an attack on her will be witty and clever. They believe taking her out will be a strategic gain. But they are blind to the fact that the Democrats (with the support of most activists and donors) would toss her to the wolves in a second if it meant they could have a full investigation of the authorization to use torture to collect unreliable “intelligence.”
And I hope a few GOPers do follow Rob’s leads.
You saying there have been attacks before Bush, and putting quotations around the word torture will not change the effect a full investigation would have on the already tarnished brand of the Republican Party.
@senator – that’s public opinion with the ‘facts’ as they are currently known by the public. an investigation showing the details of why/how/who could change that public opinion very easily. especially if you take away that ticking bomb 24 aspect of the why, and replace it with a justification for an unpopular ongoing war. that’s why it’s bad for republicans.
Senator, my bad I posted that we executed them. Sorry about that. The fact remains, though, we did prosecute and sentence them for waterboarding.
Senator: “And if you’re trying to quote McCain like he’s some conservative…well you have a lot to learn about conservatives.”
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/2008/01/28/john-mccain-prisoner-of-war-a-first-person-account.html
I’m quoting McCain because he spent years in a POW camp experiencing torture. Lighten up on your labels, Senator. You use them like a crutch. We are all American, even when you disagree with them. I will take McCains opinion over yours any day:
Senator: ” As a wise man once said, Peace through Strength
-Ronnie
I think your referring to Ronald Reagan?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvFj1QIn1EA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGm-4MRuGF0&feature=related
Senator: ” As a wise man once said, Peace through Strength
-Ronnie. Kinda sounds like this guy, huh?
http://www.paulnoll.com/China/Mao/Mao-05-War-and-Peace.html
Ironic that Senator would quote Ronnie on this. In Ronnie’s own words (May 20, 1988):
The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention . It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. [...] Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today. By giving its advice and consent to ratification of this Convention, the Senate of the United States will demonstrate unequivocally our desire to bring an end to the abhorrent practice of torture.
Senator: “Heck THEY CUT OFF OUR GUYS HEADS ON TV! and you think that they are livid because we give them a little torture… We aren’t cutting their heads off!”
I’m glad you think our way of dealing death is somehow more noble than theirs:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5600920080174465066
Bottom line: Dead is dead.
http://web.mit.edu/humancostiraq/
@Tim
Dead is not dead… Those men killed were not innocent civilians who just happened to be out for a stroll in the mountains of Afghanistan. It isn’t the same as taking a reporter who is a non-combatant and cutting his head off on TV… If there were the same kind of tape of snipers hitting U.S. soldiers I would be appalled but at least I would know that the soldier who gave their life for our freedom put themselves in harms way on their own free will… they weren’t drafted… they weren’t Joe and Jane heading into the office at the World Trade Center 9/11..
@ Jason
Touche
Touche indeed
But… Again I never personally condoned torture… I’m still not convinced as to the definition of torture…Hence why we should investigate but that will never happen… Now if Reagan came out and said he thought waterboarding was torture then I would have my entire foot in my mouth… For the mean time… I only have the toe…
My point with Ronnie wasn’t so much about torture though… It was more about diplomacy. Obama seems willing to bank on diplomacy. A policy that I think could be dangerous.
Wait a minute, Senator. Do you have evidence of this: “Those men killed were not innocent civilians who just happened to be out for a stroll in the mountains of Afghanistan.”
Two decades ago they were ‘freedom fighters’.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGm-4MRuGF0&feature=related
Just because the video labels them terrorists doesn’t mean you shoudn’t have proof. Bring it. Which one is it? When they fight someone we don’t like they are freedom fighters, and when they don’t they are terrorists?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r42oejmpkgw
Again, what about 9/11? Close to million dead Iraqis. Are you telling me they were all terrorists or combatants?
Oh yeah, that didn’t have shit to do with 9/11.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI_MACZo2sg&feature=PlayList&p=771EF14FA51F49CA&index=14
I wish I could have your selective morals, Senator.
Honestly, I don’t know… I realize that there are innocent casualties in every war… But it sounds like you are sounding the John Kerry, they are terrorizing woman and children in the dark of night alarm. I don’t subscribe to that… I don’t buy that we target innocent people like they do.
I’m not going to get into a debate about the Iraq War other than to say that I DO think that there were WMDs otherwise why wouldn’t Saddam let the inspectors in… Someone had to force the U.N. Sanctions because obviously the U.N. was ready to go for empty sanction after sanction with no threat of force behind it… And if you are a conspiracy theorist there is some evidence to support the fact that Saddam was paying the U.N. leadership off. Don’t bother trying to convince me that there weren’t WMDs there I know there isn’t evidence to support my claim other than the circumstantial evidence stated above.
You are exactly right about the Freedom Fighters/terrorists… It is common sense to support people who are fighting against our enemies… When they start fighting against us… That’s when we have a problem with it. That is common sense… Sometimes I think that liberals don’t think with their brains when it comes to war. What are we supposed to do? Lay down… Let them build a militant Islamic state first?
How do you know that the snipers in the video didn’t have proof that those people were terrorist? You also act like we weren’t provoked into taking the battle to the places that are most hostile to us. During the Clinton years we sat on our hands and smiled and played nice and all it got us was the 93 WTC bombing, the USS Cole… And 9/11…(JASON, THESE ARE EXAMPLES OF ATTACKS BEFORE BUSH)
You can find any clip you want to support your argument but it is never going to show the whole picture especially if it is from scholarly sources like the Daily Show or the Colbert Report… Why don’t you just get it over with and put an Olbermann clip on there.
Selective moral outrage? When you have proof that the US targeted sites where 18,000+ civilians were just going to work one day…Not in the middle of a war zone and BOOM! We attacked them… then you will find my moral disdain for our country… I just find it gross when people like you try and blame the United State for 9/11 and talk about how evil we are…
Speaking of selective moral outrage… Are you outraged by Obama’s order to execute 3 Somali teenagers?
Mr. Senator,
If you are going to include the USS Cole attack as an example then you should extend that to any attack that kills US citizens that are not on our shores… which means you should include all attacks in Iraq that wound and kill US soldiers as failures in homeland security, and waterboarding seems to not have provided info to prevent many of those. I don’t expect you to hold to that since it wouldn’t make much sense to do so.
Also, about WMDs. If you believe that there were WMDs, then you would have to acknowledge that the US invasion failed completely in finding and securing such dangerous weapons. If there were WMD stockpiles in Iraq, then we now have no idea where they are or what organization (if any) now has them. If that was the case, the Iraq war was a complete and utter failure and now we have no way of controlling where or who has the WMDs that you are so convinced existed.
Convinced that liberals are the only ones that sometimes don’t think with their brains?
Sorry Senator, I was busy this weekend and couldn’t respond to your…. post.
I think I like this the best: “I just find it gross when people like you try and blame the United State for 9/11 and talk about how evil we are…”
I’m all choked up. Very emotionally charged! And completely false. Too bad you have to make shit up to mount any kind of a debate here Senator. Your true colors come shining through.
Yes Senator, I like to ask questions. At one time in our history, this was seen as ‘patriotic duty’. Not with people like you anymore. You wrap yourself in the flag, paste a yellow sticker on your car,and show up on political blogs to proclaim you rightness and insult people who don’t share your narrow view of the world. You proclaim how good and noble America is, but dismiss the values that made her great: Innocent until proven guilty, Free speech, Right to legal council, privacy rights. You attack those that look in the mirror.
The best you can come up with is to attack the messenger, and ingnore the message:
” WOW Quotes from the Daily Show… Good Source… Very Scholarly…”
” I think if it was successful in stopping terrorists then the only people who are going to give a crap about Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaida are leftist crazies… Like you!”
” But it sounds like you are sounding the John Kerry,”
“Why don’t you just get it over with and put an Olbermann clip on there.”
Pretty weak, Senator. Your tactics definitely match your name. You’ve been taking debate lessons who is able to hang up on them when they disagree, and ridicule them when they can’t respond. Bring some evidence to the table, because all we’ve heard is your mouth so far. You’ll be thankful America works that way, someday. Your tune will change drastically, if it happened to someone you love.