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Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Michael Barone :: Townhall.com Columnist
No Time for Tea-and-Crumpet Interrogations
by Michael Barone
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What was the biggest suprise of Election Day?



When former Vice President Dan Quayle scheduled a big speech, President Bill Clinton didn't hop in and schedule one for the hour before. When former Vice President Al Gore scheduled a big speech, President George W. Bush didn't hop in and schedule one for the hour before. But when former Vice President Dick Cheney scheduled a big speech for 10:30 a.m. last week at the American Enterprise Institute, where I am a research fellow, President Barack Obama hopped in and scheduled a speech for 10 a.m. that day at the National Archives.

A little defensive, no?

Cheney spoke in defense of the Bush administration's terrorist interrogation policies and of the Guantanamo detention camp. But he was really on offense. The Bush administration managed to keep America safe for 2,689 days after the September 11 attacks, he said. The enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding of three captured terrorists, saved hundreds of lives. Barack Obama's release of the legal memoranda approving those techniques has made our defenders less safe -- now let him release the reports showing the information we got from the detainees.

There were even a couple of well-deserved swipes at the press. The New York Times, Cheney noted, was "publishing secrets in a way that could only help al-Qaida. It impressed the Pulitzer committee, but it damn sure didn't serve the interests of our country, or the safety of our people." The Times reporter sitting behind me at AEI said afterwards he agreed -- whether he was joking or serious I couldn't tell.

From Obama we heard a lawyerly defense of his acquiescence in Bush policies that he lambasted on the campaign trail, including his declaration that we will hold some detainees indefinitely without trial by civilian courts or military commissions. After urging that we not look backward, he did so himself, saying he inherited a "mess" and assuring us, without supporting data, that Guantanamo "likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained." Continued...
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About The Author
Michael Barone is a Fox News Channel contributor and co-author of The Almanac of American Politics. He is Senior Political Analyst for the Washington Examiner and a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor and co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.
 
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Reply # 1
Date: May 30, 2009 - 8:30 PM EST
lilly
Please respond to this true story. (if you choose to ignore it, I will repost it every time you make a post on TH)
What would you do in this situation?
What if it was your child?
~~~~~~~~~~
Her three year old son was asleep on the back seat. Whilst she was in the service station a man drove off in her car. ..the service station's closed-circuit TV camera, saw ..(a man) with a blonde-streaked Afro entering her car.

“Don't panic”, a police constable advised the mother, “as soon as he sees your little boy in the back he will abandon the car.”
He did; police later arrested him after a struggle.
“Where did you leave the Hyundai?” Denial instead of dissimulation: “It wasn't me.” — property stolen from the car was found in his pockets.“Its been twenty minutes since you took the car — little tin box like that car — It will heat up like an oven under this sun. Another twenty minutes and the child's dead or brain damaged. Where did you dump the car?” Again: “It wasn't me.”

Threats: “If the child dies I will charge you with Manslaughter!” Sneering, defiant and belligerent, “It wasn't me”...a body-punch elicited a roar of pain, but he fought back until he lapsed into semi-consciousness under a rain of blows...now, kneeling on hands and knees in his own urine, in pain he had never known, he finally realised the beating would go on until he told the police where he had abandoned the child and the car.

..the location of the stolen vehicle and the infant inside it was portrayed as having been volunteered by the defendant.When found, the stolen child was dehydrated, too weak to cry; there were ice packs and dehydration in the casualty ward but no long-time prognosis on brain damage.

(Case Study provided by John Blackler, a former New South Wales police officer.)

Remember,another twenty minutes and the child's dead or brain damaged.
The sun is frightfully hot.
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Reply # 2
Date: May 28, 2009 - 4:13 PM EST
Lilly's position
Lilly I do not know you and I respect your opinion and yes I am an evil conservative that loves his country and values the constitution. These debates in the absract are an interesting exercise. But I wonder if you would feel the same way if your loved ones were in jepordy. Call be a barbarian, but if my two sons were in harms way and terriorist were going to blow them up I could kill.
I had great aunt at Pearl Harbor with her young Marine Corp pilot husband. She told me in the most sober way that had you been there that day you could and would kill.
After 9/11 I am sure that President Bush did everthing possible, within the law, to protect all Americans. I sincerely hope Obama has the wisdom and the guts to do the same.
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