Democrats really are not having a great day in the are of enhanced interrogation techniques. First we find out that Pelosi knew about ongoing waterboarding back in 2003, and now we get audio of the senior Senator from New York saying that you “do what you have to do” if lives are on the line.
And I’d like to interject a note of balance here. There are times when we all get in high dudgeon. We ought to be reasonable about this. I think there are probably very few people in this room or in America who would say that torture should never, ever be used, particularly if thousands of lives are at stake.
Take the hypothetical: If we knew that there was a nuclear bomb hidden in an American city and we believed that some kind of torture, fairly severe maybe, would give us a chance of finding that bomb before it went off, my guess is most Americans and most senators, maybe all, would say, Do what you have to do.
So it’s easy to sit back in the armchair and say that torture can never be used. But when you’re in the foxhole, it’s a very different deal.
“fairly severe”? I take it that “fairly severe” doesn’t just mean getting people wet, so does Schumer find other forms of torture justifiable under such circumstances? It would seem so.
Schumer actually made a great point back in ‘04. Saying “we never torture” is a good theory in the university classroom, but it’s not always realistic when you’re responsible for protecting 300 million people. Or, as he says, “in the foxhole”. Sometimes, when innocent lives are on the line, you have to “do what you have to do”.
by Stephan Tawney on Wed, May 13, 2009