Comment by John Kerry — February 7, 2008 @ 7:44 pm

Spoken from the Liberal posing as a Neo-Con. This gets funnier every day. Don Rickles did the same schtick. Everyone thought Rickles was an ahole, but underneath was a true blue nice person.

Again, that’s for the entertainment John Kerry!!!

The latest defense by the Bush administration is reliance upon the advice of counsel defens. It is a defense that arose out of complex business regulations that were hard for an individual to understand. SEC, tax, EPA and other such areas provide excellent examples of where an individual has benefited from the defense. Never has it been used to justify what have been traditionally call mala in se crimes, i.e. the very nature of the action makes its nature apparent.

The reliance on counsel defense further is predicated upon a reasonable reliance on the legal advice by the person taking the action. In otherwords, a legal opinion in and of itself is not sufficient. The president and his minions will argue that the nature of waterboarding as torture is ambiguous. Given a jurisprudential history in the United States os over one hundred years that water boarding is illegal, one must argue that such reliance would not have been reasonable. The second argument is the president had the right under Article II of the constitution to violate US and international law or that it was reasonable for those carrying out the orders to rely upon such an opinion. But was not that issue resolved by the Nuremeburg proceedings after WWII? The whole point was to prevent any defense to crimes against humanity by asserting that orders came on high.

Even assuming that one could assert the reliance on counsel defense as to those carrying out the orders, there is the matter of the attorney writing the opinion. This is not a matter of a little legal malpractice. It is a matter of an attorney writing an opinion to authorize and shield those who committed a crime against humanity. God, I wish that I had had such power when I was a prosecutor and later a government attorney.

Fight fire with fire, libs!

Comment by John Kerry

Obviously, you need to use the same tactics as your enemy.

Like how during WWII the US used torture on prisoners, killed civilians as reprisal to attacks on soldiers, used both POWs and civilians as slave labor, and brutally treated and murdered hundreds of thousands of POWs.

Yep. America was just like the Germans and the Japanese.

WHo cares if it’s illegal???????????????????????
Fight fire with fire, libs!

John Kerry has lost touch with humanity. He is no longer human. Perhaps after therapy he can rejoin the human race. Till then, this creature without a species, does not deserve any response.

Strategic use of controlled burns would be a valid retort but I think I may be blowing that possibility by typing this.

No. But the point is this is about an order to waterboard.

When a CIA or military person gets an order he or she must either obey or refuse (and face court marshal).

It was, IMHO, an illegal order. But who am I? A nobody.

waterboarding is torture and torture is illegal.

Who cares if it’s illegal?

Fight fire with fire, libs!

Comment by John Kerry

*yawn*

Such a tiresome and arrogant — and aggressive — attitude. Problem is, it is pervasive in our government, our police, our pundits, our history, in fact.

On a personal level, at times, such an attitude will be deemed okay, such as protecting your person, your family, your property. But beyond that… where should the line be drawn?

But, this is not the place for a philosophy class.

But in terms of waterboarding, Dershowitz is, I think, kind of, sort of, perhaps right, in that in those rarest of rare, one-in-a-million cases where it is perceived that torture might work — maybe it should be done. But ONLY if it then is brought out in the open and those in charge, those giving the order, stand up and are held accountable.

I am saying maybe, mind you.

The thing is, this DID happen. Yet NO ONE is standing UP. NO ONE involved from the President to Legal Counsel to Secretary to whatever, is EVEN GIVING A STRAIGHT ANSWER!

Only a coward says we should “fight fire with fire” and then sit back and do nothing when his ass is on the line.

Fight fire with fire, libs!

Comment by John Kerry — February 7, 2008 @ 7:44 pm

Won’t that result in more fire? I think I will continue to fight fire with water

“Whatever was done as part of a CIA program, at the time that it was done, was the subject of a Department of Justice opinion through Office of Legal Counsel — and was found to be permissible under the law as it existed then,” Mukasey told the House Judiciary Committee.

Whether it was just some memo from the Executive Office or some actual point of law, waterboarding was, apparently, deemed “legal” but the CIA at some point.

It matters not that waterboarding is “immoral,” “known to be torture,” or whatever. If there was some “opinion” from the highest echelons of government that there was authorization, it was, well, authorized.

What happens now, or should happen, is that many lawyers need to go over every aspect of every memor and opinion from all legal councils to find if indeed some real law or procedure has been violated.

The past Executive Branch Legal Council thought that during time of war the President could by Executive Order do basically anything. That is where the real battle should be.

Fight fire with fire, libs!

Comment by John Kerry

Only true patriots who care about the constitution and the sacrifices that our fathers made during WWII.

And there are unconfirmed rumors of papal Catholicism.

To try waterboarding, I sat in my bath tub, turned on the shower and adtusted it to hit my face. Then I draped a wash cloth over my face.

…

Comment by dreevesx

Ah, were you being help upside down and forced by angry interrogaters at the time?