Graham On Torture: ‘I Don’t Think That These Techniques As A Whole Have Made Us Safer’
Graham On Torture: ‘I Don’t Think That These Techniques As A Whole Have Made Us Safer’
In yesterday’s Senate Judiciary subcommittee torture hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) lashed out at witnesses and questioned whether the hearing was “a political stunt,” contending that “it’s not really fair” to the Bush administration. He repeatedly emphasized that the “other side of the story” is that torture produced “good information.”
Later, however, Graham broke with the conservative line and candidly admitted that torture has not make the U.S. “safer.” Talking to reporter Spencer Ackerman after the hearing, Graham claimed that the interrogation program “saved lives,” but at the same time, he stated that torture didn’t “as a whole” result in greater U.S. security:
GRAHAM: Well, I’m just saying there’s information that was devised, was received from enhanced interrogation techniques that did tell us about what the enemy was up to and probably save lives. That’s the other side of the story. I don’t think that these techniques as a whole have made us safer, because of the problems we’ve had. We’ve got a new way of going forward.
“Let’s have interrogation techniques within our values, but let’s don’t tell the enemies exactly what they are,” Graham concluded. Watch it:
Graham did not specify what “problems” the U.S. has had because of torture, but the evidence is clear. Torture has led to the deaths of coalition troops, inflamed anti-American sentiment, and shattered the reputation of the U.S. Graham’s statement is a significant break from Vice President Cheney, who insisted on Sunday that torture “kept the nation safe for nearly eight years.”
Graham, a former JAG lawyer, has tried to walk a fine line in the torture debate. To his credit, he has been a frequent critic of the Bush administration’s interrogation program, saying that waterboarding is torture and forcefully criticizing Bush officials who have hedged on the topic. Yet he has also voted against banning waterboarding, tried to argue just yesterday that waterboarding was effective, and opposes efforts to investigate the Bush administration.
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What kind of double-talk is this? Is Graham just reading from the script phonetically and not understanding the talking points?
Can he explain how saving lives doesn’t make us safer? This is one of those “tent of freedom” things that should make journalists shout, “What the h*ll does THAT mean?”
Or perhaps Graham just strayed from the script during a brain fart. No matter — this kind of stuff just continues to point out that these GOPbots have no idea what they’re talking about.
May 14th, 2009 at 1:08 pmMany busy bees
May 14th, 2009 at 1:10 pmIdeas swarm in mind hive
Which one will sting you?
In other words:”if we could have actually kept this stuff secret, it would have been fine with me.”
May 14th, 2009 at 1:21 pmmisscoleopteramolly Says:
Can he explain how saving lives doesn’t make us safer?
Let me try. Ahem.
“If these techniques save more lives, then there are more Americans alive, and therefore there are more targets for the terrorists to attack, and logically that makes us less safe”.
… no? Well, I tried.
May 14th, 2009 at 1:21 pmI think a Freudian slip came through on that quote:
See, information wasn’t received or obtained from torture, it was devised, which was the plan all along. As in false confessions used to line the pockets of the chicken hawks.
May 14th, 2009 at 1:26 pmGRAHAM: Well, I’m just saying there’s information that was devised, was received from enhanced interrogation techniques…
Slip of the lip there, Huckleberry. You had it right the first time.
May 14th, 2009 at 1:27 pmThe key word is “us”. Who is “us” in his statement? “Us” could be congress and BushCo. I seriously DOUBT, that “us” meant the “little people” given what I’ve seen over the last 8-years.
May 14th, 2009 at 1:30 pmHeh. Great minds etc., Picky @ 5.
Don’t you wish Ackerman could have kept Grahamcracker talking a while longer? Miss Lindsey seemed a bit addlepated & might have had a few more “slips.”
May 14th, 2009 at 1:31 pmPicky and And Yet, I was struck by exactly the same word, “devised“. Truth finds a way out, doesn’t it?
May 14th, 2009 at 1:31 pm…Vice President Cheney, who insisted on Sunday that torture “kept the nation safe for nearly eight years.”
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Um…no it didn’t. Remember Hurricane Katrina in 2005? I don’t recall torture doing a darn thing to mitigate the property damage and loss of life Katrina caused.
Oh what’s that? Torture doesn’t have anything to do with hurricanes? Well, until I see actual evidence of torture foiling a terrorist attack, I don’t believe torture had anything to do with preventing terrorist attacks, either.
May 14th, 2009 at 1:33 pmGrahman just showed why Republicans are losing. To question a Covert Agent who actully does this for a living, while Graham sits safely at home is one of the biggest jokes. Lindsey made a complete fool of himself and his voters saw it live. Most of those committing never saw combat and Dick Cheney hid behind his wife as the coward he is with his famous 5 Deferments. It’s clear why Cheney is jumping to every TV station and why Bush is at home watching TV and smoking a joint. Bush never signed the Torture order, he gave Cheney Executive order 1329 on March 2003 giving Cheney the power of the President. Follow the pay trail with dates and with the confession by Cheney live on TV we don’t need anything else. Yes Cheney proudly said he signed the Torture Order and would do it again. Linsey can do what he wants but Cheney exposed the truth himself.
May 14th, 2009 at 1:33 pm.
Whereas some people prefer to play “Follow the Leader”…
… America was founded on “Following the Law”.
Yesterday, Graham argued for playing “Follow the Leader”
.
May 14th, 2009 at 1:38 pm#9-
Indeed, truth does. If Huckleberry did any reviewing of his sordid little performance yesterday, he may have wanted to eat some of the mindless, contradictory statements being quoted today all over the net.
And he was an insulting asshat to both Ali Soufan & Prof. Luban. Damn, his badgering/interrupting of those witnesses really pissed me off.
Effing Tool.
May 14th, 2009 at 1:44 pmWalking a fine line is virtually impossible in a 3 dimensional universe .
I apply this logic to both Mr. Graham and the President .
Proceed with caution .
May 14th, 2009 at 1:45 pmWe’ll never have peace in the Middle East or security in America until we release all the Palestinian refugees from the Israeli controlled concentration camps in Gaza and the West Bank.
May 14th, 2009 at 1:48 pmCFP,
They served as long as Dick Cheney did.
Go on…
May 14th, 2009 at 1:54 pmPoor Lindsay, he didn’t know what he was saying. He was distracted because his panties were riding up.
PEACE
May 14th, 2009 at 1:57 pmConservativeForProgress Says:
How many days did Barack Obama serve in the military?
President Clinton never served in the military.
President Clinton kept America out of war for eight years.
President Clinton engineered the greatest economic prosperity that America has ever known. The DJIA went from 2,000 to 14,000.
President Clinton began to pay down Ronald Reagan’s deficits and he left George W. Bush with a projected $5 trillion surplus.
Maybe military service is not as important as you think, Mr Conservative.
May 14th, 2009 at 1:58 pmAs long as you are keeping score RE: Graham’s dissembling, you might as well mention that he lied to the Supreme Court and got caught while he was trying to protect the kangaroo court system (Hamdan V. Rumsfeld).
May 14th, 2009 at 2:02 pmhttp://www.slate.com/id/2138750/
ConservativeForProgress Says
May 14th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
How many days did Barack Obama serve in the military?
How many days did Joe Biden serve in the military?
How many days did Hillary Clinton serve in the military?
How many days did Bill Clinton serve in the military?
How many days did John Edwards serve in the military?
How many days did Dennis Kucinich serve in the military?
How many days did Bill Richardson serve in the military?
Let’s see, if we add them all up, we get…… 0.
Now, what relevance does that have to the debate? None, as far as I am concerned, so why do you keep brining up military service as if that is a pre-requisite to be entitled to have an opinion?
___________________________________________________________
Nobody is claiming that military service is required to have an opinion. But we do criticize warmongering chickenhawks.
The difference between your list of cherry-picked Democrats who never served (including two people who never dodged the draft, and a couple of people who really aren’t all that politically relevant anymore), and the warmongers we criticize is that nobody on your list has been beating the drums for war.
And that’s a big difference.
May 14th, 2009 at 2:07 pmConservativeForProgress Says:
7,500 soldiers died during the Clinton years, by the way.
Really? And which war was it during the Clinton years that 7,500 American died in combat?
May 14th, 2009 at 2:10 pmConservativeForProgress Says:
I SOILED MY LACE PANTIES AGAIN!
May 14th, 2009 at 2:11 pmCONPROG:
Verbal diarrhea is your #1 asset (pun intended) indeed.
Need a clean pair?
May 14th, 2009 at 2:13 pmConservativeForProgress Says:
7,500 soldiers died during the Clinton years, by the way.
Really? And which war was it during the Clinton years that 7,500 American soldiers died in combat, Mr. Conservative?
May 14th, 2009 at 2:32 pmCONPROG=WASTE OF SPACE
May 14th, 2009 at 2:43 pmLike so many other modern-day politicians, Graham is hedging his bets by trying to play both sides against the middle. He doesn’t have either the cojones or the integrity to commit himself fully to either one side or the other because he’s concerned (not entirely without reason) that he might lose votes by doing so. Unfortunately, all he really succeeds in doing this way is making himself seem indecisive, wishy-washy, opportunistic, and unreliable…none of these which anyone in his/her right mind would call admirable or desirable qualities in a leader.
It sounds as though Senator Graham is another Congresscritter who could stand to brush up on his Aesop with particular emphasis (in this case) on the fable entitled “The Old Man, The Boy, And The Donkey” — the moral of which is…
TRY TO PLEASE EVERYONE AND YOU WILL PLEASE NO ONE.
May 14th, 2009 at 2:47 pm7,500 soldiers died during the Clinton years, by the way.
By grouping all military deaths together, you really think we don’t see your pitiful attempt for what it really is?
Weasel words is the republican style of debate:
GRAHAM: Well, I’m just saying there’s information that was devised, was received from enhanced interrogation techniques that did tell us about what the enemy was up to and probably save lives.
Just like Saddam “probably” had WMD. Can’t you guys do a little better? I mean, this is pathetic, really.
May 14th, 2009 at 2:51 pmI watched this hearing when it was shown on C-Span last night, and Graham contradicted himself constantly. It was weird, really. Almost like the connection between his right and his left brain has been cut. Weird.
May 14th, 2009 at 3:03 pmLet’s just say the Dems will be the ones to throw out the crap and keep the good stuff that works to keep the country safe ok?
May 14th, 2009 at 3:07 pmFor goodness sake, keep it simple.
Let the srew nuts hang themselves in the process.
ConForProg – 7,500 military deaths during the Clinton years…yes from ALL causes. Adding up the number of total deaths on Table 5 on the PDF file you linked to is absolutely pathetic.
May 14th, 2009 at 3:18 pm#13 Your right many during the time of War didn’t serve and some like Graham and Rummy stayed safe others like Cheney used the Deferment and then Bush who’s Father quickly get him out before his follow soldiers went to fight. I see today the same thing as many support the criminal conduct while never willing to serve in the Military. I lost a brother in Vietnam and my son and daughter served in Stop Lock service in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think I’ve earned the right to speak my opinion. Most of the news that’s reported today is old news to Military families and it was always knewn the Bush Administration’s crimes would catch up with them. Don’t worry the stories Americans have hear are just the begining of a much much worse 7 years of horror. I did notice when the topic of opening the Draft was brought up Americans quickly knocked it down.
May 14th, 2009 at 3:42 pmUSA’s TORTURE PROGRAM and its TERRORIST FOREIGNER POLICIES continue not make the US a safe place. There hasn’t been any “CHANGE” there… sadly.
May 14th, 2009 at 5:06 pmWhy is it important that a president serve in the military? What next, a president has to have served in a time of war? A president has access to all the military leaders. We just need a president that listens.
May 14th, 2009 at 6:40 pmWe need a leader – not a fighter.
May 14th, 2009 at 7:28 pmJust another example of the Republican cream of the crop. Graham should consult Palin in order to learn how to present himself more intelligently to the media.
May 15th, 2009 at 6:58 am