Don't Torture, But Tell Them We Do

I guess I have to add my two cents to the torture topic, with the release of Bush admin memos. Talking point number 1 from the GOP is that the release of this information makes us less safe. They say, that telling our enemies about our tactics hurts us. That terrorist now know that if they are captured by the US they will not actually be hurt, therefore reducing our ability to trick them into thinking we will hurt them.

This is the single stupidest argument I have ever heard. Do we want terrorists thinking they will be tortured if caught? Did Japan not use that fear to train their soldiers to fight us until death because capture would be worse than death? I want the world to know, to be completely confident, that the US will not torture them. Have we not seen Al-Qaeda using torture, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo as a tool for recruitment? If we are going to say, as President Bush did (blatantly lying to the American people) that we absolutely do not torture, do we not want the world to know that?

It is simply idiotic, not wrong, idiotic to argue that America should not torture, but should make sure the world thinks we do so they are scared of us. Idiotic. Idiotic. Idiotic.

In the Wall Street Journal, Michael Hayden and Michael Mukasey make this idiotic argument, as elegantly as they tried to frame it:

Public disclosure of the OLC opinions, and thus of the techniques themselves, assures that terrorists are now aware of the absolute limit of what the U.S. government could do to extract information from them, and can supplement their training accordingly and thus diminish the effectiveness of these techniques as they have the ones in the Army Field Manual.

Prove it. Actually give us proof of these claims, or shut the fuck up. We as an electorate, can only make accurate decisions about our Representatives if we are informed, so spare me the we have to lie (a lie of omission is still a lie) to you to protect you.

I guess we will call this the "Bluff technique" to anti-terrorism. Do not actually torture but tell the world we do torture. This is what we call speak hard but walk with a soft stick. Simply stupid.