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Coercive Techniques, Torture and Mayhem: Situational Ethics 101

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  August 26th, 2009 at 06:05 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Misleading statements, (empty) threats of physical violence, harassing and disrespectful language, nap deprivation: the CIA is accused of employing these and other ethically troubling techniques in the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh “Bluto” Mohammad and other al Qaeda operatives in the War on Terror the Great Unpleasantness.

This being a cruel world, however, we must recognize that there is a time and place for everything. We can employ one of the liberal’s favorite tools, situational ethics, to define when the use of violence, lies, threats and torture-ish techniques are morally acceptable.

Judging from the stated and unstated attitudes of President Obama and Attorney General Holder, there are instances in which the use of such coercive tactics may be ignored or even condoned. The following situational guidelines for coercion and threats of violence are offered in the interest of clarity.

THE ACTOR (the coercer)

Unacceptable: trained intelligence officer; security expert; Special Forces operative; law enforcement agent.
Acceptable: card carrying member of SEIU, the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, the Teamsters or other labor union; community organizer with ACORN; “poll watchers” from the Black Panthers Party.

THE TARGET (the coercee)

Unacceptable: Radical Islamists; sworn enemies of the United States; al Qaeda-trained operatives; non-uniformed enemy combatants.
Acceptable: Capitalists; corporate managers; small businessmen; townhall protesters and members of other Organized Mobs; voters.

THE STAKES

Unacceptable: Potential destruction of a major American city; death of random innocent civilians; threats of harm to military personnel, installations or capital ships; loss of life, liberty or property of U.S. citizens.
Acceptable: union contract negotiations, involving work rules, pay rates or benefits; protection of vote fraud initiatives; intimidation of “Health Care Reform” protesters; stifling of right-of-center political discourse.

Careful use of these guidelines should avoid any conflicts with Obama Administration objectives.

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  • bk

    Here’s how Obama/Holder envision questioning of detainees:
    1. The interrogators must be trained and certified in techniques developed by CAIR in conjunction with the ACLU.
    2. There must be at least two such certified interrogators in the room, they they are the only people on the US side allowed to speak to the detainee.
    3. Also present in the room with the detainee must be an attorney and representatives of the International Red Cross, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch.
    4. …etc…

    The other thing I wondered about is whether Holder will okay waterboarding of the CIA people he questions about EITs.

  • izoneguy

    You put in writing what I have been thinking, thank you.

  • Castor

    Please,pretty please, Mr. Khalid Sheikh Mohammmad.If you don?t tell us where the next attack is coming from we will cut off your cookies and milk.
    bk is RIGHT ON!!!!

  • RedBeard

    And accurate, sadly.

    Most of us are reluctant to use extreme pejoratives when talking about the other side, but if this administration continues to build steam and travel in the direction it has been heading, there may be no other descriptively accurate options.

    I have been cognizant of, and witness to, the actions of every administration since Eisenhower, and I cannot put a finger on anything done by any other administration that fell to the level of malfeasance that this gang practices on a daily basis. When factoring in the destructive behavior of Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Johnson, and the latter days of Nixon, that’s quite an achievement for Barack Obama.

    And he’s just getting warmed up.

  • Andy W.

    by having his administration say, “The President prefers to look forward, not backward” and “The Attorney General has the power to appoint…”

    He gets to appear out of the mix, and clean, while the very citizens he promised would be safe from prosecution a couple of months ago are placed on a pillory as a sop to the lib left that is crying for their blood. Classic Clinton misdirect of attention away from failed health care reform initiative? I think so.

  • Brian Hibbert

    Good one Vladamir. There does seem to be a bit of a double standard here.

  • harlan

    …and let the liberal chips in New York and Washington fall where they may.

    libs will soon beg to have enhanced techniques reinstated, and democrat politicians will be pariahs for a generation.

  • http://andrightlyso.com/ civil_truth

    …so that in public the Adminstration looks purer than the driven snow.

    Meanwhile, their unaccountable executive interrogation group will use rendition to send high-value prisoners out of the country, where they can be secretly tortured for information while the Administration can maintain denial of anything that happened.

    I wonder if there are any principled leftists around who will track the rendition flights and shell companias they did in earlier incarnations – or whether they will just keep their mouths shut – or whether they are getting truly scared at what’s coming down the pike regarding Obama’s secret government agencies that are accountable neither to legislative oversight or judicial action.

  • The_Gadfly

    And I suspect the same thing applies to The Big 0′s supplicants.

  • dennism

    The CIA conducted war against the Bush Administration for 8 years. I bet there’s not a conservative or a republican in the whole outfit. If Eric Holder wants an investigation, we can only hope the prosecutor broadens his scope to the Dept of State.

    The eat snails, frog’s legs and pea-soup. They’re John Kerry acolytes. Judas Iscariot had nothing on these back stabbers.

  • http://impudent.blognation.us/blog kyle8

    Has there ever been a more hidebound and useless bunch of back biting bureaucrats? They got nearly everything in the cold war wrong, including a long paper on the hidden strengths of the Soviet System only about six months before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

    They were riddled with spies, and they told Bush that WMD’s in Iraq was a “slam dunk”.

    We should get rid of this counter productive agency.