Don't Prosecute the People Who Protected Us

What would be the charge against Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld?  How about "Authorizing non-lethal, non-injurious interrogation methods that yielded crucial intelligence about planned attacks, Al Qaeda operatives, and terrorist operations"?  Or perhaps "Approving certain harsh interrogation techniques based on the sincere belief that those methods were necessary to obtain information to save American lives at a time when everyone was fearful that more attacks were about to occur"?

The folks who continue to insist that waterboarding is "torture" have yet to explain how a non-injurious, non-lethal method that we’ve used in the training of thousands of our own military personnel can be "torture."  They have yet to explain how the CIA’s waterboarding of a handful of murderous terrorists can be called "torture" when it was administered for no more than 40 seconds at a time (and usually only for about 10 seconds at a time), when the terrorists were advised ahead of time that they would not die from the procedure, and when limits were placed on how many applications could be done in a day, week, and month.

In contrast to the handful of radicals who keep posting rants calling for legal action over the alleged "torture" that was supposedly done under Bush, President Obama has wisely decided not to try to prosecute former Bush administration officials who approved the harsh (non-lethal, non-injurious) interrogation methods that were used on a relatively small number of terrorists.  The cooler, saner heads in the Obama administration have prevailed, much to the disappointment of the reckless far left.

As one reads the various far-left diatribes here about "torture," one gets the distinct impression that their authors hate Bush and Cheney more than they hate the terrorists.  Indeed, one of those authors has publicly stated that he agrees with Iran’s position that America is "the Great Satan."  Another one of those authors is a 9/11 conspiracy theorist–he thinks 9/11 was an inside job hatched by, you guessed it, Bush and Cheney.  At least two of those authors regularly accuse Bush and Cheney of being Nazis and compare them to Adolf Hitler.

As critical as I have long been of Bush and Cheney, one thing over which I do not attack them is their decision to approve the use of harsh interrogation methods on a few high-value terrorist operatives in order to save lives, to prevent more attacks, to catch more terrorists, and to better understand Al Qaeda’s structure and operations.  The released interrogation memos themselves document the fact that those goals were achieved by using waterboarding and other harsh-but-non-injurious methods, and that such methods were almost always employed only as a last resort.

Fact vs. Myth: The CIA Waterboarding Interrogations

"Torture Memos" Prove We Did Not Torture Anyone

How to Interrogate Terrorists

Didn’t Need to Waterboard?  Obama Should Know Better

The Memos Prove We Didn’t Torture

Misconceptions About the Interrogation Memos

"Torture" in the Dock

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