Yesterday, Jane Hamsher reported that the detainee photo amendment sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was stripped from the war supplemental in committee. The amendment would have allowed the Obama administration to suppress any “photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained” after 9/11 by U.S. forces. This afternoon, Graham and Lieberman held a press conference to register their objections to dropping the measure and announce that they had “added our original legislation as an amendment to the FDA regulation of tobacco bill that’s on the floor right now”:
LIEBERMAN: We’re going to vote against cloture on the bill, and I’m going to do everything I can to see if I can convince other Democrats to do that. We’re just not going to roll over because some folks in the House don’t like this amendment. [W]e’re going to do everything we can to hold up the supplemental appropriations bill until we’re sure that this amendment prohibiting the release of these dangerous photographs is on that bill. And then we’ll continue to do everything we can to attach it to other legislation, to slow up the process.Graham said the amendment was needed because “These photos, if they’re released, will be used by the enemy to incite violence as they walk down these streets.” A “senior Democratic aide” told the Weekly Standard that the two senators would “attach [the amendment] to every piece of legislation that comes down the pike.”
Another term out there that slipped into the discussion is the notion that American interrogation practices were a "recruitment tool" for the enemy. On this theory, by the tough questioning of killers, we have supposedly fallen short of our own values. This recruitment-tool theory has become something of a mantra lately, including from the President himself. And after a familiar fashion, it excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do. It’s another version of that same old refrain from the Left, "We brought it on ourselves."It is much closer to the truth that terrorists hate this country precisely because of the values we profess and seek to live by, not by some alleged failure to do so. Nor are terrorists or those who see them as victims exactly the best judges of America’s moral standards, one way or the other.
Critics of our policies are given to lecturing on the theme of being consistent with American values. But no moral value held dear by the American people obliges public servants ever to sacrifice innocent lives to spare a captured terrorist from unpleasant things. And when an entire population is targeted by a terror network, nothing is more consistent with American values than to stop them.
As a practical matter, too, terrorists may lack much, but they have never lacked for grievances against the United States. Our belief in freedom of speech and religion … our belief in equal rights for women … our support for Israel … our cultural and political influence in the world – these are the true sources of resentment, all mixed in with the lies and conspiracy theories of the radical clerics. These recruitment tools were in vigorous use throughout the 1990s, and they were sufficient to motivate the 19 recruits who boarded those planes on September 11th, 2001…
Dick Cheney, American Enterprise Institute, May 21, 2009
And, as long as we’re talking about speaking with forked tongues – what happened to all that malarkey about Congress not messing with Executive Powers that we had to listen to for the last eight years? I guess it’s selective, the precious Unitary Executive Theory. Congress shouldn’t limit the President if, and only if, the President is a Republican. These people are without conscience.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.