Look, the truth is, whatever report you want to point to, we treat our prisoners better than we have to and better than any other nation. The administration bent over backwards to make sure we got the info we needed in a manner that was legal. Your lies that this was all illegal and immoral do nothing to actually further the debate, it attemptes to cloak you in moral supremacy and end the debate. It's how 5 yr olds argure things.

And how in Gods name is AQ bleeding us dry? They have taken unsustainable losses and been driven from every major base they've tried to establish. They haven't been able to launch any attacks with anything close to the scale and sophistication of 9/11 since that day... WHICH AS YOU STATED WAS THE DAMNED POINT OF THE GWOT.
Ironic, you castigate Bush for working to fix all the problems brought about by your preferred law enforcement policy, then try and claim that going back to that same inept policy and undoing the advances will be better. I'd laugh if it wasn't so insane.

As to your long, anti-white man screed, you're going to have to make up your mind. Are we supposed to NOT depose dictators, like in Iraq, or are we supposed to depose them, like you fault us for not doing in Saudi Arabia? Are we supposed to defend all democracies or all democracies except your preferred target Israel? Maybe we have to make tough decisions based on our own interrests and abilities? Nah, that couldn't be it...

"The soviet's invaded and we decided it was a great opportunity to bleed them dry so we worked with Pakistan's ISI to train the Mujahadeen in terror tactics. Those are the same people who eventually created Al Qaeda by the way. Great job, CIA!"

Are you saying that that strategy didn't work? Or just that Pakistan would be better off having been part of Russia and not defended by the hated USA?

What lies? What slander?

The humane treatment of prisoners is an American tradition that began with Washington's orders as Commander in Chief during the Revolution. Humane treatment of prisoners of war was enshrined in American law during the first few sessions of Congress. It was America that led the charge for the Geneva Conventions. America that led the charge for the Convention Against Torture (signed by Reagan, no less). When the Bush Administration authorized the use of illegal treatment of prisoners, they spit on those traditions.

Is what they did torture? That was the conclusion of the International Red Cross, which enforces the Geneva Convention, as well as the conclusion of the Senate Armed Services Committee, not to mention many, many lawyers in the JAG Corps of all the branches of service.

That the torture did not obtain any usable intelligence was the conclusion of the CIA Inspector General in 2004.

That the treatment of prisoners put American lives at risk was the conclusion of General Petraeus, as well as the many military and FBI interrogators who have gone on the record on the subject.

So not only are you going to back whoever you want just because they agree with you, you're going to lie and slander people in the process. Hey, its your right to be as unbalanced as your twisted mind will allow, but don't expect it to sway rational people.

Alexander was an actual interrogator, who actually got useful intelligence which was then used to catch actual bad guys.

Dick Cheney is a politician, who, in a desparate bid to "look tough", spit on 200+ years of American values and traditions and ordered the torture of innocent people in a manner that yielded no useful intelligence and put American soliders' lives at risk.

So yeah, I'll take the interrogator's word.

LOL what have we ever done but giving these barbarians money,

Since there are probably a few people reading this who really don;t know anything of our history in the Middle East I'll give an overview-

Skipping all the crusades stuff (which granted some in the middle east can still be touchy about since our main religion was trying to commit genocide on them and all...)

For the most part we ignored the middle east in the last century until oil became the fuel of choice and it was found there. At that point Arabs became "those damn people living on our oil" and we treated them as such. Western powers moved in to grab rights to the oil and gave back little or nothing to the people who actually owned it. In Iran they got a little annoyed at this and kicked out the western (mostly English) oil men to nationalize their oil (the gall!). We responded by overthrowing their democratic government (yep they used to be that thing we claim is the solution to all problems before we put a stop to it) and put in place a monarchist (the Shah). This lead eventually to the Ayatollah's revolution and our enmity with Iran (which is almost entirely our fault).

In Iraq we decided we needed a nice strong man in Baghdad. This was part of our great game with the Soviets (the same one that screwed up an awful large part of the world in all). Who did we find? Saddam Hussein. At the time he was a middling Baathist and we decided to make him our guy. So we armed hi and helped him take control in Iraq. When he massacred the Kurds Teddy Kennedy tried to get the UN and the US to take action which was blocked by Rumsfeld and Cheney and that group (the a$$holes) part of the Reagan admin at the time. Saddam was way more important to them than some stupid genocide.

Saddam and the Iranians had themselves one hell of a bloody war (which our guy started, natch) during which Saddam also used chemical weapons (that we'd given him, natch). Strangely this didn't endear us to the Iranians.

Saudi Arabia is a brutal monarchy that we've helped keep in power because they are major oil allies. Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and of course the Palestinians have all suffered as a result of our Israel policy (best summed up as "have a crap load of guns, guys, just don't tell us what you do with them, we don't want to know" nod nod wink wink).

Egypt got uppity about the Suez canal, once again because western powers were getting all the money while natives did most of the work and lived in poverty. When they tried to nationalize the English got the Israeli's to invade so England come come in as a third party that just happened to have to take control of the canal, what a coincidence. At least we were pretty clean in that one.

Afghanistan was another one of those great games with the soviets. The soviet's invaded and we decided it was a great opportunity to bleed them dry so we worked with Pakistan's ISI to train the Mujahadeen in terror tactics. Those are the same people who eventually created Al Qaeda by the way. Great job, CIA!

All in all it's had to find a country in the middle east that we haven't screwed over majorly.

Tlaloc, you're arguing for undermining the CIC in a time of war. For not presenting a united face to the enemies of the nation. And you're ok with this being done not by loyal opposition by by slander and deciet. This again shows your naievity in assuming this would have no positive effect on our enemies. Keep in mind, you agreed with the explicit statement that this was done not to protect "the troops" but for political gain. As I piddled: Disgusting.

There's no war for there to be a time of. No declaration of war, no enemy state. I might as well claim the right was undermining Clinton during the "War" on Drugs.

Words have meaning. We are not at war.

Beyond that Bush's asinine gunboat diplomacy was a far bigger threat in terms of encouraging our enemies. Terrorism is all about provoking a militarily superior enemy into doing stupid things so you can bleed him dry. So what's bush's response to 9/11? He charges across the world, pissing off allies and wasting our military and economic strength in Iraq. Undercutting that was necessary for National Security.

Look you guys were idiots and did precisely the wrong thing at the wrong time because you enjoy being macho more than that sissy thinking thing. Now it's time for the rest of us to fix the mess you made while you sit in a corner and think about what you did.

While taking the point that the Arabic/Muslim world has its share of genuine grievances, I would not say that, for example, the Nazis' hatred for Jews had some good reason.

Well Christianity had a couple millenia to demonize the Jews in Europe. With that kind of lead time yeah you probably can manufacture hate out of thin air.

Tabling discussion over the decision to invade, frankly, our soldiers are saving an exponentially larger number of lives than they are sacrificing, prior to Iraq's security reaching acceptable levels of stability.

I can think of few better ends.

This presumes that we are going to keep the current level (or more) troops in country for the additional decade (or more) that will be required to actually get Iraq on the path to self management.

I know that assumption is BS. We're not going to do it even if we could, and really we can't. We don't have the man power, the funds, or the interest.

That being the case the only question is when we withdraw and thus when it starts backsliding. We've already seen some uptick in violence as the sunni realize that the shia promises are empty and they start polishing all those nice shiny weapons we gave them during the "awakening."

So all we're doing is prolonging the low intensity chaos before the inevitable blow up. That means we're dragging this thing out and causing more casualties by delaying the only thing that will eventually lead to a recovery- hitting bottom.

Tlaloc, you're arguing for undermining the CIC in a time of war. For not presenting a united face to the enemies of the nation.

So I assume you are equally upset with Cheney, as he is doing the same thing...

What's really disgusting is that people in the Bush Administration felt is was necessary to resort to torture in some misguided attempt to keep our country "safe"...

You can only piss on people so long before they piss back. And we've been pretty consistently pissing on the Middle East for fifty years.

LOL what have we ever done but giving these barbarians money, Dude Why. Oh protect ourselves and others from them from time to time.

What you need to do as a liberal is think about your own words!

You can only piss on people so long before they piss back.

Tlaloc, you're arguing for undermining the CIC in a time of war. For not presenting a united face to the enemies of the nation. And you're ok with this being done not by loyal opposition by by slander and deciet. This again shows your naievity in assuming this would have no positive effect on our enemies. Keep in mind, you agreed with the explicit statement that this was done not to protect "the troops" but for political gain. As I piddled: Disgusting.

I hesitate to buy into that 100%. While taking the point that the Arabic/Muslim world has its share of genuine grievances, I would not say that, for example, the Nazis' hatred for Jews had some good reason.

Sometimes people hate because it's easier and more entertaining than addressing their real problems. (See Fox News, passim.)