But, sadly, no!

Thus, the caged bird sings on michellemalkin.com

Or something like that.

(I’d do Coulter, Ingraham, and even Althouse, too. Once. Each.)

Oh why am I sexually attracted to wingnut wimmins? It’s something about the eyes… it’s like there’s a starved nymphomaniac pent up behind every pair.

It’s like his entire world view is based on a variation of IOKIYAR. None of his views are wrong, except when held by other people.

Okay then.

Nah, save your hatred for Bush and Republicans, they’re the ones who deserve it. Percyprune needn’t be mealy mouthed; the example of the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Cuba show us exactly leftists treat their political opponents. Coercion and “re-education” are the philosophical underpinnings of the left; I doubt you’ll fool many people but the authoritarian and brutalizing instincts of the left are well known and well-documented.

By the way, Happy Independence Day, liberals! Or do you celebrate the existence of such a racist, sexist, genocidal country as the US? Oh, the mind of the liberal……

Indeed it is much sexier when others wield the branding iron.

And here I was gonna get wealthy with my huge line of bootleg Malkin merchandise. I mean, next to mickey mouse, is there a more desirable brand?

mikey

Ouch.

Didja notice the “R-in-a-circle” thingie after Malkin’s name at the top of her site? That means that she went to the trouble of registering “Michelle Malkin” as a trademark with the US Patent & Trademark Office. You could look it up. She even used a member of the patent bar to do it. You could look that up, too.

IOW, Ms. Malkin spent anywhere from the high hundreds to low thousands to brand herself — but why? To discourage us from representing ourselves as Michelle Malkin? To force us to license the name Michelle Malkin from her whenever we refer to her?

What a strange person.

Thank you. I was looking for the right way to express it, and that hits the nail on the head. Here again is the end of that Bowden piece that Truth was all het up about:

Torture is a crime against humanity, but coercion is an issue that is rightly handled with a wink, or even a touch of hypocrisy; it should be banned but also quietly practiced. Those who protest coercive methods will exaggerate their horrors, which is good: it generates a useful climate of fear. It is wise of the President to reiterate U.S. support for international agreements banning torture, and it is wise for American interrogators to employ whatever coercive methods work. It is also smart not to discuss the matter with anyone.

Note, in the sixteen thousand word piece, he provides no examples of where torture provided useful information. So clearly he’s talking about it “working” in the sense of making the US look mean and tough. Did I mention that he’s a shitbag? Oh, there’s one more paragraph:

If interrogators step over the line from coercion to outright torture, they should be held personally responsible. But no interrogator is ever going to be prosecuted for keeping Khalid Sheikh Mohammed awake, cold, alone, and uncomfortable. Nor should he be.

Read those last two sentences. This piece is from 2003, so he probably didn’t know about the waterboarding. But this is what he did know about what happened to KSM (also from the same piece)

Isolated, confused, weary, hungry, frightened, and tormented, Sheikh Mohammed would gradually be reduced to a seething collection of simple needs, all of them controlled by his interrogators.

Got that? So long as you don’t call it torture, but just coercion, then battering a human being with whatever methods are required to reduce him to essentially a mindless animal is okay by Bowden.

Even *I* was tempted to wonder how long it would take a waterboarding torturer to elicit a confession from The Truth that he was a child abuser.

But on reflection I wouldn’t wish that on him. That would be immoral.

IF THAT IS YOUR AIM then, by all means, go ahead and torture. It has a solid track record of results. And we can file you alongside the despots of history.

Sir Francis Walsingham protected Queen Elizabeth from papists this way. Her government regarded Catholics much as the right wing regards Islamists now, while Jesuits were the Jihadis of their day. The plots and threats against the regime were very real. The Throgmorton Plot was uncovered by intelligencers inside the French Embassy, but it took a second spell with one of Walsingham’s skilled racksmen–in this case the papist-hunter Thomas Norton–to elicit a confession about a proposed invasion by the Duke of Guise in aid of Mary Queen of Scots. Throgmorton’s execution at Tyburn was public, for the world to see what Elizabeth’s government were prepared to do to snuff out subversion.

This was one of many operations, such as foiling the Babington Plot and the trial of Mary, that used evidence from tortured confessions to achieve state ends. Indeed, some of Walsingham’s torturers, such as the sadist Richard Topcliffe–a man prone to writing sexual fantasies into confessions–were so notorious that mention of their name was sufficient to elicit confessions.

This was, we should remember, Britain’s ‘golden age’, a state secured by harsh repression of the once-popular Catholic religion, by show trial, torture by secret police and public execution. No wonder then that soon after Elizabeth’s reign a band of enraged Papist bravos tried to blow up Parliament and almost succeeded in creating their own 9/11. If this is the kind of country you wish to live in–prosperous for all but the disaffected–then you might accept torture.

Let’s not forget that for Elizabethans, Saddam-era Iraqis and Chileans of the middling sort–i.e. those privileged classes by nature sympathetic to the government–life WAS good under these regimes, or at least secure and tolerable. They have their counterparts in America today all too willing to parrot the government line about ‘six years of safety’. They accept torture because they feel sure it will not be used on them, and they care little for those it will be used on–the lower orders, the other-skinned, the heretic Islamist. In opposing torture you go against an ingrained instinct that only punishment, degradation and humiliation will deter the state’s enemies. They are the same people who approve of capital punishment.

Of course, all that guff about ‘intelligence gathering’ is putting lipstick on a pig. Torture’s record on obtaining sound intelligence is poor, but its effectiveness at coercing confessions is undoubted. The only shame is that many Americans of the middling sort cannot distinguish between the two…

The whole “we’re fighting them over there…” bullshit. Fighting them “over there” is obviously not preventing them from coming here.

True. Though there’s also some truth to the notion that they are bombing us over there because, well, it’s cheaper and we provide them with plenty of warm American and British bodies for targets. Why make life hard for yourself?

I loved the one about the guys trying to blow up the fuel depot near some airport in the US by blowing up the firewater mains.

http://www.investigativeproject.org/profile/105

An exerpt:

“Materials found in the apartment confirmed that an assassination attempt on the pope was also in the making. Further details laid out on Yousef’s laptops and computer disks described diabolical plans, code-named “Bojinka” (slang for explosion), to detonate time-delayed bombs on eleven US long-haul flights over the Pacific. The presence of Casio watches and references to timers caused investigators to press further. They learned that Yousef had been responsible for an earlier explosion on a December 11, 1994, flight from the Philippines to Tokyo in which a Japanese man was killed when an explosive device planted by Yousef detonated under his seat.”

Other interesting info:

“In February of 1995, close to two years after the bombing of the World Trade Center. Ramzi Yousef was captured in Pakistan. Yousef received a life sentence for the Bojinka plot and 240 years for the 1993 WTC bombing.”

So the evil mastermind that “The Truth” mentions was captured and sentenced to prison UNDER BILL CLINTON’S ADMINISTRATION.

But thanks for playing, “The Truth”. We have the home version of Sadly, No! as your consolation prize.

As just one example of your ignorance, I’ll point out that the plot you apparently reference – of “hundreds of jets” – was actually a plot to blow up a dozen jets, was planned to be executed by operatives dressed as clergymen (yes, really), and was dry run with an explosive actually killing a Japanese man on a trans-Pacific flight. Excellent intelligence and police work, as well as some lucky breaks, lead to the arrest of the terrorists so the plot obviously never came off. In your bizarro world, this means there was no threat – okey dokay.

I guess that is teh snark?

Terrorist Mastermind: Number two, have you completed the bombs?

Number Two: Wha, “bombs”? I thought you said “bongs”. But yes, I have them here.

All: *flick* BLOOBLOOBLOOBLOOOBLOOB