James Baker on Torture Memos: We're Not a 'Banana Republic'
By Paul Bedard, Washington Whispers
Former Secretary of State James Baker, one of several past top diplomats who've called for the closing of Guantánamo Bay prison camps, said the call to probe the lawyers who wrote the so-called CIA torture memos is a "banana republic" move that would undermine President Obama's larger agenda. "The one thing that we need to stay away from at all costs is criminalizing our policy differences," he said, referring to Democratic efforts to investigate those who penned the memos justifying harsh interrogation methods under former President George W. Bush. "There's a strong flirtation to do that, but we ought to stay away from that." Speaking last night at a private Virginia girls' school, he said a probe would hurt Obama and make the country look silly. "I think it would suck a lot of the oxygen out of the air on some very important things that they are going to try and get done. But we are not a banana republic, and we ought not be in the business of criminalizing policy differences," he said. Baker joined virtually all living past secretaries of state last year to call for the closing of the prison camp. But yesterday, he acknowledged that there remains a problem of what to do with the accused terrorists there. "That's easier said than done," he said. "We don't really have a good solution to where we send these people. They are dangerous people. You can't just turn them loose. Most of their native countries won't take them back."
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Tags: George W. Bush | James Baker | torture
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banana republics torture
James Baker spews we're not a "banana republic"--but boy sure did behave like one with torture. This not just "criminalizing" policy differences", but in fact a matter of prosecuting DOCUMENTED war crimes and human rights violations. Innocent Iraqi and Afghani civilians, as well as Guantánamo Bay detainees, were not just tortured but killed as well documented in the Academy Award winning documentary "Taxi to the Dark Side". What makes the U.S. look really silly was paying rewards to Taliban and Al Queda posing as members the Aghani military for turning in innocent civilians, and the arms purchased with the rewards used against U.S. troops.
What these policies did do was to set a precedent for future U.S. politicians to disregard international and U.S. laws (remember the "nation of laws" thingy) for the sake of political expediency.
King of Jordan
I think the King of Jordan put it well. People though out the Middle East are looking to see if the rule of law is real or not in America. Just like many of our closet friends, that stopped working with us on intelligence issues, are wondering if America has turned a corner or not. McCain is a good example of someone saying they are against torture, but do not want anyone held accountable nor want talk about it.
Amazing and real.
Let's see... I read that there had been over 400 Armed Services cases against military personnel... and 4000 dead US people overseas, 100,000 dead Iraqis, and 2,000,000 refuges
Nothing like torture to try and get a link to justify the Iraq war!!!! Sure torture works...
The left's self-righteous hysterics don't see THEIR causes as policy
"...we are not a banana republic, and we ought not be in the business of criminalizing policy differences."
How true.
But isn't the institutionalized late-modern idea of a human person primarily an emotional thing? And don't so-called "post"-modernists disclaim objective truth, and insist that all "truth" is subjective? So isn't it fitting that academic wisdom would fall into self-fulfilling prophecies, and come increasingly to define reality according to their private, emotional inclinations? The esoteric crap that passes as intellectual work in many humanities departments today is a symptom of the after-the-fact intellectual backfilling that's required when principles are subordinated to feelings.
To those on the left, THEIR doctrines and policies aren't mere doctrines and policies-- they're FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS OF ETHICS. At least lefties behave that way. Of course, they wouldn't admit that there are anything like fundamental truths, because they have so much invested in the method of insisting that such things are culturally relative, at least when criticizing conservatives.
Hey, where's the outrage?
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