So Karl Rove went on Fox News and said this:
ROVE: Taking, for example, the memoranda about the enhanced interrogation techniques and making them public has been a value to our enemy. It has served, frankly, I think, as a recruiting tool. They can now take these memoranda and go to prospective, you know, recruits and say, This is the worst that the enemy, the United States, would ever do to you, and they've even forsworn these things. We can help you, prepare you to deal with these things, but even the enemy is so weak they're not going to use these techniques on you. And it's given them a tool to make it more attractive to recruit people, and you know, this kind of thing is harmful to us over the long haul.
Basically, he's confirming what Andrew Sullivan conjectured, that the Bush administration used torture as a tool to intimidate would-be terrorists, not to extract ticking-bomb information.
I find it strange that Rove et al, think that extreme authoritarian tactics like this will discourage people from opposing the US? I mean, doesn't he realize this kind of sh*t fires people up? Didn't they ever watch "Red Dawn," fer chrissakes?
But then consider the war records of the people who made the decision to torture. Bush - his daddy got him a nice gig in the reserves so he could avoid active duty in Vietnam - and he still went AWOL. Cheney had "other priorities" than enlisting. Rove sought deferment after deferment, and slipped past Vietnam without firing a single shot in anger. And these men supported Vietnam. You'd hate to think what they'd have done to get out of a war they opposed.
And you wonder why they think the treat of physical harm would discourage al Qaeda recruits... |
