NYPD's(Police Commissioner) Kelly Says Torture Bad for U.S.A.

Source: WNYC

NEW YORK, NY April 23, 2009 —Police Commissioner Ray Kelly is endorsing President Obama's ban on torture as a way to gather intelligence. WNYC's Bob Hennelly reports.

REPORTER: In his appearance before the Council on Foreign Relations, Commissioner Kelly said the decision to prohibit techniques like water-boarding would actually help the nation fight terrorism in the long term.

KELLY: I don't think we should engage in torture. It may provide some short term gain but i think in the big picture it is not helpful and I just don't think it is the way we should be doing business.

REPORTER: Kelly says he's aware that after World War Two, the US prosecuted water-boarding as a war crime. But he says in at least one instance, New York benefited from some valuable intelligence from a detainee who was subjected to Bush administration interrogation techniques. he says the tip helped identify a suspect who targeted the Brooklyn bridge for a terrorist attack. For WNYC I am Bob Hennelly.

Read more: http://www.wnyc.org/news/articles/129735

NYC police commish also discovers that water is wet. :sarcasm:

I presume he's talking about Iyman Faris, a truck driver, whose alleged "plan" involved making the bridge collapse by using blowtorches to cut its cables.

And it would have worked had he been able to carry it out unnoticed for, say, 10 years!

kelly's another of those establishment 'moderates' - shining up his platitudes, with a view to replacing bloomberg, when bloomie runs out of extensions on his tame mayoralty gig, in 2014.

there's also his bleak warning on chinese hackers cutting in on the nypd computers - posted by DUer Coventina, on LBN:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3845567

to quote friends: from an nyc street level perspective - kelly runs a 'mickey mouse' nypd, but with better manners & bigger guns. of course, he's magnitudes better than our wannabe nazi, rudy & his mussolini-esque puppet, kerik. but, that's like saying gerald ford was magnitudes better as potus, than nixon.

though irrelevant, except perhaps on the credibility aspect, i believe kelly was one of the contractors at the paying end of the outsourced post-war iraqi reconstruction. he did appear to have tried to make a conscientious job of it - albeit unsuccessfully.

since the monumental stupidity of 21st century humanity apparently has no discernible limits - even in one of those pathetically few civilized patches on the face of this planet that new york city counts as - i strongly suspect that ray kelly will be the next 2-term prince of the city. and what's worse: i don't think there will be any decent alternative to him, either.