Graham: Approving Torture Techniches That Are ‘Clearly Illegal’ Are ‘Not Criminal Mistakes’

Run time: 01:43 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5opE3XYCrI   Posted on YouTube: June 04, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: June 04, 2009 By DU Member: kpete Views on DU: 2619

 
GRAHAM: The reason I don’t want to go back any more than we have already done is because I know what happened. Out of fear, we overreacted. … They took a view of the law that I think was aggressive, and I would not have approached it that way. Right after 9/11, we all thought we were going to be hit again. So as we go back and try to hold people criminally liable. I think we’re doing a lot of damage to the country, because their mistakes were not criminal mistakes. They were mistakes made out of fear.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/06/04/graham-bush-fear-torture/

FU Graham!

...to start a war.

So they tortured people.

They should go to prison for this.

NT

Intent and fear are not mutually exclusive.

Good gracious, how they would LAUGH after the quizzical looks -- in Court -- after a criminal defendant asserted the Fear Defense at all. Even self-defense is not justified based on fear, but on facts. And the facts are clear:

The torture happened over a period of YEARS, in what was mostly FISHING EXPEDITIONS, looking for something to be afraid of, to FEAR.

Fear never flies.

The GOP is filled with immature shitheels, which explains the last 8 yrs.

has anyone else noticed that Graham looks bloated, sick, and has an aura of serious disability in his near future? I'm thinking pancreas, liver, or kidneys.

Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free is where I'm from. Prosecute these war criminals. They weren't scared. They started a war on purpose and tried to justify it by torturing people for a link to 9/11. Which I half way believe they did too. Yeah, I said it.

But..but your honor I only robbed that bank and shot the guards out of fear!

and they should be prosecuted.

Borrowing money from the bank at gunpoint?

Fear and some kaleidoscopic shit to smear and ****Z*A*P**** the bullshit mongers reinvent another multifaceted bull turd of the day. Are you tired of the rubber turkey republican slobber fests on the TV? BRING IT ON Mr. GRAHAM! Bring on the bullshit!

"Out of fear,"***sob*** "we overreacted"...an admission that BushCo didn't have the brainpower to run the country when the rubber met the road. So now is ignorance, stupidity and cowardice a legitimate excuse to exempt future felons from punishment for the commission of any future criminal act. Are politicians above the law and beyond accountability?

In the past American Soldiers have been shot on battlefields by their own troops, for no other crime than being afraid under fire and abandoning their posts, but should a politician(a "LEADER")get an atta-boy for being a blathering, stampeding, coward, when the chips were down?

How to lose the "war on terror"...let the attackers change your country's core values and destroy your national standing and credibility. So KKKommander Bushwhack may have been wrong when he unfurled his lofty taxpayer funded "Mission Accomplished" banner on that fateful photo op, but he may have accidentally been right, on that one rare occasion. Did the terrorists accomplish their mission on BushCo's watch? Did the terrorists change America?

I don't think Bush or Cheney thought they were mistakes of any kind... even after being told repeatedly at the time they were mistakes & criminal by many an informed person.

to any question and rationale for the same tired result he wants every few months.

So much fear, so little faith in the Bush administration? Hmm. Some thoughts from others:

Fear is the foundation of most {tyrannical} governments {but} it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.

–President John Adams

{Fear creates} "poor reality testing" in which accurate assessment of objective reality and good judgment are dominated by emotions. There is a failure, or even refusal, to learn from experience, as we are lead to support policies that produce the opposite effect of that intended, that is, unless the intention is to create Armageddon.

-Dr. Diane Perlman

Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burned women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.

-Justice Louis Brandeis in Whitney v. California

Norman Vincent Peale:

"A simple faith can bring about almost incredible power and greatness in human beings. It is POSSIBLE to rise above disaster, overcome fear, break the worry habit, convert handicaps into assets, solve seemingly impossible problems through religious experience."

:kick:

How can Bush/Cheney be afraid of something they did like 9/11? It's just another excuse.

He was caught red-handed so he had no choice but to plead guilty. He explained: It was really, really late. He was walking home from work. He was in a bad neighborhood in L.A., and he thought a gang was following him. He got scared. He panicked. Someone else had already broken into the car and stolen it, so he just decided to drive it home.

He was convicted and sentenced. That was justice, but then the kid I'm telling you about was relatively poor. Senator Graham needs to go back into the courtroom and see what is going on in the lives of ordinary people who get scared.

Bush, Cheney, etc. are much worse criminals than the kid who stole the car. Fear is no excuse for torturing prisoners who are in your custody. It was no excuse for imprisoning innocent Japanese-Americans either.

Wealthy white men live a different set of rules in the good ol' U.S.A. (really!)

Like Graham they are so out of touch that they can even be persuaded to believe that somehow they are being discriminated against by special consideration for minorities. This is a teaching moment. Graham has the idea that because Bush and Cheney were afraid that it somehow excuses the violation of law. Where does he get this idea? Well............................

Throw our votes in the trash in 2000 and then insert an AWOL as CiC = "Gog and Magog" on Mad Dog!

That great American Ace AWOL Aviator was steadily hauling a$$ away from the east coast on most of 9/11 as I recall.

So, G W Bush was always more of a scared silly studio based chain sawing flag draped rubble stander type, than an actual fighter, I take it Mr. Graham?

Dark Dick stayed underground for a spell too, as well as I remember. Was he scared stupid too? Or was Dick already twisting the secret screws full speed ahead while the national dummy was flying to the more friendly skies out west?

That makes no sense, but that's nothing new.

Their world is like Alice through the looking glass.

Since a corrupt police force is worse than a few criminals.

Should he be tortured into confessing as much -- that non-prosecution amounts to legalization? Or into upholding his oath of office?

What if we "approached it that way" as we "look forward?"

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