OPINIONS THAT TORTURE WORKS NOT BASED ON EVIDENCE

Richard Cohen claims torture works. He writes in The Washington Post today that he believes torture is morally reprehensible but nevertheless he thinks it is effective:

"Yet the debate over torture has been infected with silly arguments about utility: whether it works or not. Of course it works -- sometimes or rarely, but if a proverbial bomb is ticking, that may just be the one time it works. I refer you to the 1995 interrogation by Philippine authorities of Abdul Hakim Murad, an al-Qaeda terrorist who served up extremely useful information about a plot to blow up airliners when he was told that he was about to be turned over to Israel's Mossad. As George Orwell suggested in "1984," everyone has his own idea of torture."

But what Cohen forgets or omits is that it works only if you grab the right guy. If you grab some guy like Christopher Hitchens or some other innocent party, thinking him to be a terrorist, torture does not work and will never work.

I say to Richard Cohen, you are no better in your ethics or in your intellectual analysis than the churchmen in the late middle ages who believed that the wrack and the test by water would make "heretics" confess. Out of 100 people subject to the dripping of the water, how many do you think confessed that they were in Satan's service? They all confessed!

So use torture with all 200+ inmates at Guantanamo and they will all admit that they were part of the Qaeda conspiracy.

And by the way don't stop with merely using water torture. Find that old branding iron and heat it very hot. Then resurrect the wrack, you know, the one with the pulleys. I am sure that you will obtain a lot of "useful information."

WASHPO: ISRAEL MAY HAVE COMMITTED WAR CRIMES BUT HAMAS IS WORSE

When in the cross hairs of very negative public opinion and condemnation for war crimes, as Israel now finds itself, have your shills try to place blame on the other guy. This is what Richard Cohen tries to do in his pro-Israeli piece in today's The Washington Post. "Israel may have killed Palestinians in its unjustified three-week bombardment of Gaza, but Hamas is worse." What the world needs is a full United Nations investigation of Israel's actions, not the whitewash conducted by the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) of its own conduct, as if all the charges about killing defenseless civilians, men women, children, were mere "hearsay."

NEO-CONS LOOK TO DEMONIZE AND ATTACK IRAN

Sometimes articles appear that cause me the reader astonishment. Such is the article by Richard Cohen in today's The Washington Post. Called "Bush's Legacy of Cynicism," it starts out bemoaning Bush's policies which have cause the lack of credence put in government many of us share.

So far so good. But then Cohen goes on to say how real the "threat" is from Iran and from the Revolutionary Guard. So Cohen's article is not about the duplicity of George Bush and Dick Cheney and their minions. It is really a call to arms against Iran. Here's Cohen:

"But the true realism is that Iran is a menace -- potentially a great one -- and that its Revolutionary Guard is engaged in the dirty business of killing Americans and others. The fact that the Bush administration says so does not make it otherwise."

Cohen apparently was gung-ho for the war against Iraq. Now he is breathless for a war against Iran. He says we have "evidence."

"As the resolution states, the American military has "evidence" -- the word is Gen. David Petraeus's -- of Iranian activity. "This is not intelligence," the general told Congress. "This is evidence, off computers that we captured, documents and so forth." Petraeus didn't get his stars for nothing. He knows the level of well-earned cynicism that the word "intelligence" now engenders in Congress. Evidence! He's talking evidence."

Mr. Cohen, you talk about "the true realism . . . that Iran is a menace." And then you talk about "evidence." If Bush, Cheney or Petraeus had hard evidence, they would be besieging the news media morning, noon and night with it. There is no "evidence" that Iran is supplying IEDS or EFPs. Any garage in Baghdad is capable of fashioning these explosives, and probably do. Just because Petraeus says we have "evidence" does not make it so, any more than Bush, Cheney and Rice claiming Saddam had WMD.

You would take us to war with Iran over non-existent evidence? You would have the U.S. Senate endorse a resolution saying that Iran is killing American soldiers solely on the basis of what some Bush loyalist says or claims?

No thanks, Mr. Cohen. This time, I for one am not buying into your pie-in-the-sky demonization of Iran and Iranians. Instead of attacking or bombing Iran, let's sit down and begin to talk with them. I remind you, this is the year 2007, not 1007.