"Signs of an Already Failed Presidency"

Just like his boss, Eric Holder is a posturing agenda-driven political operative, and a pompous arrogant ass.

Dr. Sanity has a great overview of this most recent outrage the Teleprompter-in-Chief and his Grand Inquisitor have concocted.

Quoting the Belmont Club's Wretched, regarding the jihadists:

" 'The brilliance of the new barbarism is that you cannot fight it without destroying your own value system into the bargain.

Traditionally the solution has been to consider wartime a discontinuity, when civilization's rules are suspended. It becomes possible, for example, to lay waste to the Monte Cassino Abbey. Berlin was bombed without regard for its buildings, churches or people.

The alternative is to create methods of fighting so discriminating that we can literally shoot between the raindrops. But that creates a different problem, for we will need an intelligence system so comprehensive that it will become intrusive.

Either way, the war cannot be won without cost. And the fundamental fraud foisted on the public is to claim we can have war without horror, conduct an intelligence war without dishonesty and cunning and obtain victory without sacrifice.'

His two points are particularly relevant in the discussion of torture. To the extent that we can, we have tried to maintain "civilization's rules" as much as possible, while at the same time suspending them when the situation demands--i.e., adherence to a life-affirming value system that requires you to protect innocents who might be harmed by evil. Indeed, when it comes to the issue of torture, one might even say from an historical perspective that the administration went overboard to try and find techniques that were sufficiently uncomfortable and even unbearable; and which would elicit the necessary information without inflicting lasting harm on the recipient.

In this, they were obviously successful.

In fact, I would say that the Bush Administration used an ethical system that appropriately put the value of innocent life higher than that of the dubious, or so-called 'rights' of a terrorist, who happens not to value life at all. Not only that, but the previous administration also managed to identify and use techniques that effectively 'shoot between the raindrops' of the multiple definitions and conceptualizations of torture. True, they identified techniques that were harsh; but they were also techniques which did not truly endanger the life of the terrorist (who himself does not value life in the least and would consider such scruples about it 'weak').

To say that the use of such techniques is unethical seems to me to entirely miss the purpose of ethics.

If you consider the purpose of ethics--to codify and act on one's values--then the Bush Administration behaved in an exquisitely ethical manner. They codified the most important of American values and acted on them; and in doing so managed to keep America safe from a terrorist attack for more than eight years."

"Obama is turning out to be a massive disappointment to even his most slavishly devoted and myopic followers; but this latest cynical and immoral manipulation of our national security to provide political cover for his incompetent leadership shows him to be seriously irresponsible and irresponsibly unserious as POTUS, both in national and foreign policy. He is a postmodern pied piper, leading the gullible of this country down a path of economic ruin and international impotence. As for his and his Administration's moral compass, it is spinning wildly trying to find a direction that pulls him up in the polls.

Obama was never ready for prime time; and is turning out to be a bad joke perpetrated on all Americans."

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