Salon: "What Hillary won't say about torture"

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/11/02/hillary/

<snip>

's campaign has credited her evolution on the ticking-time-bomb scenario, in part, to an April meeting at Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, N.H., with 19 retired senior military leaders, including two former chiefs of staff. It was one of several similar meetings at Pierce Law with some of the presidential candidates. The gatherings were intended to provide the former senior military officials with an opportunity to argue that coercive interrogations are an ineffective intelligence tool and that the United States -- including the CIA -- should return to more proven techniques that emphasize knowing the enemy's language and culture to build rapport.

But within days of the Dartmouth debate, Clinton was again using broad, indistinct language. On Oct. 4, Clinton wrote to the American Freedom Campaign, but she was not as explicit as Joe Biden had been. "It should never be the policy of the United States to torture," she wrote. When she mentioned interrogations in a national security treatise in the November/December issue of Foreign Affairs, she wrote, "We cannot support torture and the indefinite detention of individuals we have declared beyond the law." Her interview with the Washington Post, with the answer described as "vague," ran on Oct. 10.

Salon interviewed five of the retired military leaders who met with Clinton at Pierce Law School in April, including Guter and retired Army Lt. Gen. Robert Gard. And they all agreed they would much prefer that all of the presidential candidates directly address the CIA activities rather than simply condemn torture.

When it comes to rejecting torture, "It all depends on what is, is," said Lt. Gen. Gard, recycling a famous Clinton-ism. "It all depends on how you define torture."

" says we don't torture," said retired Rear Adm. John Hutson, the dean of Pierce Law who moderated the meeting with Clinton in April. "We have so lost our bearings on what that word means, it has become meaningless because it means everything," Hutson told me in mid-October. He has since endorsed Barack Obama.

What a weak article - some reporter just chewing his cud.

deni ability to War ,the economy and the customizing of the constitution to aid Cooperate and Covert America, it should not be characterized, a Clinton ism.

"It should never be the policy of the United States to torture," she wrote. When she mentioned interrogations in a national security treatise in the November/December issue of Foreign Affairs, she wrote, "We cannot support torture and the indefinite detention of individuals we have declared beyond the law."
Yeah that really sucks. She's just about applauding waterboarding!!
:sarcasm:

The people who control this country have redefined torture.

That way they can go out to the public and say "We don't torture..." yet we are torturing someone right now somewhere in all probability.

So the OP's content isn't truthful.

She doesn't condone torture of any kind, and in a "ticking bomb" scenario, IF torture was used only the President would be the one to determine if torture needed to be used and the President would be held accountable for that decision.


Doesn't sound very vague to me at all.

Sounds like she's saying torture is illegal, immoral --and if it were used --even the President wouldn't be above the law.

That's the problem, this piece suggests that torture has been redefined so that people in the know can go out into the world and say "we don't torture."

On the other hand, a fair definition of torture includes whatever the CIA is alleged to have done, including waterboarding.

Are you saying that Hillary thinks waterboarding isn't torture?

She's already stated she believes it is.

Would you need her to make a list for you?

"the united states doesn't torture". She sounds more and more like him every day.

<snip>

Guter also noted that Clinton's statement to Salon repudiating the CIA's interrogation tactics -- "The Senator is in favor of interrogations that are lawful" -- would still be functional in a Bush White House.

Clinton has stated what she sees as torture. Bush has not.

Yeah --she sounds just like Bush here. :sarcasm:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iGEyh8n0Jo

Here's her quote

“In the event we were ever confronted with having to interrogate a detainee with knowledge of an imminent threat to millions of Americans, then the decision to depart from standard international practices must be made by the President, and the President must be held accountable,” she said.

Flop....

<snip>

But within days, Clinton was arguing that she, too, could stomach torture under certain circumstances. Clinton told the Daily News in October 2006 that in a ticking-time-bomb scenario, she favored a legal loophole to allow the torture of a terror suspect. At the time, she argued for a "very, very narrow exception within very, very limited circumstances."

Eleven months later, when Clinton was asked about a ticking-time-bomb scenario during the debate at Dartmouth in September 2007, she ruled it out, saying torture "cannot be American policy, period."


I imagine she will change her view several more times in the next few weeks.

“In the event we were ever confronted with having to interrogate a detainee with knowledge of an imminent threat to millions of Americans, then the decision to depart from standard international practices must be made by the President, and the President must be held accountable,” she said.

AND THE PRESIDENT MUST BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE.

see how that works?

you did not read the article.

It's a piece of shit.