Source: CBS
President Obama pushed back at Republican criticisms on Iran and comments on the practice of waterboarding discussed at the CBS News/National Journal debate. Bill Plante reports.

Former Bush speech writer Marc Thiessen tells Bill O’Reilly how enhanced interrogations led us to Bin Laden.

(hat tip The Right Scoop)

From The Daily Beast:

A new study by the American Red Cross obtained exclusively by The Daily Beast found that a surprising majority—almost 60 percent—of American teenagers thought things like water-boarding or sleep deprivation are sometimes acceptable. More than half also approved of killing captured enemies in cases where the enemy had killed Americans. When asked about the reverse, 41 percent thought it was permissible for American troops to be tortured overseas. In all cases, young people showed themselves to be significantly more in favor of torture than older adults.

Obviously, I disagree with the premise. Being in favor of enhanced interrogation is not the same as being in favor of torture. Enhanced interrogation isn’t torture. But I really don’t give a damn what you call it as long we get the information we need from captured terrorists.

Daniel Stone trots out the same tired liberal canard about the treatment of our soldiers if they get captured. First of all, terrorists are not soldiers which makes them ineligible for the Geneva Conventions. Secondly, if our soldiers are captured they get decapitated. They skip the waterboarding and go straight to execution. How we treat captured terrorists is of no consequence.

Terrorists who target civilians show an utter disregard for human rights. So the idea that the US is obligated to worry about their human rights is absurd. You have to act like a human to be entitled to human rights. Captured terrorists should be interrogated and then executed.

It’s encouraging to see that young people realize we’re in a different kind of war. This is not WWII. The rules need to evolve as our enemy evolves.

Former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen appeared on “The Daily Show” to talk with Jon Stewart about his new book Courting Disaster, which gives offers an inside look and defense of the Bush administration’s enhanced interrogation program. I’m actually reading Courting Disaster right now and it’s a phenomenal book. If you don’t have it — get it.

Stewart predictably played to his ignorant left-wing audience, but it is what it is:

You can watch the extended interview at TheDailyShow.com

I absolutely love stories like this. I sleep better at night knowing the vast majority of Americans are not pussies — it’s mostly just Obama and his ACLU cronies.

A new Pew poll shows support for torture at an all time high:

The often/sometimes number is up 10 points since Obama took office, and five points since Cheney started flaring up from retirement.

Oh, but it gets better. The breakdown by political affiliation is even more interesting:

The often/sometimes number is +2 since Obama took office, Indie’s are +9, and best of all Democrats are +18.

That’s only a small sample of the latest polling data on this stuff. AllahPundit has a lot more over at Hot Air, so click over to read it.

(images via Hot Air)

This via CNS News:

Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, according to the 9-11 commission report, was the mastermind of the Oct. 12, 2000, attack on the U.S.S. Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors.

Nashiri was also the target of an "unauthorized" CIA interrogation technique (that had not been legally vetted by the Justice Department) that is described in a May 7, 2004, CIA inspector general’s report that was partially declassified by the Obama administration this week.

CIA officers blew smoke in Nashiri’s face, according to the report, and they used cigars.

The IG’s office described this smoke-blowing as one of several "unauthorized or undocumented techniques" it discovered had been used in isolated incidents by CIA employees interrogating high-level al-Qaida terrorists.

"An Agency (redacted phrase) interrogator admitted that, in December 2002, he and another (redacted phrase) smoked cigars and blew cigar smoke in al-Nashiri’s face during the interrogation," said the IG report.

I know it sounds like a brutal war crime, but the interrogators had a reason for blowing smoke:

"The interrogator claimed they did this to ‘cover the stench’ in the room and to help keep the interrogators alert late at night," said the IG report. "This interrogator said he would not do this again based on ‘perceived criticism.’ Another agency interrogator admitted that he also smoked cigars during two sessions with al-Nashiri to mask the stench in the room. He claimed he did not deliberately force smoke into al-Nashiri’s face." The interrogators learned their lesson: Don’t blow smoke at terrorists.

Only in America could something this absurd actually be real. Second-hand smoke is considered an “unauthorized” interrogation technique?

I guess if you happen to break wind in front of a detainee you have to report that as well.

What he should have done is put that cigar out in al-Nashiri’s eye. Now that’s what I call an “unauthorized” technique. Oh yeah!!!

-Chris Jones

A new CNN poll out today shows Americans approve of enhanced interrogation techniques including waterboarding by a margin of 50-46.

This is not a surprise to me at all. I’ve seen many polls that show a margin of approval much wider than that.

The only people getting worked up about waterboarding terrorists are the corrupt, left-wing media.

Anyone else besides the media upset about interrogation is an idiot and doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about.

I pray for the day when we can boot this Marxist out of the White House and get somebody in there with some balls.

The media has been frothing at the mouth over the recently released torture interrogation memos.

The NY Times has devoted as much ink as possible to deceiving the public into believing terrorists were tortured and Bush is a war criminal.

However, the only thing criminal are the lies the nearly bankrupt NY Times prints.

One of their favorite lies of late has been that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times.

That’s the kind of red meat The Times has been dreaming about for years and has been only too happy to peddle it.

Unfortunately for The Times, it isn’t true.

That 183 figure represents the number of times water touched his face. Since the object of the technique is only to scare, water is only poured on the face for maybe 5 or 6 seconds at a time.

Then KSM was allowed to catch his breath briefly before more water was poured. But each time the water is poured counts separately.

So a single waterboarding might consist of 15 or 20 pours, maybe more.

The Justice Department memos don’t explain all that, because they were never meant for public consumption. The CIA never dreamed those documents would be plastered all over the Internet and the evening news.

The real outrage here has nothing to do with interrogations and everything to do with the outrageous irresponsibility of Obama for releasing the documents.

Our president doesn’t give a f*ck about national security, and would rather placate the ACLU then do what is necessary to protect this nation.

-Chris Jones

The NY Times gleefully trumpeted the release of the so-called “torture memos” ringing every last drop of ink and pixel out of the story as it could, while quietly burying the story about the success of enhanced interrogations. One would think acknowledgment by Obama’s own intelligence director that “High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country” would be news. However, the NY Times chose to put that part of the story online only.

Their excuse for this is simply that the paper ran out of room. Yeah, sure it did. The NY Times has relentlessly flogged the “torture” narrative for years and written 100+ front page stories on it. So it’s mighty convenient that The Times would run out of room in their paper on the very day an Obama official confirms what the Bush administration has been saying for years — that the enhanced interrogation program was a big success.

-Chris Jones

I really wish this whole thing would just go away. Not because I think anyone is going to be prosecuted, but because of the absurdity of it all.

The newly released CIA memos did exactly what Obama intended them to do, inflame his kooky left-wing base.

Obama has said all along his intention is to “look forward” rather than get caught up in phony manufactured issues from the Bush era.

He gave reassurance to the CIA that no one at the agency will be prosecuted for keeping us safe for the last seven years.

However, he left the door open for his Attorney General to prosecute former Bush lawyers for their advice that led to enhanced interrogation.

It’s hysterically funny to imagine the Justice Department prosecuting members of the previous Justice Department for giving the president legal advice.

Obama is too much of a committed a liberal to allow his socialist agenda to go down the shitter for a couple of show trials. The opportunity to turn America into France may never come again.

They have no leg to stand on legally anyway, and it would set a horrible precedent that republicans would be sure to get even with once back in power.

Secondly, the opinions issued by the Bush era lawyers regarding interrogation were completely legitimate.

Moreover, democrats will have to put Nancy Pelosi and other top democrats on trial as well since we know they were fully briefed on interrogations including waterboarding as far back as 2002.

At the end of the day, all the newly released memos did was confirm what most clear thinking Americans already knew anyway — that there was no torture.

As someone who’s pro-torture, I was somewhat disappointed by what I read.

The techniques described in the memos were highly effective enhanced interrogation techniques and nothing more.

Only big pinko pussies would call anything described in those memos as “torture.”

Obama is just keeping this thing hanging out there as a bone for the kooks in his party to gnaw on while he works on getting his agenda passed.

When it comes to prosecuting Bush officials, allow me to borrow a line from the former president and say, bring it on.

-Chris Jones