Saturday, August 2, 2014

Obama: After 9/11 ‘we tortured some folks’

US president Barack Obama said the CIA “tortured some folks” after the September 11th, 2001, attacks, and that the White House had handed over to Congress a report about an investigation into “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
“We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values,” Mr Obama told a White House news conference.

“It’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had,” he said. “A lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots.”
Torture Chart

27 comments:

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

When everyone's a folk, no one is.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

So is this the radical leftist Islamist Obama I have heard so much about?

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

No. It's the front-man Obama reading his lines you've heard so much about.

Michael Haz said...

What the hell is his point?? Is it another one of those moral equivalency statements that are total bullshit?

You know, like the US is no better than some group that slaughters thousands of innocents because we water boarded five bad guys?

Idiot.

ndspinelli said...

This is just a grammatical point. When you speak of torture, "folks" should not be the subject used in that sentence. Terrorists, prisoners, captives, people, not "folks." When this guy is off the teleprompter he's a buffoon.

AC245 said...

Match the person (1 or 2) to the acts (A or B):

1. War criminal George W Bush
2. Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama

A. Poured water over the faces of captured terrorists to scare them into revealing information
B. Killed suspected terrorists and any nearby innocent civilians with drone strikes

The Dude said...

His hatred of this country cannot be denied or hidden.

Well done, Obama voters - you elected a traitorous moron.

Unknown said...

Mark Udall hardest hit.

Unknown said...

Andrew Sullivan shrugs.

Chip Ahoy said...

Democrat dictionary:

Lois Lerner's copy; tea-party type -- assholes, terrorists.

Barak Obama's copy; al Qaida members -- folks

Unknown said...

In my opinion, we didn't torture enough. Torture is too good for these earth cancer terrorists who plan their lives around killing innocents.

Unknown said...

Heh - good catch.
Terrorists are just "folks".


But those evil people who pay their taxes and desire limited transparent government - we should torture them.

chickelit said...

One folk, one reach, one furor.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
chickelit said...

What AC245 said up thread. That, in a nutshell, captures the profound hypocrisy of the sullivanists. Either accept both or reject both.

Unknown said...

When I get in my car, thanks to nanny state-ers, I must listen to an annoying female voice tell me to buckle my seat belt.

Thanks to nanny state-ers, who are against fracking, I will soon pay higher prices for natural gas.

Thanks to nanny state-ers like Nancy Pelosi Bloomberg, my gun rights are restricted and I live on the edge of a threat of a large size diet coke.

But terrorists are just regular folks, who have rights, and we shouldn't torture them to garner information that might save innocent lives. and we should twist ourselves into knots apologizing to them.

Got it.

ricpic said...

I'm bringin' Ebola heah so duh folks in 'merika ain't gots no 'vantage ovah duh folks in Motha Africa, ya see?

Shouting Thomas said...

Only 2-1/2 years of this bullshit left to be endured!

That is, unless Obama's contempt for the law becomes so egregious that Congress has no choice but to impeach him and remove him from office.

Nat Hentoff, the great civil liberties columnist for The Village Voice for decades, and chronicler of the Bop jazz scene, calls for the president's impeachment.

I'd rather see Obama finish his term and depart peaceably, but who knows what he has in store for us? Mass amnesty by executive order seems to be a given. He's got a pen and a phone!

Shouting Thomas said...

Caveat:

Hentoff is no longer with The Voice. He is now employed by the CATO institute and his paycheck is signed by those servants of the devil, the Koch Bros.

Hentoff's outlook has not changed in 50 years, which is how long I've been reading him. He's always been committed to defending civil liberties. He's one of the most consistent opponents of abortion in the press.

50 years ago, he was regarded as a fire breathing radical leftist. Today, he's dismissed as a knuckle dragging reactionary.

edutcher said...

Folks?

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is from Wes Virginny?

Bammy?

Kaintuck?

Joja?

Who does he think he's fooling with this "folks" nonsense?

(I know...)

PS Never forget all the Demo biggies in Congress (and the little fish like Choom) signed off on "torture" when they thought their asses were in danger.

Unknown said...

From ST's link:
"The problem with what the president is doing is that he is not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system. He’s becoming the very danger the Constitution was designed to avoid. That is the concentration of power in any single branch.”

-Jonathan Turley

Obama Beiber's response: "Stop all the hatin'... and embrace the suck."

deborah said...

We tortured some folks...he really is the limit.

Shouting Thomas said...

Just so you know...

Jonathan Turley has long been regarded as a very liberal legal scholar.

Now that he opposes Obama's reckless disregard for the law, I think we can count on him being labeled a right wing nutjob within a short time.

Chip S. said...

♩ Waaayy down upon de Cuban coastline

Far, far a-way;

Daaat's where we tor-tured random po' folks

down on Guan-ta-namo Bay ♬

ricpic said...

Wow, I'm stunned that Hentoff is still around and writing. He's gotta be at least in his mid-80's. When I was a stripling he was already an established figure on the Left, whose Village Voice column had real influence. But as you say he has great integrity and sticks to his guns whether in fashion or out. Reminds me of that great old radical columnist, Murray Kempton, long gone now, who had that same tell it and let the chips fall where they may attitude.

virgil xenophon said...

@ricpic/

This^^^!!!

Trooper York said...

Obama is amply illustrating that he is a radical leftist. Islamist by trying to save Hamas. By not doing anything about ISIS when they are murdering Christians and burning down churches. Not even easy stuff like arming the Kurds who are willing and able to stop them in their tracks.

Almost every action of this administration has enabled and aided radical Islam.

We have switched side and everyone knows it.