Cornyn presses on Waterboarding
I was going to write a long post on Senator John Cornyn of Texas (one of the dumbest people in the Senate in my opinion). Then I read Think Progress‘ post and they really covered everything I wanted to say.
From TP: During his confirmation hearing today, Attorney General nominee Eric Holder unequivocally rejected torture. “No one is above the law,” Holder said repeatedly during the hearing.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) could not fathom that an Attorney General would reject a practice that both is unlawful and endangers Americans. He tried to get Holder to back off his anti-torture stance by presenting an absurd “ticking time bomb” hypothetical in which thousands of American lives are at stake. “You would still refuse to condone aggressive interrogation techniques?” Cornyn asked. When Holder replied that waterboarding is not the only interrogation method, Cornyn insisted, “Assume that it was”:
HOLDER: I think your hypothetical assumes a premise that I’m not willing to concede.
CORNYN: I know you don’t like my hypothetical.
HOLDER: No, the hypothetical’s fine; the premise that underlies it I’m not willing to accept, and that is that waterboarding is the only way that I could get that information from those people.
CORNYN: Assume that it was.
HOLDER: [Laughs] Given the knowledge that I have about other techniques and what I’ve heard from retired admirals and generals and FBI agents, there are other ways in a timely fashion that you can get information out of people that is accurate and will produce useable intelligence. And so it’s hard for me to accept or to answer your hypothetical without accepting your premise. And in fact, I don’t think I can do that.
Eric Holder did a great job in standing up to Senator Cornyn and not giving into the senator’s premise. President Clinton on NPR about two years ago said you can get Congress to pass special legislation if you knock someone around to get information. We don’t need laws that support torture. We must get away from saying to ourselves that torture is okay. It is un-American.
