Apparently I missed something. What lives were saved?

[gulliver]

The GOP keeps talking about how they have saved lives with their secret programs. Have any top secret cleared Dem members of the Senate Committee on Intelligence (Rockefeller, Levin, Feingold, etc.) backed this up? Why did McCain say that altering our interpretation of the Geneva Conventions was "unnecessary?" That seems to be fairly categorical.

It looks like we are settling for mere assertions again. We are debating whether NSA spying violates the law, whether altering Geneva endangers the troops, whether allowing the executive to function outside the Constitution is "worth it." But no one has shown us what "it" is.

The all-Brownie Administration defeated us in 2002 by selling trusting, angry Americans a pig in a poke. Are we going to let them do it again?

[patrice]

1. That's right. They are claiming a "Greater Good" that we have no way

of validating, especially since EVERYTHING is classified now.

[Vyan]

2. Not Hardly...

if Congress wants to keep their jobs.

http://vyan.blogspot.com/2006/09/crossroads-for-americato-torture-or.html

And even then, they probably won't.

[savemefromdumbya]

3. what terrorist attacks were thwarted by Bush?

they would lie anyhow even if they told you there was one

[p12psicop]

4. The Big Terrorist Plan thwarted

was being hatched in Miami, remember? The Al-Quaeda in the Ghetto was gonna blow up the Sears Tower. Sounds like it's worth it to me. =) As long as I feel safe they can torture and listen to phone calls and put people in secret prisons for their whole lives with no access to a lawyer or even a trial. Sounds like a great plan!

[yardwork]

5. Welcome to DU!

You've picked up our use of sarcasm around here - you'll fit in well! Smile.

[savemefromdumbya]

12. oh yes, the Chicago subway or NY subway

just remembered

[Greyhound]

13. And a Babylon 5 fan too. Welcome. n/t

[Jim__]

6. The only "evidence" we have that this program has accomplished ...

anything is the word of bush and his minions. We all know what that is worth.

In its Sept 11 issue, the New Yorker did an article on Junior an al quaeda informant to the FBI. Here's an excerpt from an FBI interogator on the value of torture:

Coleman, for his part, believes that “people don’t do anything unless they’re rewarded.” He says that if the F.B.I. had beaten a confession out of Fadl with what he calls “all that alpha-male shit,” it would never be able to talk to him now. Brutality may yield a timely scrap of information, he conceded. But in the longer fight against terrorism such an approach is “completely insufficient,” he says. “You need to talk to people for weeks. Years.”

Cloonan, too, is a skeptic about the Bush Administration’s commands to handle terrorism suspects roughly. (In 2001, Vice-President Cheney declared that it was time for the U.S. to enter “sort of the dark side.”) Few suspects, he acknowledged, are as eager to confess as Fadl was. Nevertheless, he suggested, there is always the possibility that other people with useful information about Al Qaeda will consider becoming informants. “You think all of this stuff about torture is going to make people want to come to us?” Cloonan asked. “That’s why I get upset when I hear people talking about stress positions, loud music, and dogs.” Looking back, he said, “There’s a lot of stuff Junior talked about in casual, non-threatening moments.” He smiled. “You could talk about everything with Fadl. That’s the beauty of it.”

That's from someone who's on the frontline, doing the interogations. The rest of the bullshit we're hearing is from bush and friends who've never interogated anyone in their life.

[RangerSmith]

7. They should have their hand forced on this

Look, plots have been broken up in several spots in the world since 911. It matters not by whom... You got to acknowledge at least that unless you have the tin foil on and believe all the terrorist attacks are black ops and then... well... you're a nut.

My point is this... say, ok... show us exactly what you did to obtain the info you used to thwart these attacks. If what they did was illegal, we now have something totally cut and dried for legal charges.

[indepat]

8. You'll just have to trust 'em on this one like all other claims that make

no rhyme, reason, or sense.

[Turbineguy]

9. We're on double secret probation

they can save our lives, they just can't let us know when it happens. As a matter of fact, they have saved my life 213 times. But I am an ungrateful curr and I'm gonna vote Democrat anyway!

[spanone]

10. Classified...they don't have to (want to) tell us.

[Rageneau]

11. They mean "political" lives, such as Bush's and Cheney's.