Comments on The Belmont Club,"Give me chastity and continence, but not yet"

On this subject I am torn. The extreme left would love to set up the apparatus of Truth Commissions. Like with a Constitutional Convention the conservatives should be very careful of what they wish for. We live in a Republic and that means that a panoply of elected and appointed officials in the three branches of the federal government and in the States are supposed to be keeping an eye on each other for us. The idea that operational intelligence and confidential advice could be disclosed to settle a partisan political dispute offends me. The lawyers who gave the advice should face no risk of exposure. The only question regarding Ms Pelosi is whether she has been economical with the truth. It should not be necessary to disclose any secrets in an open forum to arrive at an answer to that question.

Pelosi is entirely beyond the point in which a politician in a more civilized age would have been left alone in a room with the knowledge that there was a revolver in the desk drawer. She has the nerve to say that she is

moving forward in a bipartisan way

as if the Republican party was a sock puppet that she could drag out or a dog with a penchant for eating her embarrassing garbage.

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Two things to know about torture:
1) Everybody breaks. The key is to know your limits and work within your
     knowledge.
2) It is good to hate the enemy, contempt is even better.

At one point the Navy pilots in the Hanoi Hilton were puzzled by the interrogators interest in the swimming pool off the hanger bay in the Oriskiney class carrier. Assuring them that there was no such amenity only resulted in more severe torture. The Navy men figured out that the North Vietnamese were being fed a line by the Air Force crews they had captured. So they started feeding them information about the wet bar on the B-52 that was staffed by Playboy Bunnies. Once you realize that you are going to suffer anyways you can work within that limit to influence if not control the situation and feed your life giving contempt for the enemy.

To go back a few threads WWBD, What Would Bombadil Do?