58% Of Americans Want The Crotch Bomber Waterboarded - And the Left Is Outraged

Rasmussen just released a poll showing that the vast majority of Americans want the wanna-be Christmas bomber Abdulmuttalab waterboarded to gain intel:


Fifty-eight percent (58%) of U.S. voters say waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques should be used to gain information from the terrorist who attempted to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 30% oppose the use of such techniques, and another 12% are not sure.

As you can imagine, the Angry Left has its knickers in a major knot over this. Matt Yglesias over at Think Progress just can't for the life of him figure out how his fellow Americans could be so dumb and inhumane:

...what I really wanted to draw attention to was how different this discussion is from the debater’s gambit arguments we’re used to having about ticking time bombs and city-destroying nuclear weapons. The fact that Abdulmuttalab was on that plane, alone, with a not-very-impressive explosive stuffed down his pants is about the best proof you can think of that al-Qaeda doesn’t have a massive nuclear weapon hidden somewhere beneath Manhattan that they’re about to set off. The guy may or may not have some information that would be useful to intelligence officials, but he clearly doesn’t have specific information about imminent attacks. The idea being endorsed here is really just routinized use of torture as an investigatory technique.

At any rate, I would be interested to know how far the public—or how torture-loving conservative elites—would be willing to go on this. In a lot of ways terrorism cases strike me as unusually unpromising venues for torture. Something more banal like trying to get a low-level drug dealer to spill the beans on his supplier could really work. My view is that routinized deployment of brutality by government officials isn’t going to produce any systematic gains, so it doesn’t make sense to uncork this kind of treatment on Abdulmuttalab or Generic Drug Dealer X. But for torture enthusiasts is there anything special about terrorism suspects?

'Torture-loving conservative elites'? Spare me.

Mr. Yglesias and a lot of his left-bent commentors miss the boat on a large number of points here - situation normal.

First of all let's deal with some of Yglesias' suspect assumptions. That 'not-very impressive' explosive was more than enough to destroy the aircraft and everyone on it, and but for a faulty detonator and a very brave Dutchman, America would have spent Christmas Day looking at 300 charred corpses and grieving family members instead of the usual holiday fare on TV.

Second, Yglesias and his pals entire argument is based on the fact that this isn't a 'ticking bomb' scenario...as if they'd change their minds if they thought it was!

In fact there's no proof whatsoever for Yglesias' cavalier assumption that al-Qaeda or its fellow jihadis have no imminent attacks coming and that Abdulmuttalab has no knowledge of them. They're simply making stuff up, to quote the Rightwing Demon Goddess Sarah Palin.For instance, what if our friend the crotch bomber happened to let slip who his contact/trainer was in Yemen and where he could be found? What if that person was picked up interrogated and with a little persuasion clued us in to his particular cell, and so on? That, Mr. Yglesias, is how the pros roll up a terrorist network, in case you didn't know.

Let's look at another gem Yglesias tosses off: "My view is that routinized deployment of brutality by government officials isn’t going to produce any systematic gains, so it doesn’t make sense to uncork this kind of treatment on Abdulmuttalab or Generic Drug Dealer X. But for torture enthusiasts is there anything special about terrorism suspects?"

Were you born stupid, Matthew, or did you have to work at it? Here's what's special about jihad terrorists, and how they differ from narcotics salesmen. Drug dealers may come and go, but they have no specific ideology except survival. They're also not part of groups that are an existential threat to our society, or want to conquer us. Nor do they customarily have knowledge of such things. That's they're customarily dealt with by promises of immunity or leniency to compel their cooperation. They're interested in commerce and saving their own necks, not jihad suicide or creating the Worldwide Caliphate, and they don't murder whole airplanes full of innocent people or shoot up military bases as a religious activity while shrieking Allahu akbar...or destroy places like the World Trade Center, for that matter.

I'm frankly amazed I should even have to bother explain that to anyone with a fighting chance of an IQ over two digits.

One important point I can concede - torture per se ( and I do not consider water boarding 'torture') doesn't work so well much of the time.. it can be incredibly inefficient, and given an individual with a sufficiently strong will, it can take hours, days, months or even years to accomplish the desired end.

Combining the administration of drugs like sodium penathol, baradanga, and sodium amytal with a skilled interrogator is normally quicker, more efficient and easier on the basement janitorial crew afterwards, provided you have the time.


However, the way it stands, none of these non-torture interrogation techniques can be used to find out anything..because the Obama Administration quickly charged this jihadi with a criminal offense, mirandized him and allowed him to lawyer up and stay silent.

Because of the ridiculous way the Obama Administration decided to handle this, we'll never know what Abdulmuttalab knows.And it appears that's exactly how Matt Yglesias and his ideological comrades want it,including the current occupant of the White House.

And let's get something else on the table - this turd Abdulmuttalab is not a US citizen and is thus not entitled to Constitutional protections, except in the minds of Leftists who are prepared to stretch the Bill of Rights completely out of shape.

Nor do the Geneva Convention or other UN doctrines apply. Not only did al-Qaeda not sign it, ( nor did many of the jihad-supporting nation-states now ensconced on the UN Human Rights Council) but the entire idea of these provisions was to provide a quid-pro-quo to treat each others captives decently in wartime.It has never worked when dealing with totalitarian entities, and certainly hasn't with Islamist fascists.

There's absolutely no rational reason to extend the Constitutional rights of American citizens to jihadis caught in the act. It defies common sense and retards any legitimate effort to get the intelligence we need to protect the country in wartime.

The American people understand this, and that's why Rasmussen got the results he did..not because they're interested in 'routinizing torture' as our fine über-leftist puts it.

The Obama Administration is doing exactly what Dick Cheney accused them of - pretending not to be at war and repeating the error of making jihad a law enforcement matter. I would have thought that even most of our friends on the Left would realize how badly that worked the last time we tried it, but apparently not.