The "mind" of the America-haters

John Hinderaker comments on the controversy over waterboarding:

As I've said before, I think waterboarding is the ideal interrogation technique for known terrorists. It is nearly always effective, works in just a few minutes, and does no physical harm. It works by frightening the subject, which seems highly appropriate for a terrorist.

What I can never understand is how, exactly, the people who object to waterboarding want us to interrogate terrorists. Presumably they don't want us to beat them; unlike waterboarding, that would not only scare the terrorists but do them physical harm. Do they seriously think that we can get timely information from hard-core terrorists through clever cross-examination? Or do they think that captured terrorists, like criminal defendants in the American judicial system, have a right to remain silent?

One of the most shit-all stupid things to come out of both the left and the pseudo-right is the brouhaha over waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques used against captured terrorists.

These are not US citizens. They are not defendants in the criminal justice system. They are not being questioned primarily to gain information to be used in their own prosecution. They are illegal combatants who exist outside the protection of the international treaties governing the conduct of civilized warfare.

The question which must be asked is why there are people stepping forward to demand kid-glove treatment for individuals whose conduct should by all rights remove them from even being considered to share a common humanity with the rest of us.

In the case of someone like John McCain the answer is simple. In Vietnam he was taken prisoner and tortured until his mind shattered. After the war he did not so much put the pieces back together as collect them into one pile which looks sort of like a personality, when viewed from the right angle. In his damaged reasoning process he is fixated on the syllogism, the North Vietnamese were evil; the North Vietnamese tortured him ; therefore torture is evil.

I don't blame McCain. He can't help it that his experiences have left him clinically insane. He deserves our pity and our gratitude (but in no way should he ever be given political power, or sharp objects, or firearms, or matches).

What about folks like Pelosi and Reid and the ACLU? They must realize that waterboarding doesn't actually harm anyone. They must also realize that American soil has not seen another terrorist attack like 9/11 in no small part due to the use of such interrogation techniques.

Most of these people live in large cities which are potential targets for terrorist attack. Is their hatred for George W Bush so great that they are willing to risk their lives and the lives of their families to hinder his efforts to keep them safe?