Marc Thiessen the Pseudo-Tough

Suddenly, former speech writers are expert interrogators. If you haven't seen it, CNN's Christiane Amanpour hosted a debate between former Presidential speechwriter Marc Thiessen and author Philippe Sands.

http://amanpour.blogs.cnn.com/...

Thiessen, who has never served in uniform (a career media guy), seems to have all the answers about what works in interrogations. But maybe he should have checked his facts, as Scott Horton did:

http://www.harpers.org/archive...

My favorite part of the interview is when Sands calls Thiessen out for chickening out of the waterboarding that he espouses is not torture.

Apparently Thiessen cannot use Google, which is stunning considering he is a former speech writer. Because if he could use an internet search engine, then he could easily find the two major precedents in International Law and U.S. Law that have ruled waterboarding is torture (the post World War II Tokyo Trials and a case in Texas where a Sheriff and his deputies were convicted for waterboarding criminal suspects).

As Horton points out, Thiessen doesn't even know Geneva Conventions, which outlaws inhumane treatment for all categories of detainees, not just legal combatants.  

Thiessen, in the words of former Rear Admiral John Huston, is the prototypical 'pseudo-tough' torture endorser -- someone who's never put on the uniform or gone to combat but is more than willing to help recruit new terrorists that will kill those of us who do.

A little history lesson for you, Marc. Since you used to write Presidential speeches, here are some penned lines from former Presidents:

"Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause... for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country." - George Washington, charge to the Northern Expeditionary Force, Sept. 14, 1775

"If torture isn't wrong, then nothing is wrong." -- Abraham Lincoln

"I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment. I call on all nations to speak out against torture in all its forms and to make ending torture an essential part of their diplomacy." -- President George W. Bush, June 26, 2003, the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture

(Note: These words were spoken before Thiessen arrived in The White House)