GOP Forces Dems To Pull The “Be Nice To Terrorists” Bill

Did you hear about this one Thursday? While you were distracted by the health bloviations, Andy McCarthy found out what the Democrats tried to slip into an intelligence bill

The Obama Democrats have outdone themselves.

While the country and the Congress have their eyes on today’s dog-and-pony show on socialized medicine, House Democrats last night stashed a new provision in the intelligence bill which is to be voted on today. It is an attack on the CIA: the enactment of a criminal statute that would ban “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.” (See here, scoll to p. 32.)

The provision is impossibly vague – who knows what “degrading” means? Proponents will say that they have itemized conduct that would trigger the statute (I’ll get to that in a second), but it is not true. The proposal says the conduct reached by the statute “includes but is not limited to” the itemized conduct. (My italics.) That means any interrogation tactic that a prosecutor subjectively believes is “degrading” (e.g., subjecting a Muslim detainee to interrogation by a female CIA officer) could be the basis for indicting a CIA interrogator.

If you look at the list at National Review, it becomes quite apparent that it would be impossible to have any interrogations with terrorists. What CIA employee/contractor would agree to interrogate, or even have a pleasant chat, with an Islamic extremist under these or any conditions? You can bet that they would be sitting in a Congressional hearing after ever interrogation, getting raked over the coals. And, yes, these restrictions do mirror the revised Army Field Manual, which took the teeth out of interrogations, and reduces it all to asking terrorists “pretty please?”

However

A controversial bill that would have levied criminal punishments on intelligence officers for harsh interrogations was pulled Thursday evening.

House Republicans charged Democrats with trying to sneak a provision into the intelligence authorization bill that would establish criminal punishment for CIA agents and other intelligence officials who engage in “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” during interrogations.

The world is a nasty, dirty place, lefties. There are people out there who do want to kill us and destroy our way of life. And you want to treat them like kids busted for shoplifting. Great.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove

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