Would Romney’s Mormon faith keep him from using torture as a tool against enemies or perceived enemies? Andrew Sullivan doesn’t think so:
Bruce Jessen - a critical figure in developing the Gestapo-derived torture techniques used by the Bush-Cheney administration - has just become the bishop of Spokane’s 6th Ward in the Mormon church. Torture did not come up in any of the presidential debates. But we know now that Romney's Mormon faith will not stand in the way of its return. More on Jessen's history of bringing torture into the heart of America is here.
Simply put, Barack Obama is against the use of torture and has specifically banned it in his administration, while Romney is for the use of "enhanced interrogation" techniques, or what most of us see as torture (waterboarding is a good example).
Barack Obama Quotes on the Use of Torture
In 2007, then Sen. Barack Obama (after his run for the presidency had been announced) issued a press release titled ”Torture and Secrecy Betray Core American Values”:
“The secret authorization of brutal interrogations is an outrageous betrayal of our core values, and a grave danger to our security. We must do whatever it takes to track down and capture or kill terrorists, but torture is not a part of the answer - it is a fundamental part of the problem with this administration's [George W. Bush] approach. Torture is how you create enemies, not how you defeat them. Torture is how you get bad information, not good intelligence. Torture is how you set back America's standing in the world, not how you strengthen it. It's time to tell the world that America rejects torture without exception or equivocation. It's time to stop telling the American people one thing in public while doing something else in the shadows. No more secret authorization of methods like simulated drowning. When I am president America will once again be the country that stands up to these deplorable tactics. When I am president we won't work in secret to avoid honoring our laws and Constitution, we will be straight with the American people and true to our values.”
“He's making the world a much more dangerous place as he continues to pull America back and allow those who seek to do harm to freedom, those who seek to oppress -- yes, evil forces around the world.”
- Rick Santorum bashed President Obama today, lamenting, apparently, the end of the two wars, and the drawing down of the American military presence in parts of the world.
“I've been watching some of these Republican debates and they're just terrible. Terrible. It's embarrassing for me as a Republican to watch this stuff.
What have been the big applause lines in these debates? Well, a statement that the governor of Texas is responsible for killing 234 people on death row. Or that we favor torture. Or that we’re creating a fence on the Mexican border that electrocutes people when they try to cross it. Or when people show up at the emergency room at hospitals and they’re not insured don’t treat them. And that, I mean these are the big applause lines, people just hoop and holler when they hear all that. [...]
It doesn’t have anything to do with the republican party that I was a part of. This is just totally different. And all of these people who are saying this, y’know, and claiming that, y’know, they’re for all this stuff, they also sort of ostentatiously say, “Oh, we’re very religious people. We really, we’re just very pious, Christian people.” They were for torture, and electrocution of the people on along the border and all of that. That doesn’t have anything to do with, is contrary to the Christianity that I understand.”
- Former Sen. John Danforth (R-MO) on the GOP primary debates and the seeming religious hypocrisy of modern Republicans.
“Waterboarding is torture. It’s contrary to America’s traditions. It’s contrary to our ideals. That’s not who we are. That’s not how we operate. We don’t need it in order to prosecute the war on terrorism. And we did the right thing by ending that practice. If we want to lead around the world, part of our leadership is setting a good example. And anybody who has actually read about and understands the practice of waterboarding would say that that is torture. And that's not something we do -- period.”
- President Barack Obama, again speaks out against waterboarding at a press conference in Hawaii on Nov. 14, 2011.
“They're wrong. Waterboarding is torture. Anybody who has actually read about and understands the practice of waterboarding would say that that is torture. And that's not something we do -- period.”
- President Obama on waterboarding - torture, responding to Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann, who both stated (during the debate Sat., Nov. 12) that they would approve the use of waterboarding if he/she were to win the presidency.
U.S. District Judge James Gwin, rules to allow a torture suit against former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to go forward :
“The court finds no convincing reason that United States citizens in Iraq should or must lose previously-declared substantive due process protections during prolonged detention in a conflict zone abroad. The stakes in holding detainees at Camp Cropper may have been high, but one purpose of the constitutional limitations on interrogation techniques and conditions of confinement even domestically is to strike a balance between government objectives and individual rights even when the stakes are high.”
"We have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement," Obama said. "But even though we've answered these concerns, I gotta say I suspect there are still going to be some who are trying to move the goal posts on us one more time."
"Maybe they'll need a moat," Obama said mockingly to laughter from the crowd. "Maybe they'll want alligators in the moat."
Steve Benen on Liz Cheney, promoter of torture. Digby weighs in.
GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has been full of really, really dumb things to say lately, but today on Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham’s show, he made a statement that just might take the prize:
9/11 families and everybody else in America should be furious at this president that he’s walking abound taking credit for, you know, getting Osama bin Laden. He didn’t get Osama bin Laden! … The president of the United States simply said — courageous act, give him credit for saying yes — but that’s all he did, is say yes. He didn’t do the hard work. The people he’s going after did the hard work. And that is an outrage.
Since yesterday, the most ubiquitous right-wing meme on the web regarding the death of Osama bin Laden has been the one were, in a nutshell, “Bush deserves the credit. The information came from a Guantanamo detainee who was tortured. This is Bush’s achievement.” (Please also note how unashamed they are to claim the “credit” for the use of torture.) Think Progress:
Bush loyalists have been “irked” over the past 24 hours that they are not getting credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden, arguing that their torture program helped bring about intelligence that led to the mission. Karl Rove said “the tools that President Bush put into place –- GITMO, rendition, enhanced interrogation” led to the successful operation. Similarly, former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said the mission “rested heavily on some of those controversial policies” from the Bush era.
In large part, this came up due to a report by The New York Times yesterday that the information came from a Guantanamo detainee:
President Obama 
9/11 families and everybody else in America should be furious at this president that he’s walking abound taking credit for, you know, getting Osama bin Laden. He didn’t get Osama bin Laden! … The president of the United States simply said — courageous act, give him credit for saying yes — but that’s all he did, is say yes. He didn’t do the hard work. The people he’s going after did the hard work. And that is an outrage.
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