Last week, both President Obama and former vice president Dick Cheney gave speeches within a few hours of each other. Obama in his typical fashion talked about closing Guantanamo Bay without really offering many specifics about his plans on what to do with the remaining prisoners. He also talked about the same old thing about how we have lost our moral authority in the world and how we failed during the last 8 years to uphold this authority. He seemed to be saying that we are becoming less safe as a nation and must make some changes
It was refreshing to see Cheney come out and state the facts and put Obama on the defensive. The fact of the matter is that we have become much safer as a nation during the past 8 years and Obama should really examine what Cheney did and follow his policy. This waterboarding issue is total nonsense. How can it be torture when someone went through 83 times? Torture is something that will cause meaningful physical harm to someone. We give waterboarding to our Navy Seals during training so I doubt it can really be classified as torture. If we can get valuable information from a terrorist by using this techniques. I am all for it. In documents that Cheney was referring to, these methods may have saved thousands of American lives. Valuable intelligence was given about attacks on several cities in the western United States.
I am still wondering how closing Guantanamo Bay will make us a safer nation. Do you think other nations will really like us more if we close it down? And of course the question about what to do with the prisoners. Do we send them here for trials and trust our judicial system? Sending them to our maximum security prisons sounds like a good idea, however, I would hate to live in a city which has one of these prisons and become a target for a terrorist attack. You can bet terrorists will target these cities.
Terrorists are enemies of not only our nation but the world and we must not treat them like some average run of the mill criminal. It makes we sick when I hear some of these liberals talking about how we are taking away their rights and mistreating them. Maybe if one of their loved ones got killed by a terrorist, they would have a different viewpoint. Terrorists hate our values which Obama talked during his speech and would like nothing better than to destroy this country. If waterboarding can help save just one innocent American life, it is well worth it. I am sure other countries will understand that and not hate us for it. Cheney is absolutely right on this topic.
Mark's Views 