Liberals Were For Torture After 9/11

From Rush Limbaugh

RUSH: A story from our old buddies at NewsMax and it went back and they recounted all the comments from liberal Democrats who were in favor of torture in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. And they write: "Things were different when America still realized it was under attack from its enemies at home and abroad. Leading civil libertarian, Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz, actually argued that the torture of terrorist suspects was legal under the U.S. Constitution and should be employed when a suspect refused to divulge information about potentially deadly terrorist plots."

Dershowitz said -- this is November 8th, 2001, Los Angeles Times op-ed piece -- "Is it justified to resort to unconventional techniques such as truth serum, moderate physical pressure and outright torture? The constitutional answer to this question may surprise people who are not familiar with the current U.S. Supreme Court interpretation of the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination." But he continued writing, "Any interrogation technique, including the use of truth serum or even torture, is not prohibited [by the U.S. Constitution.]"

"Dershowitz explained that while evidence obtained through torture could not used in a criminal prosecution it 'could be used against that suspect in a noncriminal case such as a deportation hearing - or against somebody else." Or used to protect the lives of Americans who might benefit from knowing what information this terrorist suspect had. "Since there was no constitutional ban against torture, Dershowitz argued that the U.S. courts could issue torture warrants in cases where terrorist suspects refused to talk."

Do you see how things have changed? This is November of 2001, get the exact date again here for you, my good buddies. Yep, November 8th, 2001. September, October -- not even two months afterwards. And we're talking about torturing these people if we could just find 'em. And now look at us? Oh, no! They're nude and wearing hoods and they're in a pyramid. Oh, no, what are we going to do, put 'em into a phone booth next or maybe one of those little Cooper Minis? How awful are we? And then he says this.

"What if [torture was] limited to the rare 'ticking bomb' case - the situation in which a captured terrorist who knows of an imminent large-scale threat refuses to disclose it? Would torturing one guilty terrorist to prevent the deaths of a thousand innocent civilians shock the conscience of all decent people?"

[The piece continues] "With the wreckage of Ground Zero still smoldering, few if any Americans, he said, would object. Likewise, Newsweek mega-liberal Jonathan Alter argued that it was time to take the gloves off with enemy detainees. 'It's a new world, and survival may well require old techniques that seemed out of the question,' he wrote this the same week Dershowitz spoke out. 'In this autumn of anger, even a liberal can find his thoughts turning to ... torture,' wrote Jonathan Alter."

Read the whole thing.