Don’t give a rat’s ass

It seems every bleeding-heart is up in arms today over reports CIA interrogators were mean to terrorists. If, that is, bleeding-hearts aren’t opposed to being up in arms, so to speak. Anyway, this article from MSNBC details some of the shocking claims against these evil, bad men.

The CIA that is, not, of course, the terrorists who we all know are freedom-loving patriots.

Now I’m not saying I’d want to share a meal with someone who threatened to kill my children or have my mother raped in front of me, but it would certainly get me thinking. Thinking about what information I could give up to avoid such things.

I hesitate to use the word “war,” as in “Global War on Terror” because it tends to diminish the term. Kinda like the “war on drugs” or the “war on poverty.” Yeah, both of those have been going swimmingly.

The truth is though, we are engaged in an armed conflict. An armed conflict with groups who think kidnapping people, cutting their heads off with knives and videotaping the proceedings is a legitimate act. An armed conflict with people who would be quite happy to kill you, your family, friends and everyone else you know and don’t know without blinking an eye.

Did you ever see The Untouchables? Remember the scene where Sean Connery got fed up with the mob guy not talking, so he went outside and grabbed the dead body of another mob guy? “What’s amatter? Can’t ya talk with a gun in your mouth?” he asks the corpse before shooting him to scare the live one into talking.

“They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. *That's* the *Chicago* way!”

I have no problem using the *Chicago* way. Although I’m sure people I like and respect will disagree with me. But that’s the beauty of this, as civilized people, we can agree to disagree and then go out for a Jameson’s and talk about it some more.

There is one funny thing about this suit from the American Civil Liberties Union. In its efforts to protect terrorists already in custody the ACLU is endangering the lives of terrorists’ pals who have yet to be captured.

How the hell can that be you ask?

Well, it’s very simple and it goes like this: Since dealing with captured terrorists is getting to be such a gigantic pain in the ass with you standing a really good chance of ending up in federal prison, there just won’t be prisoners. In the future the good guys – that’s us for those of you not following, our Marines, soldiers, SEALs, CIA guys and whatnot – will just shoot the bad guys in the head, launch a Hellfire missile from a Predator drone or put a laser dot on the target to make sure the GBU-12 hits the spot. You see, it’s a whole lot easier and safer for our troops to kill the bad guys than to try to take them alive. All things being equal, which choice do you think they’ll make?

Call it an effect of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

So I’d like to take this opportunity to say thanks to ACLU (who’s work, I should add, I generally support) for doing its part to keep our troops safe. Although the loss of actionable intelligence from live prisoners might tend to make the rest of us less safe.

Oh well, everything in life is a trade off.