2009-06-10 - 3:27 p.m.
wherein I parse the shit out of a statement to prove that people just don't read carefully enough to understand politics...
From Firedoglake: (Obama, for example, said, "the public reports and the public justifications for these techniques -- which is that we got information from these individuals that were subjected to these techniques" -- doesn't answer the core question, which is: Could we have gotten that same information without resorting to these techniques?)
But, you see, Obama doesn't say that we got the information because we waterboarded people. He says that we got information from the people that we waterboarded. We could have gotten that information before we waterboarded them. We could have then just waterboarded them either to get more information from them (but he does not say that) or we could have just waterboarded them 'cuz it's fun! Yay, waterboarding!
This crap has been going on for a while now - seriously - still angry that no one ever asked the stupid Bush Administration why they always used the past tense when discussing Saddam's weapons of mass destruction; i.e. We know Saddam Hussein HAD weapons of mass destruction - they never said that he "has" them. Not once. Of course, this was lost on all human beings. So let's not let Obama's words do the same things.
