Across the United States, 483,978 ammosexual erections just deflated.
It sounds as if Mattis could potentially be confirmed without a lot of pushback. However, he’d be at odds with Pompeo, head of CIA.
Gen. James Mattis : “These are not the techniques you are looking for”
Pepe: "They don’t look like anything to me"
All of Trump’s people essentially AGREE with each other. Making artificial distinctions or describing minor variations is pointless when dealing with authoritarian madmen.
Not to mention a profound waste of time.
Mattis is just the last person the Dear Leader talked to on the subject. The answer will change again after he talks to Pompeo or Flynn.
Trump isn’t “changing his tone”. He’s facing reality. Ending a “campaign device”. He’d be in deep shit if he ordered waterboarding and was faced with mass resignation and exodus. And that’s what would happen. The utility in waterboarding is no longer needed. That campaign is over. Same for prosecuting Clinton. great “campaign device” but it would likely generate sympathy for her and come up short. No wall either. It wasn’t possible and the idea he could force Mexico to pay for it, another abandoned promise, was ridiculous. Great “campaign devices” though. Kicking 12 million undocumented folks out of the USA was a joke. Big Agriculture would go apoplectic and no one knows where most of them are. Campaign devices. Now we’re at 2 million and expect that to fall.
You don’t need to be a shrink, CIA interrogator or Journalist to know who Trump really is. Why this guy was handled the way he was is just beyond belief.
So, Trump listened to an intelligent, reasonable expert and changed his position. That seems reassuring, but the feeling lasts for about ten seconds, because Trump is spewing contradictory policy positions so fast that I don’t have any confidence in anything he says.
It’s more important to look at what the authoritarian does than what he says.
What he does: Put waterboarding advocates into the cabinet.
Donnie Darko isn’t an ideologue = Donnie Darko has no beliefs, ideas or plans
I taught interrogation for 3 years and any of our brand new graduates could have told him that.
Donnie, you claimed to be the expert on waterboarding…you aren’t. You know real estate. But listening to you is a form of torture.
Trump: People are reading into this way too much. Defense Secretary will not do Waterboarding but CIA will do it as needed. I satisfy everyone, liberals and idiots.
CNN actually listed his flip flops…he’s up to 15.
Mattis is right - a person being waterboarded will tell you anything to make it stop, but your new friend will tell you what you need to know.
As has been said many times over, abandoning campaign promises will not dent his support on the Right. They didn’t vote for him out of any conviction he’d actually accomplish anything specific. They merely wanted to win, to flip off Obama and Clinton and the Left. That alone was reason enough to vote Trump.
"I was very impressed by that answer,” Trump told the Times, adding that torture is “not going to make the kind of a difference that a lot of people are thinking.”
So, Trump was unaware – after two years of intense debate – that the argument against torture was always that it was less effective than treating prisoners humanely and rewarding good behavior? What he doesn’t know is kind of scary.
Trump had to talk to Gen. Mattis to learn about the ineffectiveness of waterboarding? He didn’t know this before? Who had he previously been consulting with - Hannity?
Trump should agree to be waterboarded just to see what it’s like to his tiny, fevered mind. My guess is, he’d consider it torture in about 1 zeptosecond. A right-wing radio nutjob once boldly claimed that waterboarding was no big deal and that he’d allow himself to try it. He said it entirely changed his mind, it was indeed torture and he lasted about 6 seconds.