
Florida Senate candidate Marco Rubio opened CPAC this morning, his speech peppered with standing ovations from the crowd. When he spoke about capturing terrorists, one audience member had a suggestion.
"Waterboard them!" the man yelled.
Rubio smiled, and the audience laughed.
"We will capture them," he went on. "We will get useful information from them," he said, to more laughter.
"And then we will bring them to justice in front of a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay," he said, at which point the crowd erupted into cheers.
Watch:
Rubio is a darling of the conservative movement for challenging Florida Gov. Charlie Crist in the Republican primary.
mike from Arlington
February 18, 2010 11:47 AM
and then they'll probably get off because the tribunals have only been successful 3 times out of dozens...sorry. But we'll do it anyways because its the opposite of what the Obama administration wants to do.
Cheer!!
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A Missouri voter
February 18, 2010 12:42 PM in reply to mike from Arlington
Hey, if the defendants were acquitted after we got useful information out of them, even that would not be so bad. It would be a heck of a lot better than the current situation, where we get no useful information out of them because (and I know that this is hard for conservatives to grasp, but the data prove it) military interrogations do not work with terrorists. For the purposes of getting information from detainees in an actionable time frame, techniques developed by police work much better with these folks than techniques developed by soldiers in combat situations.
I know that it makes Republicans feel all macho to pound their chests and boast of waterboarding, but voters need to ask themselves what they want from a government: do they want a police force that can keep them safe from terrorists, or do they want a WWF-style war-show that looks cool and aggressive but achieves nothing much in terms of preventing attacks and disrupting terror cells?
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TrentinaNE
February 18, 2010 4:17 PM in reply to A Missouri voter
Could you explain what you mean by "techniques developed by police"? As I understand it, the real problems with interrogating terrorism suspects are that too many so-called interrogations are carried out by 20-year-old soldiers who don't know the language, don't know basic psychological techniques, and often don't know much about the world period. I have this straight from a 50-year-old ex-Marine who specializes in intelligence and who has carried out numerous SUCCESSFUL interrogations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and east Africa.
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Powkat
February 18, 2010 11:56 AM
Because we are sunshine patriots who don't trust the rule of law and the Constitution when times are hard.
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dtOZONE
February 18, 2010 12:18 PM
Maybe my friends overseas are right when they said Americans are sick bastards.
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Duck Stab
February 18, 2010 12:43 PM in reply to dtOZONE
These people are amoral sadistic goons. All the loudest voices calling for torture and blood to spilled, i.e. Cheney, Kristol, Bolton, have never served a day in our military. Not a single one of them knows what combat is like, or what torture really is. Yet they are the first to call for the use of it.
Sick bastards. Of course so called 'rational' conservatives never say a goddamn word about this. Like good little sheep, they keep their mouths shut, lest they defy St Reagan's commandment of never speaking ill about your fellow cult member.
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darkrhyme
February 18, 2010 2:40 PM in reply to Duck Stab
I'd love to enhanced-interrogate everyone you listed.
Yoo told me it was OK.
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roxsteady
February 18, 2010 12:18 PM
Hey Marco! Where are the Hispanics? Why aren't they out there with you? Is it because they know that the crowd at CPAC would just love to have them clean their houses, mow their lawns and they said, thanks but no thanks!
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Africanlivedit
February 18, 2010 12:24 PM
Tea-tards at their finest.
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3star2nr
February 18, 2010 12:32 PM
If there was ever a doubt that the modern republican party is the party advocating Fascism in America, this just removes all doubt.
I hope conservatives love water boarding, indefinite detention, torture and murder without trials, when it starts happening to regular americans
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Morbo
February 18, 2010 12:44 PM in reply to 3star2nr
It's because modern conservatives are a bunch of bed-wetting pussies. Torture makes them feel safer, so it's all good, nevermind the mind-blowing moral wrongness of it.
(Sullivan has been good lately about how these hypocrite assholes weep over Jesus on the cross every Sunday while condoning the same treatment of terror suspects.)
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Cool Blue Reason
February 18, 2010 1:05 PM in reply to 3star2nr
They will, just so long as it is happening to their disfavored groups of Americans.
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Walter Mitty
February 18, 2010 12:32 PM
I can't put a finger on it, but this guy reminds me of a 80's/90's sitcom actor. It might be Elvin from The Cosby Show, but I'm not sure.
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Cool Blue Reason
February 18, 2010 1:06 PM in reply to Walter Mitty
AC Slater?
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Majorajam
February 18, 2010 12:34 PM
The irony is that were the US populated exclusively with ignorant, amoral, backward lunatics of the kind that populate the reactionary/CPAC/tea party right, it would've never been more than a backwater cesspool, and these neanderthals would never have the power to inflict their lunacy on the rest of the world.
Who would argue that it is coincidence that our best academic institutions are overwhelmingly in blue states? Coincidence that the poorest states in the union are with few exceptions red states, while the most prosperous are with few exceptions blue states? Take away accident of geography- i.e. oil money in Alaska, Texas and the Gulf Coast- and the fact that red states are massive net recipients of transfers from blue states and the picture only becomes more stark.
Alas, the politicians in the North wouldn't let the South secede from the union, and then compounded the catastrophic error by yielding to the gimps an equal say in how to run the affairs of its prosperous citizenry. And now we're all reaping the whirlwind- anchored to these malignant tumors, as they drag the nation down into the depths of moral oblivion, and all the consequences that naturally follows. See for further review: Heart, Darkness of.
Honest Abe quite honestly screwed the pooch.
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Michael A
February 18, 2010 1:11 PM
Unbelievable. This is really unbelievable in 21st Century America. Washington, Jefferson, Adams and the other founders of this country must be having a cow. We fought multiple wars against this kind of thing and hundreds of thousands of men and women died to fight regimes that advocated torture and the like. I really cannot believe that this is happening. I just can't. Never in my lifetime would I believe that I would witness americans acting so cowardly and with contempt for others and want to freaking torture them. I just cannot believe it.
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Subliminability
February 18, 2010 1:18 PM
Note that "Marco Polo" to which Rubio refers after the waterboarding comment is a swimming pool game that involves repeatedly going underwater.
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tduff
February 18, 2010 1:37 PM
These people are crazy.
http://randomthoughtstd.blogspot.com/
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rawresolve
February 18, 2010 3:51 PM
Water Boarding is Torture and Torture is a War Crime. It still makes me ill that USA has so dramatically lost it's way on basic human rights and accountability to our own laws and constitution. So much so that now it's a joke and people laugh?
War Crimes... ha ha ha ...hilarious!!!
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Michael A
February 18, 2010 4:23 PM in reply to rawresolve
Yep. Let's see them laugh in the faces of the families of WWII veterans that were waterboarded by the Germans and Japanese. Or how about laughing in the faces of the families of the war criminals that were hung after WWII for waterboarding and torture. This is kafka.
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MyMy
February 18, 2010 4:22 PM
The grin implies that he, and no one there, would ever be waterboarded--because conservatives would be in charge of torturing, and since no one who is opposed to them believes in torture, they are absolutely certain that they are immune and can sponsor torture without any consequences to themselves personally.
Moreover, since conservatives tend to be chicken hawks and rarely if ever serve in the military (because they have enough money to evade it), there is little chance that they would ever be captured and tortured by enemies.
So they get such a free pass on that.
But voters: what guarantees that YOU are safe from being tortured if these guys regain power?
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jeffgee
February 18, 2010 4:34 PM
There's so much raw meat being thrown around at CPAC, I'll bet the place smells like an abattoir.
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Barney
February 18, 2010 9:03 PM
Rubio's family is from Cuba. They don't waterboard in Cuba. They torture in Cuba.
They don't waterboard dissidents in Cuba. They kill dissidents in Cuba.
Americans don't risk their lives trying to float in an old patched innertubes across 100 miles of the Florida Straits trying to reach Cuba. They don't waterboard people who try to escape Cuba. They kill them.
Know who loves the Cuban Marxist-Fascist goverenment that murders its citzens??
The left.
..and they hate people like the Rubio family who chose not to let themselves by this murderous left wing government
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tom
September 1, 2010 6:19 AM
spoken like someone who knows what his men are really doing.
__________
internet coupons
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