"I think, on balance, that those moves help [us]," said the chief of U.S. Central Command. "In fact, I have long been on record as having testified and also in helping write doctrine for interrogation techniques that are completely in line with the Geneva Convention. And as a division commander in Iraq in the early days, we put out guidance very early on to make sure that our soldiers, in fact, knew that we needed to stay within those guidelines.
"With respect to Guantanamo," Petraeus added, "I think that the closure in a responsible manner, obviously one that is certainly being worked out now by the Department of Justice -- I talked to the Attorney General the other day [and] they have a very intensive effort ongoing to determine, indeed, what to do with the detainees who are left, how to deal with them in a legal way, and if continued incarceration is necessary -- again, how to take that forward. But doing that in a responsible manner, I think, sends an important message to the world, as does the commitment of the United States to observe the Geneva Convention when it comes to the treatment of detainees."
Gen. Petraeus has just delt a crushing blow to the Republican party as well as the entire conservative movement. The lynch-pin of their arguments have been that GITMO must stay open and that "enchanced" methods of interrogation have kept the country safe.
So, conservatives will take one of two paths. They will either completely ignore tha statements of the man they once showered adoration upon or they will attempt to distance themselves from Petraeus' comments by claiming they were taken "out of context" - a favorite tactic of conservatives when they are faced with facts that show their glaring irrelavency.
And now, we sit back and watch the hypocrisy fly.
No comments:
Post a Comment