THE DEMOCRATS’ TORTUOUS LIES ABOUT TORTURE

"How many legs does a calf have, if you call the tail a leg?" Abraham Lincoln asked a Congressman during a discussion of whether he had the authority to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

"Five," the Congressman replied.

"Four," Lincoln corrected him. "Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg."

We can assume that Lincoln would similarly correct Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee who have as expansive a definition of "torture," as he would those feminists who include consensual sex in their definition of "rape."

Foremost of the "tortures" Democrats decried in a 500 page report was the waterboarding of three senior al Qaida leaders.

The more than 70,000 U.S. military personnel who’ve experienced it during SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) training can attest waterboarding, which simulates drowning, is highly unpleasant.

But "there’s no pain, actually. There’s no trauma. There’s no lasting effect," said Capt. Ken Kropkowski, a naval aviator who was waterboarded. "I don’t see how you can equate that with torture."

CIA interrogators were themselves waterboarded before using the technique on terrorists. Abu Zubaydah broke after 35 seconds of waterboarding, an interrogator said.

Grandstanding journalists have volunteered to be waterboarded to "prove" it’s torture. Which should prove conclusively it isn’t. No journalist has ever volunteered to have his fingernails pulled out, or electric shocks administered to his genitals.

Sleep deprivation, liquid diets, playing heavy metal music very loud were other forms of "torture" the report decried.

No one at CIA involved with enhanced interrogations was interviewed before the report was published.

That’s because they would have testified information obtained from "enhanced interrogations" thwarted several terror plots, led to the capture of senior al Qaida leaders, pointed the way to Osama bin Laden’s hideout, said former CIA Director Michael Hayden.

"Enhanced techniques made me want to tell the truth to make it stop, not to compound my situation with more lies," said former interrogator "Jason Beale."

Their testimony wasn’t sought because it would have clashed with the committee’s predetermined conclusion enhanced interrogations were ineffective, Gen. Hayden said.

Democrats emphasized this highly specious assertion, because Americans think the CIA ought to rough up terrorists, if that’s what it takes to get them to spill the beans on terror plots.

Aggressive interrogation techniques were backed, 47 percent to 33 percent, in a Rasmussen poll. Only 24 percent in a YouGov poll Dec. 11 said torture is "never justified." Think what those numbers would be like if there were another terror attack on American soil.

This is not a hypothetical question, the Moslem terrorist hostage-taking this week in Sydney reminds us. Thanks to President Obama’s foreign policy blunders, the threat Islamic terrorists pose has never been greater.

"How are we better than our enemies morally in light of what we all read about today," NBC’s Brian Williams asked Gen. Hayden.

For starters, Brian, we don’t behead people who don’t share our religious views. We don’t blow up little girls because they went to school.

Rolling Stone magazine accused a fraternity last month of using gang rape as an initiation rite, without having made any effort to determine if the accusation was true. The strenuous efforts Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats made to avoid hearing evidence that contradicted their narrative reminded Jeff Chidester, a radio talk show host in New Hampshire, of the Rolling Stone article.

None of the accusations are new. The torture meme was concocted to give Democrats a club with which to beat the Bush administration in the 2006 and 2008 elections. Why is it being resurrected now, when it can only hurt morale at the CIA, cause allies to distrust us, give aid and comfort to our enemies?

"By attempting at this late date to vilify the men and women who did the hard, dangerous and unpleasant work of keeping the rest of us safe, Senator Feinstein and her backers create, gratuitously, a real and present danger," said LtCol. Ralph Peters, a retired Army intelligence officer. "They have placed a higher value on the exaggerated ‘suffering’ of barely human monsters than on the safety of our diplomats, our troops, our citizens abroad and our closest allies."

Rolling Stone’s bogus rape story backfired. The torture report is backfiring too. In that YouGov poll, 52 percent said its publication has hurt the United States. Only 29 percent thought "the use of torture by the American government" was more harmful.

Imagine what those numbers would be like if we stopped calling a tail a leg. Democrats will regret positioning themselves as the party that cares more about the comfort of terrorists than the safety of Americans.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

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