The "good people" tell the rough men to just stop

The Senate voted on the 13th to restrict all US agencies to US Army interrogation techniques, restricting the use of harsh interrogation techniques under any circumstances. The vote has often been described as a prohibition of waterboarding, but it is much worse than that: the Democrat-sponsored legislation would limit all American interrogators to the techniques approved in the Army's Field Manual.
Typically, the vote broke down along party lines with some fence jumping:

Grouped By Vote Position

YEAs ---51
Akaka (D-HI) Baucus (D-MT) Bayh (D-IN) Biden (D-DE) Bingaman (D-NM) Boxer (D-CA) Brown (D-OH) Byrd (D-WV) Cantwell (D-WA) Cardin (D-MD) Carper (D-DE) Casey (D-PA) Collins (R-ME) Conrad (D-ND) Dodd (D-CT) Dorgan (D-ND) Durbin (D-IL)	Feingold (D-WI) Feinstein (D-CA) Hagel (R-NE) Harkin (D-IA) Inouye (D-HI) Johnson (D-SD) Kennedy (D-MA) Kerry (D-MA) Klobuchar (D-MN) Kohl (D-WI) Landrieu (D-LA) Lautenberg (D-NJ) Leahy (D-VT) Levin (D-MI) Lincoln (D-AR) Lugar (R-IN) Menendez (D-NJ)	Mikulski (D-MD) Murray (D-WA) Nelson (D-FL) Pryor (D-AR) Reed (D-RI) Reid (D-NV) Rockefeller (D-WV) Salazar (D-CO) Sanders (I-VT) Schumer (D-NY) Smith (R-OR) Snowe (R-ME) Stabenow (D-MI) Tester (D-MT) Webb (D-VA) Whitehouse (D-RI) Wyden (D-OR)

NAYs ---45
Alexander (R-TN) Allard (R-CO) Barrasso (R-WY) Bennett (R-UT) Bond (R-MO) Brownback (R-KS) Bunning (R-KY) Burr (R-NC) Chambliss (R-GA) Coburn (R-OK) Cochran (R-MS) Coleman (R-MN) Corker (R-TN) Cornyn (R-TX) Craig (R-ID)	Crapo (R-ID) DeMint (R-SC) Dole (R-NC) Domenici (R-NM) Ensign (R-NV) Enzi (R-WY) Grassley (R-IA) Gregg (R-NH) Hatch (R-UT) Hutchison (R-TX) Inhofe (R-OK) Isakson (R-GA) Kyl (R-AZ) Lieberman (ID-CT) Martinez (R-FL)	McCain (R-AZ) McConnell (R-KY) Murkowski (R-AK) Nelson (D-NE) Roberts (R-KS) Sessions (R-AL) Shelby (R-AL) Specter (R-PA) Stevens (R-AK) Sununu (R-NH) Thune (R-SD) Vitter (R-LA) Voinovich (R-OH) Warner (R-VA) Wicker (R-MS)

Not Voting - 4
Clinton (D-NY) Graham (R-SC)	McCaskill (D-MO) Obama (D-IL)

Do you notice who skipped the vote? Clinton and Obama couldn't stand the heat, while McCain surprised everyone and voted against the bill. He had the cojones to make a stand on the bill. I expected him to vote Yea. And I'm glad that Warner didn't switch sides.

Here's the context in which this vote was conducted:
Gen. Michael Hayden, Director of the CIA, patiently explained to the Congressional Dems:

There is a universe out there of lawful interrogation techniques that we should feel, as a nation, that we have a right to use against our enemies. … The Army Field Manual describes a subset of that universe.

The Army Field Manual does exactly what … it needs to do for the United States Army. But on the face of it, it would make no … sense to apply the Army's field manual to CIA.

The population of who's doing it is different than the population that would be working for me inside the CIA interrogation program. It meets the needs of America's Army in terms of who's going to do it, which in the case of the Army Field Manual would be a relatively large population of relatively young men and women who've received good training but not exhaustive training in all potential situations.

The population of who they do it to would also be different. In the life of the CIA detention program we have held fewer than a hundred people. And … actually, fewer than a third of those people have had any techniques used against them – enhanced techniques – in the CIA program. America's Army literally today is holding over 20,000 detainees in Iraq alone.

There's a difference in terms of … the circumstances under which you're doing the interrogation. And I know there can be circumstances in military custody that are as protected and isolated and controlled as in our detention facilities, but in many instances that is not the case. These are interrogations against enemy soldiers, who almost always will be lawful combatants, in tactical situations, from whom you expect to get information of transient and tactical value. None of that applies to the detainees we hold, to the interrogators we have, or the information we are attempting to seek.

If it is the judgment of the American political process that the Army Field Manual and the processes of the FBI are adequate to the defense of the republic in all conditions of threat, in all periods in the future, that's what we will do. My view is that would substantially increase the danger to America and that my agency should be allowed to continue the use of techniques which have been judged lawful by the attorney general and briefed to this committee.

The enemy consists of "people" that think nothing of beheading anyone that disagrees with them. These scum use innocent retarded girls as bomb carriers. And the Democrats are worried about "harsh treatment" like we're going to use acid baths or red hot pincers on innocent people.
Oh, wait, that would be the other guys that did that.

While waterboarding is terrible, while "harsh treatment" can be considered torture, why is it that the US is held to a double standard? Every country in the world protects itself. Why is it that the USA is always supposed to hamstring its defenses. This is a war of intelligence. This is a war of the knife. We should not give our government a "carte blanche" to conduct operations, but, sometimes, things need to be done that are unpleasant.

Tell me, would you not waterboard Mohammed Atta if you had intel on 9/11?

"Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. "
"To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself. "
George Orwell