perfidy

Scenes from the New York Times Magazine interview:

Q: We can't kill everyone who hates America!

A: We can kill a lot of them, particularly when they try to kill us.

Q: You recently created a stir when you defended the interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib.

A: Most of the people in Mississippi came up to me and said: ''Thank Goodness. America comes first.'' Interrogation is not a Sunday-school class. You don't get information that will save American lives by withholding pancakes.

Q: But unleashing killer dogs on naked Iraqis is not the same as withholding pancakes.

A: I was amazed that people reacted like that. Did the dogs bite them? Did the dogs assault them? How are you going to get people to give information that will lead to the saving of lives?

Q: How do you feel about gay men adopting and raising children?

A: It's so important that children have parents or family that love them. There are a lot of adopted children who have loving parents, and it comes in different ways with different people in different states.

And there you have it. Kill the bad guys, gay marriage ok!, and it's not torture as long as the dogs didn't bite.

[wik] n.b. I originally included a darkly sarcastic analogy in the above to make it clear that I think Trent Lott is out of his damn tree if he's gotten around to splitting hairs on the torture issue by arguing that a) we don't know that the dogs ever attacked anyone, b) ergo, no torture, and c) they deserved whatever they got anyway, and who knows where those bite marks are from. However, the analogy was too unsavory and made me rather uncomfortable. Consequently, I just have to say it. Trent Lott is out of his damn tree if he thinks that using dogs-- the bitey kind or otherwise-- to threaten unconvicted, possibly average-Joe prisoners in the hopes of gaining (*stentorian Prussian voice*) in-formation is the right idea. At least two of my bloggin' buddies disagree with me on this point, but in 100% of cases I've heard of to date, I'm agin' it, and it makes me see red.

[alsø wik] Trent Lott thinks gay marriage is okay by him. Whoosh. I need a minute to process.