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The Daily Dish - 2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan

Romney on Torture

By The Daily Dish
May 16 2007, 12:30 PM ET

Here's a fascinating interview with Sean Hannity, a man who would love the Republican candidate to campaign on torturing detainees. Of course, Fox News skews the debate by focusing entirely on the one in a million "ticking time-bomb" scenario. What else would you expect from Brit Hume? But Romney reveals in this clip that he does not believe the president is bound by the law in this question. He says that he will not provide a definition of "what is torture and what is not torture," because a president should be able to keep terror supects guessing. So he supports "enhanced interrogation techniques" and not torture, but refuses to say what the difference is. And he says the president gets to pick. And U.S. citizens are subject to this regime. The logic of Romney's position, then, is that the president can designate any human being or citizen an "enemy combatant," detain them indefinitely without charges or recourse to the courts, and torture them using any method he wishes as long as he says it's not torture and he is under no obligation to explain what torture is. This is tyranny. Period.



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