Reading Richard Cohen: A fate worse than waterboarding

By Ken Silverstein
Harpers

Like Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, I too am “torn between my desire for absolute security and my abhorrence of torture.”

How can one solve this dilemma? Easy–cancel your subscription to the Post. That’s the only was to assure with absolute security that you won’t be tortured by reading one of Cohen’s idiotic columns.

Is there any columnist in America as obviously senile and banal as Cohen? If you can stomach it, read a few paragraphs from his column today, and what he and his editors deem to be original thinking:

No one can possibly believe that America is now safer because of the new restrictions on enhanced interrogation and the subsequent appointment of a special prosecutor. The captured terrorist of my fertile imagination, assuming he had access to an Internet cafe, knows about the special prosecutor. He knows his interrogator is under scrutiny. What person under those circumstances is going to spill his beans?

Ah yes, the interrogator must build rapport with the captured terrorist. That might work, but it would take time. It could take a lot of time. Building rapport is clearly the preferred method, but the terrorist is going to know all about it. He will bide his time. How much time do we have?

(More here.)