Over the last decade, liberals have become implacably convinced that harsh interrogation of captured jihadists who planned the slaughter of thousands of innocents on 9/11, and who sought to kill far more if they could acquire the means, constituted "torture."
On his radio show today, Rush Limbaugh performed an invaluable public service by citing better examples of torture that never seem to bother left wingers, despite their vocal piety on the subject (audio) --
Look at it this way -- what does liberalism ask us to do? What does the Democrat party today, Barack Obama -- what are they asking of us? They're essentially asking us to set aside our survival instincts. And they're asking us to set aside mechanisms and institutions that have been devised to help us survive. Liberalism is asking us not to use effective interrogation techniques to save American lives. Liberalism is asking us to look the other way. Liberalism is asking us to be empathetic (an allusion to Hillary Clinton's assertion that Americans must empathize with our enemies).
You know what torture is to me? Can I tell you what torture is to me? Torture to me is not all this waterboarding and stuff. You know what torture is? Torture is trying to go to sleep every night with pictures in your head that your wife, your husband, your son, your daughter jumped from a top floor at the World Trade Center to his or her death rather than burn alive. That's torture to me.
You know what's torture to me? Torture to me is being a family member of somebody who died at 9/11, either in the Twin Towers, the field in Pennsylvania, or the Pentagon, trying to go to bed every night thinking about what they experienced at that moment, when the planes hit the towers.
Torture to me is what you go through each and every day trying to go to sleep as you think about the last moments of the lives of your loved ones or family members on 9/11.
Torture is being a family member of an American being beheaded on television by al Qaeda or ISIS or you name it, Islamic jihadists, and wondering what was going through their mind at that moment. Torture is then having that be the first thing on my mind when I wake up every day. That's torture and it's every day and it is every night.
Torture is being the family member of a first responder on 9/11 as they gallantly, valiantly, courageously walked and ran to those Twin Towers, looking for survivors, hoping to drag people out, and they never came out. Torture, every day, is wondering what they went through.
And I'll tell you, there's something else that's torture to me and that is, knowing all of that, trying to go to sleep every night with those thoughts in my head and having to get up and listen to the news in this country -- CIA report, intelligence report from the Senate intel committee which blames Americans for this. Try to go to sleep every night and I can't get the picture out of my head of my family member jumping out of those buildings or burning alive, and I get up and I get to listen to how we're mistreating, by depriving them of sleep, the people who did it.
Torture to me is the utter frustration involved in watching various elements of our government bend over backwards to be nice, to have empathy, to be respectful, to the people who did this to people I loved or members of my family. That's torture to me. What's torture to me is to get up every day after having not been able to forget any of that and to listen to one American after another essentially find ways to blame the United States for what happened. There's all kinds of torture out there.
None of which counts as torture to liberals, for whom Sept. 11th is an anniversary to be observed once a year and grudgingly at that. They've contorted themselves into believing that waterboarding mass murderers to prevent them from further carnage is as morally repugnant as mass murder itself.
