The View's Nicolle Wallace on Torture: “I Don’t Care What We Did”

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Torture's back, as I noted in my last post. The currently and briefly Democratic Senate has released their Torture Report after six years of study. It pretty much lays out that yes we tortured people, and that no, it wasn't a useful tactic, though it was illegal. War crimes. The reaction from the left is, "Yep, we knew that. Arrest them!" The reaction from most in the middle (or your average non-voter from this last election) is a shrug. "Whatever. Where's my iPad?" And from the right?

Predictably, many on the right are in denial. It wasn't torture. If it was, it wasn't that bad. Our Navy Seals are subjected to worse in training. Besides, they're terrorists, and they'd do worse to us. Hey, at least we aren't beheading them! And then there's the "Whatever it takes to keep us safe, all bets are off, just DO it."

That seems to be the position of Republican strategist and The View co-host Nicolle Wallace. I like her, or rather, I have in most appearances of her that I've caught. She's a conservative, but she's bright, articulate, funny and wry. She's sparred with Rachel Maddow several times, and they always come away laughing. But lately, she seems to be prone to outrageous statements, possibly because of her new gig? Though I wouldn't have expected her to say this.

[Excerpt]
 
“I don’t care what we did”: What Nicolle Wallace’s rant reveals about America’s torture problem

After years of excuses and delays, Americans finally have a chance on Tuesday to read the Senate Intelligence Committee’s so-called torture report (or at least most of its executive summary which, as the Intercept’s Dan Froomkin has noted, constitutes less than 20 percent of the whole report). And while it’s likely that most of the summary will focus on information we basically knew already, there have been hints of new and significant revelations, too. If it’s true that the CIA misled President Bush about the effectiveness of the torture program, for example, then the intelligence agency, which has already been caught spying on Congress, is even more of a threat to American democracy than we feared. Either way, the story of how the United States came to embrace “interrogation” techniques pioneered by . . .

Read more at: Salon