Huckabee Attends Mints-For-Terrorists Confab

From The Hill, a Leftist group called Human Rights First has organized meetings to bash America's efforts to gather intel and stop terrorism, and they've and found some Leftist retired officers (there are a few) to come and serve the main entre: red herring.

Here's what the fish looks like, from retired Brig. General David Irvine:

“You can be a hawk on national security but that does not mean you have to advocate torture,” he added.

I don't think anyone's advocating real torture (though it might be necessary in some situations to imminently save lives). We aggressively pursue intelligence gathering, but what we do compared to what terrorists do is child's play, and it's an insult to the men and women of our defense and intelligence agencies to put them in the same category. After all, here's what was found in a captured Al-Qaeda torture manual earlier this year:

...an assortment of crude drawings depicting torture methods like "blowtorch to the skin" and "eye removal." Along with the images, which you'll find on the following pages, soldiers seized various torture implements, like meat cleavers, whips, and wire cutters.

This "non partisam" group has opposed Judge Michael Mukasey's nomination to Attorney General, opposed Club Gitmo altogether, opposes isolation, and travels in the company of the Leftist Amnesty International organization.

The article mentions that John McCain " has been a strong voice against using torture as part of the detainee interrogation process." I greatly respect McCain's service to our country and what he went through as a POW in Vietnam. However, as a former prisoner of the North Vietnamese communists, he should be able to distinguish between the brutal beatings he received and the barking dogs, loud rap music and waterboarding that the U.S. military sometimes uses to gather intel from brutal women-and-children-killing terrorists.

Some of the military training I've undergone is worse than what these terrorists at Club Gitmo experience. Conditions are better for them there than for most of them in their own countries.

A host of Democrat candidates have already attended some of these meetings, and more are scheduled to this weekend. But so far, Mike Huckabee is the only Republican candidate stupid enough to actually agree to go to these meetings. Apparently even McCain is willing to forego precious time in front of the cameras and skip this meeting. And "compassionate conservative" George W. Bush seems to understand that you have to be tough to fight a war.

This is just one more piece of evidence that Mike Huckabee doesn't have what it takes to make the hard decisions. Liberals can afford their dreams of a mint on every terrorists' pillow, but the president of the United States has to be ready to wage war on evil and, within the bounds of human decency, do whatever it takes to stop terrorism and save lives.