“There is no doubt that the Romney administration would be able to claim \u2014 in the event of a Romney presidency \u2014 a democratic mandate for torture. That would put Romney as the first world leader in history to be able to claim a democratic mandate for torture.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Emmerson’s remarks are based on Romney’s advocacy for the euphemistically-named “enhanced interrogation”<\/em> techniques such as waterboarding. The rest of the world calls it torture, and even many U.S. experts regard it as an inhumane tactic that produces unreliable results.<\/p>\n As usual, Romney has taken both sides of this issue. In a debate in 2007 he said that he opposed torture, but refused to say whether he considered waterboarding torture. However, he also refused to rule out the use of waterboarding, and just Last month, when asked directly if he believed waterboarding to be torture, he responded, “I don’t.”<\/em><\/p>\n President Obama can exploit both Romney’s wavering positions and his current stance approving of practices that include torture. Obama signed an executive order that put an end to the use of enhanced interrogation, which Romney has promised to rescind. Romney’s position is of concern to international allies, as expressed by the UN’s Emmerson…<\/p>\n “The re-introduction of torture under a Romney administration would significantly increase the threat levels to (Americans) at home and abroad. Such a policy, if adopted, would expose the American people to risks the Obama administration is not currently exposing them to.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Were Obama to point out this fatal flaw in Romney’s foreign policy platform he could draw a sharp distinction between his steady leadership that is in harmony with our allies around the world, and Romney’s extremism that would serve only to alienate our friends and give our enemies justification for accelerating their attacks in an ever more brutal fashion.<\/p>\n Hopefully Obama will raise this subject if the moderator does not. It would provide for a far more enlightening discussion than one consumed by nonsense like when Obama said that the attack in Libya was an act of terror, or how badly Romney hurt U.S.\/British relations by insulting their Olympics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tomorrow’s presidential debate will be focusing on foreign policy. Instead of wasting 90 minutes on shallow disputes over out-of-context soundbites and arguments over who gets credit\/blame for events that only tangentially reflect on the office of the presidency, the public would be better served if there was a substantive discussion on the issue just raised […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[152,1],"tags":[183,260],"class_list":["post-8267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election","category-general","tag-barack-obama","tag-mitt-romney"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-29l","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7501,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=7501","url_meta":{"origin":8267,"position":0},"title":"GOP Can’t Make Up It’s Mind On ObamaCare","author":"Mark NC","date":"7\/4\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney spokesman: \"The governor believes that what we put in place in Massachusetts was a penalty and he disagrees with the court's ruling that the mandate was a tax.\" Reince Priebus, Republican Party Chairman: \"Our position is the same as Mitt Romney's position. It's a tax.\" There is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8274,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=8274","url_meta":{"origin":8267,"position":1},"title":"Mitt Romney: Taking America Back To The Future – Horses And Bayonets And All","author":"Mark NC","date":"10\/23\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The final debate of the 2012 presidential campaign is history, which is ironic because that's where Mitt Romney appears to want to lead America. There was almost nothing that Romney said that described a vision for the future of America. The entire focus of his remarks centered on either what\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8121,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=8121","url_meta":{"origin":8267,"position":2},"title":"Fox News Appoints Itself As Mitt Romney’s Debate Coach","author":"Mark NC","date":"9\/30\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"It's a few days before the first presidential debate of 2012, and Fox News is playing out its role as Mitt Romney's debate coach. With broadcasts that openly display their preference for Romney, Fox News has dispatched their anchors, correspondents and contributors on a mission of shoring up Romney's fading\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7920,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=7920","url_meta":{"origin":8267,"position":3},"title":"The Ten (Plus) Rankest Hypocrisies Of Mitt Romney And The Republican Party","author":"Mark NC","date":"9\/10\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"A slightly abridged version of this article was published on AlternetThe Republican National Convention was a rare opportunity to peer into the soul of a party that has embraced an open aversion to the truth. It was a veritable festival of falsehoods, from Paul Ryan implying that a GM plant\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8145,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=8145","url_meta":{"origin":8267,"position":4},"title":"Debate Wrap-Up: Obama Limps, Romney Lies","author":"Mark NC","date":"10\/4\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The first debate of the 2012 election is history and the way the press covers it will tell us a lot about whether they are more interested in style or substance. In a couple of snap polls last night, Romney came out on top with a big 2-to-1 advantage. It's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7935,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=7935","url_meta":{"origin":8267,"position":5},"title":"OMFG: Mitt Romney\u2019s New Black Leadership Council Chair: Allen West","author":"Mark NC","date":"9\/5\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Just when you think that politics has reached an epic high in absurdity, something happens that makes you realize that there is simply no limit to how monumentally deranged things can get. Last month an NBC\/Wall Street Journal poll was released that showed Mitt Romney receiving 0% of the African-American\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8267"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8270,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8267\/revisions\/8270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Mitt](\"\/Pix\/Campaign2012\/romney-torture.jpg\")
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