The Ny Times and “Super Secret Documents” show:

“When the Justice Department publicly declared torture ‚Äúabhorrent‚Äù in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.

Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard.

The classified opinions, never previously disclosed, are a hidden legacy of President Bush’s second term and Mr. Gonzales’s tenure at the Justice Department, where he moved quickly to align it with the White House after a 2004 rebellion by staff lawyers that had thrown policies on surveillance and detention into turmoil.

Congress and the Supreme Court have intervened repeatedly in the last two years to impose limits on interrogations, and the administration has responded as a policy matter by dropping the most extreme techniques. But the 2005 Justice Department opinions remain in effect, and their legal conclusions have been confirmed by several more recent memorandums, officials said. They show how the White House has succeeded in preserving the broadest possible legal latitude for harsh tactics.”

This story is just another example of why the next attack can be placed squarely in the lap of liberal media. For throughout the entire diatribe not a single case of “harsh tactics” is cited, but of course “Gonzales, and Bush and Cheney Oh my!”. It’s nothing but another attempt to set the stage for the Mukasey hearings so they can get him to promise that “You’ll never hold them down and tickle them until they turn blue!”.

The long and short of it is to ask just how far would YOU go to extract information out of terrorists to save American lives? Most Americans say, “Whatever it takes”. If Khalid Shaikh Mohammed would have been captured before 9/11, and we could resurrect victims of 9/11 how far would they and they’re families want us to go.

Bill Clinton said:

“If you’re the Jack Bauer person, you’ll do whatever you do and you should be prepared to take the consequences.”

People like the reporter who wrote this article along with the left that is salivating over it have never interrogated anyone - under extreme circumstances - in their lives. Therefore from an “unintelligence” standpoint they cannot speak except in hyperbole and innuendo about constant “What ifs”, and moan about how we are above such barbarism.

The reason we had a 9/11 in the first place is because the Clinton Administration used Marques of Queensbury rules in dealing with terrorism in the 90s. The result was that in addition to 9/11, this country was basically under siege by Al Qaeda.

Since 9/11 there hasn’t been a single attack on America.

The question of “What would YOU do?” is better asked, “What kind of America do YOU want in 2008 and beyond?”