A "furious" Rep. Peter King, the hawkish, maverick Long Island Republican, blasted a "disgraceful" Eric Holder for opening an investigation of CIA interrogators and chided his own party for what he described as a weak response to the move in an interview just now with POLITICO.Typical Republican hawk, right? Until I found out about his support for the IRA - who are forgotten examples of White European non-Muslim religious terrorists:MSNBC consults expert on blowing up London... | The Spectator
"It’s bulls***. It’s disgraceful. You wonder which side they’re on," he said of the attorney general's move, which he described as a "declaration of war against the CIA, and against common sense."
"It’s a total breach of faith, and either the president is intentionally caving to the left wing of his party or he’s lost control of his administration," said King, the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Homeland Security and a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence.
King, channeling both the sense of outrage and of political opportunity felt in parts of the GOP, defended in detail the interrogation practices — threats to kill a detainee's family, and or to kill a detainee with a power drill — detailed in a CIA inspector general report released yesterday.
"You're talking about threatening to kill a guy, threatening to attack his family, threatening to use an electric drill on him — but never doing it," King said. "You have that on the one hand — and on the other you have the [interrogator's] attempt to prevent thousands of Americans from being killed."
"When Holder was talking about being 'shocked' [before the report's release], I thought they were going to have cutting guys' fingers off or something — or that they actually used the power drill," he said.
Pressed on whether interrogators had actually broken the law, King said he didn't think the Geneva Convention "applies to terrorists," and that the line between permitted and outlawed interrogation policies in the Bush years was "a distinction without a difference."
"Why is it OK to waterboard someone, which causes physical pain, but not threaten someone and not cause pain?" he asked, warning of a "chilling" effect on future CIA behavior.
"You will have thousands of lives that will be lost, and the blood will be on Eric Holder's hands," he said.
As he told an IRA rally in 1982, "We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry." Two years later Mr King's "legitimate guerilla army" came close to assassinating Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Subsequently there were bombs in the City and Docklands, plus a mortar assault on 10 Downing Street amongst many, many other outrages.and the article I got this all from:The Spectator
The only terrorists Peter King thinks should receive protection from the Geneva Conventions are Irish Republican terrorists. That terrorism - ie, blowing up pubs, slaughtering kids as they were out shopping and trying to assassinate the British Prime Minister - was a "noble" cause as far as King was concerned. If he had a problem with the IRA's old interrogation tactic of threatening a "six-pack" - that is a bullet through each elbow, wrist and knee - one can't remember him ever saying so. And, sure, if it was good enough for the IRA it should be good enough for the CIA. After all, the Provos were "the legitimate voice of occupied Ireland" weren't they?Even sadder when you find out WHY he no longer supports the IRA:Rep. King and the IRA: The End of an Extraordinary Affair? - June 22, 2005 - The New York Sun
Even by the low standards of the House of Representatives, King is a disgrace. But I suppose, at least he can be relied upon to provide copy.
The Nassau County politician, who used to travel to Belfast as often as twice a year, has not set foot in Ireland since just before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Conceding that he has "cooled on Ireland," Mr. King blames an epidemic of what he calls "knee-jerk anti-Americanism" that swept through Ireland after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.forget kneejerk Anti-Americanism - how about this dude that supported the IRA and Ireland getting told to "go home" by his former friends. The love affair is over. They don't need you anymore. Love affair: over. Get lost.
"I don't buy that it's just anti-Bush. There's a certain unpleasant trait that the Irish have, and it's begrudgery ... and resentment towards the Americans," he said in a recent interview in his Washington office.
Once a vocal and frequent House champion for the IRA's political wing, Sinn Fein, and its leader, Gerry Adams, the 60-year-old, Queens-born Mr. King has said nothing about either on the House floor in years. The politician once called the IRA "the legitimate voice of occupied Ireland," he was banned from the BBC by British censors for his pro-IRA views, and he refused to denounce the IRA when one of its mortar bombs killed nine Northern Irish police officers. But Mr. King is now one of America's most outspoken foes of terrorism.
Six weeks after September 11, 2001, he told WABC radio that the military should use tactical nuclear weapons in Afghanistan if it was believed that Islamic terrorists would deploy chemical weapons on American soil. Last year, he inflamed American Muslim groups when he said that 85% of mosques in this country have extremist leaders and that Muslims in this country were reluctant to help law enforcement.
Despite his years of support for the IRA, Mr. King has become a valued ally of the Bush administration on terrorism matters and sits on the House Committee on Homeland Security. He has won considerable praise for his role as chairman of its subcommittee on emergency preparedness - most recently for helping to steer the First Responders Bill into law. The bill aims to streamline federal grants to communities most at risk of terrorist attack.
Not so long ago, the words "Peter King" and "renegade" appeared together in many a published profile. The link resulted from the Republican's support for President Clinton before and during the impeachment crisis and his bitter spat with a former House Republican speaker, Newt Gingrich, whom Mr. King, to the delight of Democrats, once termed "political road kill."
Not anymore. These days Mr. King is a mainstream GOP loyalist, at least most of the time. He praises the current House speaker, Dennis Hastert of Illinois, and he has even made up with Mr. Bush after backing the president's opponent in the 2000 primaries, Senator McCain. When Mr. Bush visited Bob Jones University in South Carolina, an institution that is notorious in Ireland for awarding an honorary doctorate to Northern Ireland's tempestuous Protestant leader, Ian Paisley, the presidential candidate became, as Mr. King angrily put it, a tool of "anti-Catholic bigoted forces."
In recent years, Mr. King said, the GOP "made friends with me."
"Several things happened," he said. "One, Gingrich left in '98. That was a big thing for me. He really symbolized the stridency and anger in the Republican Party, while Hastert made a big difference in the Congress.
"Secondly, ever since September 11, the war against terrorism, the war against Islamic fundamentalism, has become the main issue, and I have formed a very close relationship with President Bush. I have really got to know him."
Gotta love these idiot politicians so out of touch with the realities of the world who were "transformed" by 9/11 or that can't read the tealeaves and get blindsided by shit. Go read a history book, idiot. The Dennis Miller of politicians.
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