Is the Terror Issue Getting Overlooked in Scott Brown Win?

There’s been much talk about the national debt, spending, health care and the Washington back room deals that have voters so angry. But there’s another angle to the win by Scott Brown which is being overlooked, or at least downplayed by the media. Throughout the campaign Brown blasted the administration’s plans to grant terrorists civilian rights. He’s also a proponent of enhanced interrogation, as Mark Thessian pointed out.

Next to health care, the issue that has dominated the debate in the Massachusetts Senate race is terrorism. Scott Brown, the Republican running ahead in the race for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat today, has campaigned as an unabashed supporter of enhanced interrogation. Brown – who serves as a JAG lawyer in the Army National Guard – has argued that the Christmas Day bomber should be interrogated as an enemy combatant, not given the right to remain silent. And he has said of waterboarding, “I do not believe it is torture. America does not torture … we used aggressive, enhanced interrogation techniques.”

There is a lesson here for Republicans. If an outspoken supporter of waterboarding can run this strongly in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, imagine how the issue will play in the rest of America.

The fact is President Obama has placed our country in grave danger by dismantling the CIA’s program to interrogate senior terrorist leaders like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. By limiting all terrorist interrogations to the techniques in the Army Field Manual, Obama is actually requiring that captured terrorists receive better treatment in the interrogation room than common criminals being questioned at your local police precinct. Not only has he eliminated lawful interrogation techniques, under his administration the United States is no longer trying to capture the leaders of al Qaeda alive, and bring them in for interrogation so they can tell us their plans for future attacks. …

In his speech last night, Brown hammered home the argument against trying terrorists as civilians.

And let me say this, with respect to those who wish to harm us, I believe that our Constitution and laws exist to protect this nation – they do not grant rights and privileges to enemies in wartime. In dealing with terrorists, our tax dollars should pay for weapons to stop them, not lawyers to defend them.