Colin Powell Supports Enhanced Interrogation on Face the Nation

The mainstream media can be very judgmental. The like to classify everything into categories, especially things they disagree with. For example there are "good" Republicans. and "bad" Republicans. "Bad" Republicans are people like Newt Gingrich,Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney. "Good" Republicans the more "liberal" ones,  people like Colin Powell, John McCain (when he is not running against Obama) and Maine Senator Olympia Snow. The mainstream media takes every opportunity to use the "good" Republicans to bash the bad ones.
The MSM may be moving General Powell to the "bad" category after his performance today on Face the Nation. The former Secretary of State was asked about Enhanced Interrogation Techniques on Face the Nation today and took the side of the Bush administration and Dick Cheney. Take a look at the video above (the relevant part begins at around the 12:15 mark or read the transcript below:

BOB SCHIEFFER, HOST: All right. Let me ask you this. The former vice president said he had no regrets about the methods that were used including waterboarding. He actually authorized it. He says they may have saved thousands of lives. I want to ask you two questions. Do you agree with that? That these techniques were effective?


And number two, when did you know about this business, general?


POWELL: When we started to examine these techniques I was in some meetings where they were discussed.


POWELL: I was not privy to the memos that were being written or the legal opinions that were being written.


I think it was unfortunate but we had a system that kept that in a very compartmented manner. And so I was apart that these enhanced interrogation techniques were being considered. And they were judged not to be torture at the time.


And when you were facing the possibility of a 9/11, you had to give some -- some flexibility to the CIA. But it was under the Bush administration that they stopped using these techniques back in 19 -- in 2003.


So obviously the CIA did not feel that we had anybody else in our custody that would need to have these techniques used. And as a result...


SCHIEFFER: Do you think they were effective?


POWELL: ... they haven't been used -- I have no idea. I hear that they were. I hear that they weren't. You see people from the FBI who come out and say, we got all of that information before any of that was done. I cannot answer that question.


And the problem is, I don't know what I don't know.


SCHIEFFER: Let me just ask you this. Jan Crawford Greenburg of ABC News reported last year that the top people in the administration, you, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the national security adviser, were actually brought in to meetings in the White House where these things were outlined. But you're saying you don't know -- at those meetings you're saying that nothing was (INAUDIBLE)?


POWELL: They were outlined. We were aware that these techniques were being discussed. And we were aware that legal opinions were being given that said they met the standard of the law.


But over time, now that we look at it, it's easy now in the cold light of day to look back and say, you shouldn't have done any of that. But as Mr. Cheney has said very, very often, as has President Bush and all of us, if we had another attack like 9/11, say on 9/11 a year later, nobody would have forgiven us for not doing everything we could.

OOP, General Powel you keep talking like that, the mainstream media is going to take away your "Good" Republican Decoder Ring.

H/T Newsbusters