Of course most of the people who tortured for the CIA are patriots. So what?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

Patriot is a word with a meaning.

It does not mean "mensch" or "decent bloke", it means someone with a particular set of ideological views and emotional attachments to their country.

Having those views or not has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not it is OK to torture people, any more than being a patriot makes it OK to rob banks.

I am absolutely certain that the vast majority of CIA operatives (and a significant number of bank robbers), including those who have tortured people, are patriots.

It is not obvious to me either why Obama offered that as an implicit defence of them, or why so many people think that it is not true.

The logical response is "Yes, they are indeed patriots. So what?"

[Katashi_itto]

1. They were only following orders.

[HereSince1628]

2. Words have multiple meanings...some formal some not. Parsers parse.

In the minds of many "patriots" are persons whose behavior is seen as something to be modeled.

Parsers parse...

Bush and Cheney didn't lie, they didn't torture, they enhanced interrogations, and the work itself was outsourced so that they could have plausible deniability, if ever a need for self-defense was required.

But no one ever expects that need to actually arise. Because the US, like many nations, can't see their nation or their patriots as every doing anything that wasn't necessitated.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

3. From a purely logical and technical standpoint, you're correct.

The 'so what' comes into play when you go beyond the dictionary definition and examine how the word is used in modern America by regular people, and the values that they attach to the word above and beyond its dictionary definition.

For instance, most people will attach the value 'good' to patriotism, whether or not the dictionary says so. So to use the word 'patriot' in a piece of political rhetoric is to try to assign values above and beyond the dictionary definition. And politicians know this, which is why they so often try to portray themselves and their allies as patriots, and those who oppose them as not.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

4. Yes, I agree with that, but I think they shouldn't.

I think that Obama was probably using "patriots" to imply "good".

I think that he was wrong to imply that (although I can understand why he did; I think that blaming CIA operatives rather than senior administration members for torture is unfair).

A lot of people have responded by saying "no, they're not patriots".

I think that this is obviously wrong.

I think that the correct criticism of Obama's comments is to focus on the implication, not on what he actually said, and that - as you say - that he's far from unique in using "patriot" to imply "good", and that anyone who does so should be challenged.