Will the Torture Never Cease?

The endless talking about torture, that is. Now the big talk is over what Madame Speaker knew and when she knew it. Republicans are of course charging her with hypocrisy since she was apparently aware 7 years ago about a practice that she now contends was heinous and said nothing about it then. She claims, not very convincingly, that the CIA didn't tell her they actually did waterboard anyone. But to be fair, imagine the howls if she had said anything back then - those calling her a hypocrite now would have called her a traitor. Still, wouldn't it have been incumbent on her to have spoken out about it then even if it risked her career? Her argument, that she thought about revealing it then, but decided to win back the congress instead as a more effective approach, is too silly to consider.

But far more important, and therefore generally ignored in the press, is the question of what the point of the torture was. Former Powell aide Lawrence Wilkerson is charging that the point of the torture was not to "protect American lives" but to elicit evidence to justify the Iraq war. I sadly admit that this is all too believable - and if true would surely justify prosecution of the former Vice President and anyone else behind it. Torturing a few jihadi thugs in the wake of 9/11 is nothing to lose sleep over, but torturing them because they're not telling you what you want to hear about a conspiracy that didn't exist - well that's another whole ballgame.

And this would be a good opportunity for Republicans to start weaning themselves from the poisonous Bush foreign-policy teat. The Bush administration was one big mistake, and the Republican party will continue to whither away unless it takes steps to disconnect itself from those sorry years. So they need to take these opportunities when they can. There's much else they need to do, of course, but that's a subject for a different post.