A Tortured Republican Argument

 

The United States of America routinely tortured suspected terrorists during the administration of Republican George W. Bush, in flagrant violation of American law and tradition.

 

And it’s all Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s fault.

 

The Republican National Committee’s website at gop.com, has a page titled “Nancy’s Debunked Denials,” where the text begins in boldface: “New Intelligence Documents Prove That Pelosi Has Not Been Honest About What She Knew And When She Knew It.”

 

The Republican reasoning is that since Pelosi knew about what the RNC stubbornly calls “enhanced interrogation techniques” and failed to stop them, she is complicit in their use.

 

And since she’s complicit in the use of torture, she shouldn’t make it a “political issue,” which is how Republicans prefer to describe conduct that would be a crime if it took place in a police station or jail.

 

The GOP says Pelosi learned about the torture (oops! Enhanced Interrogation) in a Fall 2002 briefing. Pelosi says that briefing’s only mention of water boarding, the torture technique of choice, was that it wasn’t being used.

 

Thoughtful Republicans – there must be a few somewhere – might recall that the “what knew/when knew” query reached its sloganeering peak in the Watergate burglary hearings about another GOP guardian of our liberties, Richard M. Nixon. But let’s not focus on the past, especially the past in which Republican operatives broke the law.

 

We should stay focused on the present in which Republican operatives broke the law because the Democrats failed to stop them.

 

Never mind that Democrats were in the minority in 2002. Today’s Minority Leader John Boehner, Republican of Ohio, is quoted in Wednesday’s New York Times as saying “It’s pretty clear that they were well aware of what these enhanced interrogation techniques were; they were well aware that they’d been used; and it seems to me that they want to have it both ways. You can’t have it both ways.”

 

Sure you can John. You can do the crime, and when you’re caught, you can blame the cops for not preventing you.

 

Not to be outdone by the John Boehner Theory of Criminal Law, Republican Senator Kit Bond of Missouri thundered from his web site: “Instead of prosecuting or persecuting, our country should be supporting our intelligence professionals who work to keep us safe.”

 

Senator Bond’s four-paragraph statement made no mention of who would keep us safe from our intelligence professionals.

Let’s just say that when looking for an answer to that question, the present Republican Party doesn’t immediately spring to mind.

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