Taking Hostages for Torture

Republican senators are threatening to block confirmation of key Obama nominees if the Obama administration makes public the Bush administration Justice Department memos that explicitly authorized torture and other barbaric relics.

Human rights/constitutional lawyer Scott Horton notes, “It now appears that Republicans are seeking an Obama commitment to safeguard the Bush administration’s darkest secrets in exchange for letting these nominations go forward.”

Funny to remember how many people believed that Washington would no longer be sordid after Bush and Cheney left office.

If the Obama team rolls over for this Republican power play, this will be a symbol of the bipartisan complicity in the worst abuses of recent years.

15 thoughts on “Taking Hostages for Torture”

  1. If there was ever any doubt that the Republican Party is the party of war and torture this bit of news should relieve anyone of such doubt. There are probably very good reasons to oppose key Obama nominees, but to oppose key Obama nominees because he (Obama) might make public the Bush Administration’s complicity and endorsement of torture is not one of those reasons.

    1. Are you suggesting the Democrats are the party of peace? Who maneuvered us into WW1, WW2, Korea and Vietnam? Both parties are rotten to the core. Don’t expect to see U.S. troops leave Iraq either, super-Obama notwithstanding.

      1. I never wrote or said the Democrats were the party of peace. All I wrote was that the Republican Party is the party of war and torture. Both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party can burn in hell as far as I am concerned. In fact I would now say that both the Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan are Democratic wars. The Democrats could have stopped the war in Iraq when they took over congress by refusing to appropriate any money for that war. They could have stopped the war in Iraq when they were a minority in congress by filabustering any appropriations for that war in the Senate. They did not do any of those things. Now that a Democrat is President and the Democrats control congress they have esculated the war in Afghanistan, and have a troop withdrawal plan with regard to Iraq that will keep troops in Iraq forever and a day. On top of all this, Obama, the so called Peace President, is banging the drums for war against North Korea, a country which might have the GDP of Nashville, for launching a rocket.
        After rereading my post I can understand why you might think I was a member of the cult of Obama and a shill of the Democratic Party. However, if you have read the totality of my posts here (I am not so full of myself as to think you should have read all my post here) you would realize the injustice of your insult.

    2. I wouldn’t speak so soon. Don’t forget that Obama and the Democrats have four years to out-torture Bush and the Republicans. It is also time for the War Party’s Left Talon to rend flesh in the Bananastans. The only difference is that the Left Talon will be painted up pretty with Heartwarming Humanitarian Liberal Intervention.

      The old Liberal Interventionists, they know what’s up. The same people that whined about BushCo Intervention for years are now cheering Af-Crap. You know who I am talking about, they pull the Darfur Card if they catch a whiff of nonintervention, and then imply that you hate Lincoln, love Hitler. It’s like the Hasbara brigade meets Ayn Rand.

      It will be a tough task but neither Obama nor his squad of cheerleaders are interested in nonintervention, they are interested in churched up propaganda and Democracy Spreading, so there is hope.

      1. There is nothing wrong with hating Lincoln. It is a pity that Lincoln was assinated by Booth. It would have been far better if he was hanged as a war criminal for the crimes he committed against Southern civilians both free and slave, white and black, rich and poor. These crimes inlcude murder, theft, arson, and rape. In waging a war to preserve the geographic integrity of the Union Lincoln behaved like an uncivilized brute. He refused to exercise any restraint or recognize any limit on what he could do to accomplish his goal. Do not be afraid to Lincoln. You will be a better person for it.

  2. Obama could easily take the issue of torture memos off the table by simply releasing them and appointing a special prosecutor to go after those responsible. This would take out some of the GOP leadership in the Senate once their knowledge and complicity were revealed publicly. But, it ain’t gonna happen because it would also take out some of the Democrats who were briefed on torture matters.

    Obama could also appoint a few Republicans that the GOP Senators wouldn’t oppose because at the end of the nightmare when the nation has been fully looted, what difference does it really make?

  3. If Ron Paul wasn’t a Republican, I would be long gone. The GOP is really now the party of the Neanderthal Bone-Head and Joe The Dumber is a perfect symbol: stupid, arrogant, mindless, incapable of compassion, mentally paralyzed and with this revelation….morally bankrupt.

  4. Funny to remember how many people believed that Washington would no longer be sordid after Bush and Cheney left office.

    Is this really any surprise? It’s obvious that Abe Lincoln was dead wrong; you can -and will– fool all (or most) of the people all of the time. How else does one explain the fact that 50-plus percent of the woolly herd dutifully shuffles off to the polls in a quadrennial November exercise in futility, convinced, despite glaring evidence to the contrary dating back well over a century and a half, that one of the two Establishment marionettes for whom they pull a lever will bring “change” and will “clean up Washington.” While common [sic] sense dictates that no adult human being with a normally functioning cerebrum could possibly be so stupid and so impervious to the obvious (even lower-order animal life learns by instinct from experience), medical science has yet to offer a rational explanation as to why it happens with maddening regularity. By Albert Einstein’s definition, insanity reigns supreme, although primordial stupidity is a much more adequate explanation.

  5. So far, Obama is Bush Lite. He shows the same disregard for civil liberties, the same disregard for the law, as did the former Chickenhawk-in-Chief. Neither Obama nor Holder is interested in ordering investigations required by the Convention Against Torture.

    And we wonder why America’s reputation is lower than a snake’s ass.

  6. Torture should be opposed 99.9% of the time.

    However, what if your own son or daughter, wife or husband was being held hostage. Suppose he was in a shallow grave with only enough air for 24 hours. And further suppose we had a guy who knew exactly where your loved one was but was not willing to talk. Would you oppose torture in such a circumstance? Even if the torture would not lead to death or permanent injury?

    1. Yet another straw man argument. In other words, torture is wrong, when Tim R, says it is.

    1. That’s probably where he gets his weird ideas from Lear. I think it was an episode of CSI.

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