And I think we better listen to them. If you haven't heard that promise in the arguments they're making, let me point them out, because that is what they are saying, very clearly.
The latest argument the Republicans are making is that investigating torture is nothing more than 'criminalizing policy differences'.
Of course, Glenn Beck, Mark Steyn, Hannity, and all the rest of the usual suspects are even making the argument that simply investigating torture turns the US into a banana republic.
Naturally, no one states it better than Karl Rove, on Fox News last week:
"[W]hat the Obama administration has done in the last several days is very dangerous. What they've essentially said is, if we have policy disagreements with our predecessors, what we're going to do is we're going to turn ourselves into the moral equivalent of a Latin American country run by colonels in mirrored sunglasses, and what we're gonna do is prosecute systematically the previous administration or threaten prosecutions against the previous administration based on policy differences."
Torture is a policy, over which administrations can disagree, and the full implication of this argument is that they fully intend to use it again when and if they regain power.
Remember, Obama ended torture by executive order, just as he ended the restrictions on federal funding of stem cell research. And that means torture can resume, by the simple means of another President revoking that order. Torture now holds the same status as stem cell research, or federal hiring procedures, and they want to keep it that way.
But would they? Yes, they want to use it again, as can be plainly seen by the outrage following the release of memos describing the techniques.
Listen to Michael Mukasey, not by any means the most radical voice among the torture promoters.
"By allowing this disclosure, President Obama has tied not only his own hands but also the hands of any future administration faced with the prospect of attack.
Dick Cheney has said over and over again that he thinks waterboarding should be used again. Believe him, he speaks for many still serving in the CIA.
The Wall Street Journal:
..until now, the U.S. political system has avoided the spectacle of a new Administration prosecuting its predecessor for policy disagreements.
This 'politicizing policy differences' is a direct challenge that forces the opponents of torture to prosecute, because if it stands, we will find torture in our future.
And there is one more thing that should absolutely chill your blood.
Michael Hayden, the former CIA director on Fox News:
At the tactical level, what we have described for our enemies in the midst of a war are the outer limits that any American would ever go to in terms of interrogating an al Qaeda terrorist. That's very valuable information. Now, it doesn't mean we would always go to the outer limits, but it describes the box within which Americans will not go beyond.
Read between the lines. This is the argument that will justify even harsher methods of torture the next time people like him come to power.
Pulling out fingernails, genital shocks, whatever they can come up with, and they will BLAME IT ON LIBERALS; 'They made us use these harsher methods by exposing the techniques we used to use'.
They are digging in to preserve torture for when they return to power. It must not happen.
