Former President George W. Bush said Wednesday that he has no regrets about waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, saying that, if presented with the same opportunity, he’d “do it again.”...Politico
Scott Horton, who's a lawyer, types out a quick one condemning the Obama administration for its willingness to flout the law. You know, that Obama, the one who is a former constitutional law professor, not just some son-of, some glib, dry-drunk former president. Horton writes:
For two years, Republicans have argued against any inquiry into the torture practices of the Bush-Cheney administration, but apparently all it takes to get Bush to discuss the issue is a fat speaking fee.
Horton also cites the recent statement from a former CENTCOM commander asserting that "waterboarding is torture. John McCain has said it’s torture. We have prosecuted foreign and American military personnel for waterboarding. We even prosecuted a sheriff in Texas for waterboarding. Waterboarding is torture and torture is a crime. It cannot be demonstrated that any use of it by U.S. personnel in recent years has saved a single American life."
We could scurry around and try to find excuses for the Obama administration's hands-off-the-perp attitude. But that's a little like flustering around while attending the poisoning of the entire Gulf of Mexico. Not only is it bad but it'll come back to bite us hard, as the CENTCOM commander assures us, "battering our alliances, damaging counterinsurgency efforts, and increasing threats to our soldiers."
We'll deserve it. Obama deserves it, too. But he'll have a nice pension plus book royalties and, um, fat speaking fees. Maybe he'll go back to teaching a little constitutional law.
It's a damn shame Americans can't drop partisanship if only for a moment to condemn these two presidents for their blatant, cool lawbreaking.
