IF torture is only a partisan issue?
It is dangerously thin ice on which we skate.
One wonders if there is an issue that cannot be defined by partisan division? What cannot be rationalized as simple "partisanship"?
Republicans tell their followers that the torture report was nothing more than Democrats seeking political advantage. No Republicans signed off on it. Therefore, it is not legitimate.
Never mind that Republicans would not support any report that was not favorable to Bush and Cheney and the CIA, under any circumstances. They would not support calling those involved in torture before the Senate Committee. So then, they can tell their supporters it was all for "partisan reasons". And the Republican sheep blindly slurp it up.
So long as they can divide this country in such a way, by partisan label, nothing is beyond the bounds. Videos of children being raped and molested is meaningless, so long as Republicans continue to claim it is all for political gain. Eavesdropping and spying on Americans, or even physical abuse of our citizens by law enforcement officers, can never be addressed as long as Republican politicians continue to define it as only a "partisan difference".
Torture is only a figment of Democratic imaginations. There is no morality. There are no rules. There are no laws. In other words, justice is dead. There are only right-wing patriots who are at war with anti-American leftists, as defined by talk radio.
= new reply since forum marked as read
There are, however, some mavericks on the right that depart from the party line. Here's Daniel Larison on the pages of The American Conservative:
Torture Is Wrong and Useless
....Torture is absolutely wrong and absolutely useless, and demonstrating the truth of both statements will make clear how completely bankrupt its defenders’ arguments really are. Proving that torture achieves nothing except the cruel degradation of human beings takes away the only argument its defenders have left. It would obviously be better if no one were willing to offer a defense for something as abhorrent as torture, but we know very well that quite a few people are prepared to do that so long as they can dress up what they’re defending in euphemisms and false claims about its efficacy. The point of insisting on torture’s uselessness is to strip away the remaining falsehoods that its defenders use to conceal the ugly reality of what they are defending.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/torture-is-wrong-and-useless/
(and then there's McCain.)
