SocraticGadfly: Some Democrats like Torture Ultra-Light, too

September 29, 2006

Some Democrats like Torture Ultra-Light, too

Unadulturated torture is torture. Liberal pundits have been calling Bush’s original “kinder, gentler” version “torture light,” so what the Senate has now approved is obviously torture ultra-light.

And despite this:
“This is wrong. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American,” said Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the committee’s top Democrat. He said it was intended to choke off access to Guantanamo to “ensure that the Bush-Cheney administration will never again be embarrassed by a United States Supreme Court decision reviewing its unlawful abuses of power.”

not even all Democrats feel that way, given the 65-34 final margin.

Democrats who voted “Yes” are Carper, Johnson, Landrieu (no shock with her lack of conscience), Lautenberg, Lieberman, Menendez, Nelson of Florida, Nelson of Nebraska, Pryor, Rockefeller (no surprise, given his lack of backbone in the past), Salazar (no surprise for quasi-Rockefeller reasons he’s already shown in his young Senate career). It’s especially troubling that members of racial or religious minority groups, who in this country, perhaps, and historically elsewhere, have had problems with government detention, would vote for such a bill.

In the House, 34 Democrats like torture ultra-light. That’s despite only eight of them being in election races ranked as tight, including two running for the Senate.

Again, for you readers, consider voting Green. And, ignore full-of-shit pseudoliberal bloggers like Mark Kleiman when they claim you and I are enabling Karl Rove by trying to hold Democrats accountable. He may claim to be part of “the reality-based community,” but it’s not one I want to live in.

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