Andrew McCarthy’s article in today’s National Review Online characterizes the Democrats witch-hunt as a cynical farce. He strips the professed moral high ground from their argument and demonstrates how disingenuous they are. Obama, Kennedy, Leahey, et al are out for political revenge and willing to promote policies inimical to the best interest of the country.
The story begins in 2006, before Democrats took control of congress and while the memory of 911 was fading from public attention.
Sen. Ted Kennedy proposed an amendment to the Military Commissions Act MCA then under consideration. His measure would, finally, have brought clarity to the legal status of waterboarding. It would have expressly defined the procedure as a violation of Common Article 3 CA3 of the Geneva Conventions, putting it on a par with “torture” — which is specified in CA3 — and making it punishable as a war crime.
The amendment lost, 46-53. All Democrats except one Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska voted in favor. One Republican still in the Senate, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, voted with the Democrats. As a result, while the MCA substantially overhauled the war-crimes statute Section 2441 of the federal penal code, it did not criminalize waterboarding to say nothing of less harsh tactics. Nor did Congress touch the torture statutes Sections 2340 and 2340A, which define and punish torture, much less enact a clarification that waterboarding is torture. The legal status of waterboarding remained exactly what it had been: ambiguous, at best.
This history is significant because Republicans no longer run Congress, like they did back then. Since January 2007, Democrats have been in charge of both houses. At any time they wished, they could have revived the Kennedy Amendment, and passed it. Since January 2009, moreover, Democrats have run not only Congress but the White House. At any time they wished, they could have ended what they call the “false choice between our security and our values” translation: their considered choice of no security and their values. At any time they wished, they could have settled the debate and passed a law: No more waterboarding.
They haven’t done that. For all the high dudgeon, they won’t do it. And the reason for their reticence is shameful: To clarify the law would be to admit that the law has been unclear. Clarifying law is not the objective, settling political scores is.
To enact laws against coercive interrogation today would demonstrate that Democratic witch-hunts based on the coercive interrogation of yesterday — against the intelligence officers who carried it out and the legal experts who arrived at the inconvenient truth that our law did not prohibit it — are grotesque. These investigations violate the constitutional bar against ex post facto prosecutions. They run afoul of the constitutionally derived “rule of lenity,” which bars prosecutions based on vague statutes that fail to provide adequate notice of what the law forbids. And they flout the doctrine of qualified immunity, which protects government officials from liability unless their conduct transgresses, as the Supreme Court has put it, “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights.”
What is going on beneath President Obama’s theatrics about “our values” again, meaning his values is a cynical farce. If our values were really at stake, if there were a consensus among us i.e., Americans that harsh interrogation tactics could never be justified, the Democrat-controlled Congress would outlaw them today and bask in the resulting adulation. But there is no such legislation, because the goal here has nothing to do with improving American policy.
The goal is vengeance, pure and simple.
via A Dishonest Debate by Andrew C. McCarthy on National Review Online.
The article goes on to demonstrate the effect of the witch-hunt on public policy and the lives of those involved. What a vile web Obama starts to weave!