Marion in Savannah, rescuing The Great One from behind the pay wall:
…. Mr. Bush has degraded our government and undermined the rule of law; he has led us into strategic disaster and moral squalor.
But the leading contenders for the Republican nomination have given us little reason to believe they would behave differently. Why should they? The principles Mr. Bush has betrayed are principles today’s G.O.P., dominated by movement conservatives, no longer honors. In fact, rank-and-file Republicans continue to approve strongly of Mr. Bush’s policies — and the more un-American the policy, the more they support it.
[…]
There was a telling moment during the second Republican presidential debate, when Brit Hume of Fox News confronted the contenders with a hypothetical “24”-style situation in which torturing suspects is the only way to stop a terrorist attack.
Bear in mind that such situations basically never happen in real life, that the U.S. military has asked the producers of “24” to cut down on the torture scenes. Last week Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, circulated an open letter to our forces warning that using torture or “other expedient methods to obtain information” is both wrong and ineffective, and that it is important to keep the “moral high ground.”
But aside from John McCain, who to his credit echoed Gen. Petraeus (and was met with stony silence), the candidates spoke enthusiastically in favor of torture and against the rule of law. Rudy Giuliani endorsed waterboarding. Mitt Romney declared that he wants accused terrorists at Guantánamo, “where they don’t get the access to lawyers they get when they’re on our soil … My view is, we ought to double Guantánamo.” His remarks were greeted with wild applause.
Keep this in mind whenever you see Republican candidates for any job pretending to distance themselves from Bush. His beliefs are their beliefs, right on down the line.
Note well that John McCain is the one candidate who knows, both on an intellectual and a personal level — he was tortured obscenely during his five years as a POW of the Vietcong North Vietnamese Army (thanks, Bill) — that torture is not only immoral, it’s useless. And the “we support our troops” people have rejected him in favor of the goosestepping fascist Giuliani and pretty boy torturer Mitt.
Mercury Rising 鳯女 