Even before Sen. Inhofe put the gutter side of Republican Party values on display for the world today, the following pair of companion articles showed that the White House strategists had decided to go the pro-torture route in defending the Pentagon's misconduct. And by Pentagon, I mean the civilian officials who direct it, as well.
This article says that the Senate managed to put on a rare display of bipartisan unity Monday in condemning torture in the gulag. In a general way, in a non-binding resolution.
Senate condemns abuse without a trace of dissent San Francisco Chronicle 05/11/04
Not surprisingly, the "bipartisanship" seemed to be more a result of Democratic restraint (timidity) than anything else:
The Senate, which plans more hearings into the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal beginning today, voted 92-0 Monday in favor of a resolution that condemned the abuse, praised the conduct of most U.S. forces in Iraq and called on Senate committees and President Bush to fully investigate the incidents.
Perhaps more important for the president and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, no senators used the debate to call for the Pentagon chief's dismissal because of the prisoner abuse scandal. However, as Rumsfeld himself noted Friday in Senate testimony, the scandal has a long way to go, and more serious disclosures that could undermine his position are possible as soon as today's hearing.
The Senate resolution was bipartisan, so the Senate avoided the angry debate that marked last week's 365-50 passage of a similar House resolution. Democratic House leaders objected to the House resolution because it didn't include their call for investigations into the abuse at the Abu Ghraib Prison near Baghdad.
Thank God no Senate Democrats were so rude as to have an "angry debate" demanding full accountability for one of the most damaging episodes in the history of American foreign policy.
The other shows Bush the Liberator of Peoples standin' by his man:
Bush stands by Rumsfeld; White House on offensive San Franicisco Chronicle 5/11/04.
I will refer eveyone to Juan Cole's fisking of Bush's little speech. Individual quotes of Cole's takedown just wouldn't do it justice. But buried down in the Chronicle article is the partisan fighting line (my emphasis):
The head of the Republican Party meanwhile accused Democrats of trying to politicize the issue by calling on Rumsfeld to quit even before he had testified before Congress last week and for exploiting the controversy as a way to raise campaign dollars.
"These hasty calls for resignation reflect a cynical political ploy or an inaccurate and sadly unfortunate view of the honor of our armed forces,'' said Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican Party.
So, the "support our troops" variant of the pro-torture position now has a green light from the top. If you demand accountability for torture, you are dishonoring American soldiers.
Republicans get to pick their own campaign approaches, of course. But the rest of us should be clear just what that means. The Congressional Republicans support a general statement that says, "We don't officially approve of torture." Then the Party's real campaign position, which will now echo through the halls of Freeperdom and Oxycontin radio, is: You can't honor our troops without supporting torture. Anyone who opposes torture is not supporting American troops.
The neo-Confederate faction of the Party will understand that method of "honoring" the armed forces. Everyone else will have to draw their own conclusions about just how the Republican Party is "honoring" our troops with this position.
Bush did clean up one line in his stump speech, at least for the moment:
As the United States prepares to hand control of the nation to Iraqis next month, reports have surfaced of deep divisions within the top U.S. military command over the Pentagon's war plans. And as Bush tries to build upon the frail coalition of international allies to help secure the peace and rally domestic support behind his Iraq plans, he has stopped making references to Saddam Hussein's "torture chambers'' and "rape rooms'' in favor of explanations of how democracies handle controversies better than dictatorships.
Oklahoma Republican Senator James Inhofe used the new Republican Party line at the Armed Services Committee hearing today:
I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment ... in cellblock 1-A or 1-B, these prisoners, they're murderers, hey're terrorists, they're insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands and here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals.
Yes, this fine spokesman of the Republican Party is more outraged by the outrage over torture and war crimes than he is over the acts themselves. This is a good example of the tolerance of criminal behavior by Republicans which let the gulag and other problems develop as far as they have.
A spokesman for the Kerry campaign responded to comments of Inhofe's attacking Kerry for criticizing torture, saying:
Jim Inhofe is trying to turn official Senate business into a political stunt to divert attention from the serious issues being discussed. I only wonder what outrageous attacks they'll conjure up to try and silence Republicans like Sen. (Chuck) Hagel and Sen. (John) McCain who, like John Kerry, are asking the questions that defend America's troops and American values.
Let's make no mistake about it. When candidates in a democracy feel that it's necessary to defend themselves by affirming and reaffirming that they honor and support American troops and American values whenever they speak out against the practice of torture, then it's long past time for our pompous politicians to stop saying that America is the greatest country in the world. Because our practice of politics has become corrupted by something even worse than our still-shameful "pay to play" system of campaign financing.
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