Righteousness uber Redemption
Like George Bush, Romney leaves Americans with a sense of vertigo on the issue of torture. i.e. Even Hitler, though responsible for the Holocaust and countless atrocities, didn’t PUBLICLY cozy up to torture like these two. Months ago at a press sponsored Republican presidential candidates forum, Ron Paul was the only candidate to unapologetically condemn torture as morally wrong and counterproductive. All the others, including Romney, approved of it. (Bush once explained, “We HAD to know what they were THINKING!”)
This isn’t ‘torture’, it’s…uh..whatever the meaning of ‘is’ is.
Perhaps forgetting how the once common practice of beating black slaves wasn’t considered ‘torture’, Herman Cain brashly promised to bring back water boarding if he were elected. Today, it looks as though Romney is following Cain’s lead. This leaves an important question unanswered. What was the point of beating the Nazis only to become just like them?
I like your style, Romney–don’t stop saying stuff.
An article buried on the bottom of page 13 of The New York Times on Friday revealed that Romney’s national security team has recommended to him that he rescind President Obama’s executive order barring torture.
The Times article, by the great Charlie Savage, also notes that Romney last December said he didn’t think waterboarding was torture and he would use techniques [isn’t that a creepy word] Obama refuses to use, that are not allowed by the Army manual.
This puts Romney squarely back in the sadistic Bush-Cheney camp. [And, to many, the camp of war criminals]
Waterboarding: Old Torture, New Pretext
And little wonder: Because many of the people on Romney’s national security team actually served in the Bush-Cheney administration who backed waterboarding and other kinds of brutalities/attrocities.
This is a lovely glimpse into what a Romney presidency would look like.
In fact, it’s a horrifying flashback, and a reminder that the neocons and Cheneyites are just biding their time, waiting for their opportunity to abuse power once more when the national mood returns to business as usual.
This is what happens when there is impunity, as Professor Al McCoy of the University of Wisconsin argues. By not prosecuting Bush or Cheney or Rumsfeld or Alberto Gonzales and other senior officials who designed the torture policy, and by not prosecuting the CIA agents who actually did the waterboarding, President Obama has left the door open for the torturers…hardly a ringing endorsement for the President.
And they’re lining up to get back in.
