The champions for each side of the waterboarding debate have finally been chosen rather later in the game. On the side of squishy niceness is Nancy Pelosi. It now seems certain that Pelosi has never had a serious thought about national security one way or the other.
On the other side is Dick Cheney. That side has not had any vocal supporters up to now. The Bush administration ceded the field to its detractors.
Pundits are saying that Cheney is doing serious damage to the recovery prospects of Republicans, that is, the prospects of them becoming squishy and nice and unserious about national security. Those pundits are less sure what to make of Pelosi’s revisionist and opportunistic stances on the subject.
Mark Steyn demonstrates how one man’s interrogation technique is another woman’s torture, depending on when it occurs and who does it. Sen. Diane Feinstein pointed out that we were under a threat of terrorism in 2002 (or perceived that to be the case), and fear of terrorism is, like, so yesterday. That rousing defense of Pelosi illustrates the depth of principle that would animate the proposed “truth commissions.”
Indeed. In effect, the senator is saying waterboarding was acceptable in 2002, but not by 2009. The waterboarding didn’t change, but the country did. It was no longer America’s war but Bush’s war. And it was no longer a bipartisan interrogation technique that enjoyed the explicit approval of both parties’ leaderships, but a grubby Bush-Cheney-Rummy war crime.
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Well, sure. It’s the Miss USA standard of political integrity: Carrie Prejean and Barack Obama have the same publicly stated views on gay marriage. But the politically correct enforcers know that Barack doesn’t mean it, so that’s okay, whereas Carrie does, so that’s a hate crime. In the torture debate, Pelosi is Obama and Dick Cheney is Carrie Prejean. Dick means it, because to him this is an issue of national security. Nancy doesn’t, because to her it’s about the shifting breezes of political viability.
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