May 20, 2006
Hayden, the Senate, and torture
Torture is fundamentally evil.
"Waterboarding" — simulated drowning — is torture.
Gen. Hayden refuses to renounce it, even in the face of a clear mandate from Congress to do so.
Ergo, Gen. Hayden intends to keep committing fundamentally evil acts if confirmed as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Ergo, voting to confirm Gen. Hayden means being complicit in fundamental evil.
Every Senator who voted for the McCain anti-torture amendment and now votes to confirm Gen. Hayden — including, of course, Mr. Straight Talk himself — ought to be asked whether he (or she) meant it the first time, or whether he (or she) merely voted against torture before voting for it.
Feh.
I'm glad to see that the editorial board of the Washington Post is as angry about this as I am. Hat tip: Matt Yglesias, who comments on BushCo's "seamless culture of lawlessness."
Good long post on this by law professor Marty Lederman, an ex-staffer of the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, here: http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/05/michael-hayden-and-article-ii.html
(hat tip: Michael Froomkin)
Idleness is the mother of all evil... Melchior
Posted by: Melchior at November 30, 2006 01:18 AMThanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)
