The Political Chase

Reaction to Dems Support on Torture

In my last post on the WaPo’s article eviscerating Democratic leaders (Pelosi, Rockefeller Harman, et al.) for supporting/enabling the Bush administration’s torture-policies and program, with minor exceptions, I did not want to judge too quickly until more information is released. There’s always a story to follow The Story and thereby the potential for the unknowns to change the overall dynamics — negatively or positively. But there are a few areas that don’t require patience — full knee-jerk reaction is totally acceptable.

If taken at face value, the article is a damning indictment of Democratic leaders in Congress that may prove them to be as guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity as the Bush administration (Oval Office to the specific interrogator(s)). But, I’m confident more information will be forthcoming and not so confident that it will be vindicating for the Elite Democratic Beltway Establishment.

Regardless of what the news looks like in the future, there are two inescapable elements to this albatross: the crap that Harman and Rockefeller have been trying to pull by declaring themselves “helpless” because of secrecy requirements. No matter what revelations come forth (or not) in the future, they’ve already played their hand, and there is no returning to the game. If they firmly believed that pathetic storyline, they have no business being on an intelligence committee, much less holding office as a Senator or Representative. Voters in West Virginia and California need to throw the bums out when their respective terms expire. That of course presumes they manage to avoid criminal prosecution before reelection time.

Moreover, Jay Rockefeller needs to be removed immediately as Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. This complicit clown is going to lead an investigation into his own malfeasance? It’s ludicrous to even consider the notion of Rockefeller being privileged to intelligence committee information given his record (torture, FISA, etc.), much less allowing him to quietly sweep his own trash out the door just like he has for the Bush administration.

In general terms, a special prosecutor needs to be assigned. It has been well established the administration and their GOP water-carriers in Congress cannot be trusted, and without some immediate credible contradiction from Democratic leaders that have supported this torture fiasco all along, they can no longer be trusted either. As presented, they are nothing but a bunch of hypocrites, whose last resort may be someone exposing the WaPo’s article as actual Republican propaganda, which would not surprise me given the Post’s history and the way the article was written. It almost looks like a fill-in-the-blanks form from Karl Rove’s playbook.

On a bit of a side note, it’s rather interesting to see how Democratic presidential candidates have responded to the issues over the past week. John Edwards and Joe Biden seem to be the only candidates taking note of what’s happening inside the Beltway and responding accordingly.

I’m really surprised with the absence or inaccessibility of statements by Obama on important issues of the day. Either Obama does not have any statements on his campaign’s web site about emerging issues, or they are hidden quite well. Good luck trying to find anything that is not Oprah related.

As for Hillary, there are tons of releases but its just BS in the form of all-Hillary-all-the-time. Endorsements here, endorsements there, Hillary issues a plan to get Ken and Barbie back together, blah, blah, blah. A quick sample from Hillary’s site: 

Edwards and Biden stay on top of the issues and issue statements, with Edwards holding a slight edge. Their statements may be a bit boiler-plate, but at least they’ve taken a position and recognize something is happening in the world other than themselves.

More on all this later…