Veto blunders

Unbelievable.\nPresident George W. Bush has used the veto zero times in his presidency thus far. For five years, every single bill Congress has sent him has been signed into law.\nDespite the Republican Party's hollow rhetoric about how it stands for smaller government, there is no expansion of government, no bill, no new program that Bush has had the fortitude to reject.\nUntil now, perhaps. Bush is threatening to use the veto for the first time.\nWow! Surely this must be some awful bill to merit Bush's inaugural veto. The Senate must have approved something terrible to elicit Bush to break his five-year abstention from using his veto power. Right? \nWrong. \nThe bill Bush is threatening to veto is the bipartisan bill the Senate passed 90-9 that would ban "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of any individual held by the United States, whether on our soil or abroad. The White House is threatening to veto a ban on torture.\nSome people think torture is tolerable because the ends justify the means. They say that anything our military does is tantamount to harmless hazing in comparison with what terrorists would do to us. Some go even further; Rush Limbaugh's Web site proudly sells "Club G'itmo" clothing to mock those who call into question prisoner treatment that occurs at Guantanamo Bay, a U.S. base in Cuba. \nI declare such depravity appalling. But don't listen to me. Army Capt. Ian Fishback, a decorated West Point graduate who served in both Afghanistan and Iraq, said it better than I can. He was instrumental in the Senate's passage of the bill by writing a forceful letter to Sen. John McCain urging him to pass such legislation.\nTo those who think the moral relativism of our policies justifies them in comparison to terrorists' policies, Fishback asks, "When did al-Qaida become any type of standard by which we measure the morality of the United States? We are America, and our actions should be held to a higher standard, the ideals expressed in documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution."\nMcCain, who survived five and a half years of vicious captivity in Hanoi during the Vietnam War, expands: "Many of my comrades were subjected to very cruel, very inhumane and degrading treatment, a few of them even unto death. But every one of us -- every single one of us -- knew and took great strength from the belief that we were different from our enemies."\nThe practice of torture is incompatible with the ethos of any great nation, means be damned. I cannot believe Bush is actually considering using his first veto to sustain internationally condemned policies that resulted in the Abu Ghraib events and other unreported malfeasance. \nThis administration has long demonstrated its moral bankruptcy. I wonder if someone can veto that.