Defeat-o-crats

We do not torture.” So says George W. Bush. Without telling us what constitutes torture or telling us what methods our interrogators use, President Bush wants us to simply take him at his word. And, like the spineless pushovers they are, the Democratic Congress gladly acquiesced, with many voting for the Military Commissions Act in October 2006 that essentially ended any judicial review for terror detainees.\n Now, Bush’s nominee for Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, refuses to call waterboarding torture. What is waterboarding? Someone raises your legs, straps you down and pours water into your mouth to simulate drowning. On average, a CIA officer can take 14 seconds before caving in. It is a simulated execution, which is banned under international law and the Geneva Conventions, of which the United States is a signatory. The Khmer Rouge used it. The Nazis used it. We use it. \n Mukasey, like all the torture-enabling cronies that Bush loves, dances the same semantic line as his peers. Mukasey, at his confirmation hearing, said, “If (waterboarding) is torture, then it’s not constitutional.” Yeah, and if a frog had wings, it wouldn’t bump its ass when it hopped. \n Supporters of Mukasey might say that it doesn’t matter that he waffles on waterboarding. After all, who cares? He’s only the nation’s top lawyer. What does it matter if he knows what’s legal and what’s not – let alone what’s right and what’s wrong?\n Luckily for Bush, it turns out that Senate Democrats care about the moral high ground about as much as Republicans. Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., both members of the Judiciary Committee, have said that they will vote to send Mukasey’s nomination to the full Senate, where more of their feckless colleagues will surely bend over for the Bush Administration. \n The Democrats, after seizing control of Congress with a promise to change Washington, have instead given Bush everything he wanted. Iraq funding with no strings attached? Here you go. Kids need health care? Eh, not worth the fight. Immunity for illegal wiretaps? Why not? \n After railing against Bush for illegal domestic surveillance and the Iraq War, Democrats proceeded to enable Bush’s schemes, while successfully enacting no legislation of their own. \n When you refuse to sacrifice anything to stand up for something, were you ever really standing for it in the first place?\n When will the Democrats realize that politics is the ultimate zero-sum game? There are a limited number of offices, and if you lose, they win. Every time the Democrats give Bush the benefit of the doubt, they give him more than he deserves.\n Americans today are more fed up with the government than ever before, and their anger now translates to both parties. \nTorture is torture. Waterboarding is torture. No matter what former CIA director Porter Goss says, waterboarding is not a “professional interrogation technique.”\n By approving Mukasey and his reasoning, every one of us is a torturer. \n If Democrats won’t stand up for what’s right, then America should find someone who will. Otherwise, we’re not choosing the lesser of two evils. We’re choosing the same evil.