THE POLITICS OF TORTURE

Linda Chavez has a piece on the politics of torture. She says, and I agree with her, that the Democrats are playing with fire.

Robert Scheer of The Nation apparently cannot even see the political danger as he advocates the outright rejection of Alberto Gonzales as the next AG.

Steve Sturm also has it right about the politics of torture. Every radio show I have ever done on the subject, and every poll I have ever seen, indicates a majority of the American people are in favor of doing whatever it takes to get life-saving information out of terrorists. However parochial or misguided you might think they are, the majority would rather see the CIA or military torture one of Bin Laden's boys to the brink of death if it got the information necessary to prevent a 9/11-style attack.

I am reminded of a line from a movie, The Man in the Glass Booth, about a holocaust victim who turns out to be a Nazi officer hiding as a Jew (although there is a fantastic twist at the end of the film). Maximilian Schell plays the part. During his interrogation he speaks about conditions in Germany at the end of the war as the Russians were advancing, pillaging, burning and raping their way across the Fatherland. To explain their behavior he alludes to the barbarisms committed by the Germans as they had advanced through Russia earlier in the war...."The Russians take a very black and white view of things" I think is the line. Well, the American people also take a very black and white view of things when it comes to fighting a war. If the enemy is willing to commit barbarisms against us, like flying airplanes filled with innocent civilians into office towers filled with innocent civilians, then we should be able to get Medieval on their behinds, at least so the thinking goes. The bottom line is that the Democrats, goaded by the left-wing true believers, are indeed playing with fire if they seek to derail the Gonzales nomination over the issue of how we treat our enemies.