to: rossdouthat@gmail.com
date Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 10:31 AM
subject re: Thinking About Torture

You haven't dealt with the fact that support of torture (not torture-lite) is now an article of faith among Republican Presidential candidates and among the rank-and-file of the Republican party. Watch the Republican primary debates again. Someone with your stance would not only have been driven out of contention, but would have been laughed off the stage as someone who puts affection for terrorists over the safety of American citizens. This is your party. The silence of conservative pundits, along with the deliberate deceptions of people like Dick Cheney and Sean Hannity, has helped to solidify a entire demographic of people who think that the ticking time-bomb scenario is real enough to dictate our insitutions and policies. Now you come back and say: well, gee wiz --- the Bush Administration should have been smarter than little 23 year-old me. I'm afraid that doesn't wash. You voted for Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld over Al Gore and John Kerry. You voted for torture and encouraged your fellow conservatives to do the same. And they did, with enthusiasm. Now you get to live with them. And I do, too. The approval of conservative pundits for torture over the past eight years has helped to permanently change the character of your party and of the country, and not for the better.