GOP Senators Would Rather Not Talk About Torture, Thanks. Or 'Torture.'

It sure would be nice if we could put aside our partisan differences for just one half of one second to agree that torturing people -- by, for example, raping prisoners with food, or, for another example, killing them -- is bad and wrong, and we shouldn't do that. But yeah, sure, right, whatEVER. This is America, where the one and only time we can agree on anything at all is that Nazis suck. 

Fortunately, because this is America, where we have the freedom to make our own choices (sometimes; offer may not apply to people who are not straight white men who heart Jesus), Republicans have the freedom to ignore the hundreds of pages of nausea-inducing details in the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on our super-secret-but-no-longer-quite-as-secret torture program, and simply stick their fingers in their ears and sing, "Lalalalalalalala, we can't hear you, we never tortured anyone, and if we did, we had real good reasons, and they worked, and most importantly of all, OBAMA SUCKS!"

Here's Sen. Lindsey Graham, in breach of his contractual obligation to agree with everything his best little buddy John McCain says. McCain -- who famously was tortured for FIVE AND A HALF YEARS, ALAN -- supports releasing the report on all that torture we did, but Graham knows better:  

The timing of the release is problematic given the growing threats we face. Terrorism is on the rise, and our enemies will seize upon this report at a critical time. Simply put, this is not the time to release the report.

When is a good time to release the report? How about half past never? Would that work? If the report is released at some other time, some not-now time, then Graham wouldn't have to be quite so suspicious about the suspicious timing of releasing the report at this particular moment, which sure seems suspicious:

I believe its release at this time is politically motivated. I have no doubts that it will create problems for our country and the men and women serving our nation around the globe.

What is the exact political motivation of releasing the report now? And who wins by releasing it, and how many points do they get? Who knows! Not Graham, because of course he doesn't elaborate. Like Fox News, he's just reporting his conspiracy theories so you can decide how much tin foil you'll need to make your own hat. Then you too can make all kinds of crazy suggestions that the real problem is we aren't torturing people enough anymore, THANKS OBAMA!

We have now gone from one extreme to the other. We've gone from waterboarding to reading Miranda Rights and providing taxpayer funded lawyers to foreign terror suspects within days of capture. In addition, we no longer hold and lawfully interrogate High Value Targets who can provide valuable intelligence to prevent future attacks.

The policies the Obama Administration has employed treats terrorists as common criminals, not enemy combatants. I'm convinced their criminalization of the war is causing our nation to lose valued intelligence which can help protect our nation.

If only we could find some happy middle ground, like maybe reading prisoners their Miranda rights while we waterboard them? How's that for compromise? Perhaps we could get a gang of senators together to push for that.

Sens. Mitch McConnell and Saxby Chambliss also believe that torture is good for America because of all the lives it must have saved, evidence to the contrary, and gosh, what lousy timing to release the report now instead of never:  

As we have both stated before, we are opposed to this study and believe it will present serious consequences for U.S. national security. Regardless of what one’s opinions may be on these issues, the study by Senate Democrats is an ideologically motivated and distorted recounting of historical events. The fact that the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation program developed significant intelligence that helped us identify and capture important al-Qa’ida terrorists, disrupt their ongoing plotting, and take down Usama Bin Ladin is incontrovertible. Claims included in this report that assert the contrary are simply wrong.

It doesn't really matter that all the evidence suggests torturing people wasnotactually an effective method of gathering reliable intelligence, but look, the CIA says its own secret strategies of torturing people did TOO work, so there. Why would the CIA lie, huh? Nope, can't think of a single reason.

We could go the simple-minded Sen. Marco Rubio route and just ignore the torture part altogether and say thanks to the brave men and women who blah blah blah 9/11 America fuck yeah!

Anyway. Let's move on and get back to things that really matter. Has Obama hit the golf course lately? We should probably look into that.