WHY WASN'T 'TORTURE' A SERIOUS CAMPAIGN ISSUE?
Ever vigilant on the torture issue, Andrew notes the following:
National Review, in the Bush era, became a de facto propaganda arm for the government, and no more so than on the question of torture ...
and
The US is a banana republic if this [torture] stuff is allowed to go unpunished.
How many times did the question get put to the candidates of what the 'next President' would do, if the scope and size of what really went on under King George were ever made known?
I can remember NO primary debate in which this came out.
In fact, when Yglesias made his now semi-famous (?) post about what questions 'the media' were not asking during the primaries, this blog put that question upfront on the list.
I had to ferret in backwater reports to find out that Obama had actually said something about it. One quote I found, without Lexis-Nexis at my side. But never, ever did candidate Obama or anyone else have to answer in a competitive electoral format, i.e. in the normal contests of Democracy, so far as I know. The evidence of transgression was mounting (original article pub. 2007).
This silence implicates people well beyond the National Review, even if they proved to be an intellectually eddy on the matter.
Update: and you can think of why not, why the question never made the cut, if it was considered. The issue was a loser for the Democrats, maybe. At least until the facts come to light, to combat the unsupported assertions of Bush, using his Presidential Voice as a substitute for true leadership.
