Hypocrisy watch

This is a day for hypocrites, isn’t it? First it’s Mike Huckabee and his attempts to play on anti-Mormon bigotry in Iowa, and then The Washington Post tells us that leading members of Congress, including now-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, knew about the waterboarding of al-Qaeda prisoners in 2002 — and approved. In fact, some thought we weren’t being tough enough:

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

And yet, as soon as they realized they could turn this into an issue they could beat the Bush Administration over the head with, they were in high dudgeon over "torture."

In other words, they were for it before they were against it.

To be fair, some members of Congress, for example Jane Harman and John McCain, were against the technique from the time they learned of it. But for Pelosi and others who were fine with waterboarding in 2002 and 2003, but against it when it became public in 2005, they are leading candidates for the Captain Louis Renault Commemorative "I’m shocked, shocked!" award.

(hat tip: PJM)

LINKS: More at Captain’s Quarters, Power Line, Sister Toldjah, California Conservative.

Technorati tags: waterboarding, torture, al-Qaeda, Nancy Pelosi, CIA, interrogation, Jane Harman, John McCain

We shouldn’t need to bomb Iran

As long as we help these people. Check out the sign on the left in the middle picture — New Hampshire would be proud.

(hat tip: PJM)

LINKS: Power Line noticed the same sign.

Technorati tags: Iran, protest, Tehran University, anti-fascism

Hypocrisy and bigotry watch

Charles Krauthammer nails Mike Huckabee’s subtle-as-a-sledgehammer appeal to religious prejudice in his race against Mitt Romney:

Just imagine that Huckabee were running one-on-one in Iowa against Joe Lieberman. (It’s a thought experiment. Stay with me.) If he had run the same ad in those circumstances, it would have raised an outcry. The subtext — who’s the Christian in this race? — would have been too obvious to ignore, the appeal to bigotry too clear.

Well, Huckabee is running against Romney (the other GOP candidates are non-factors in Iowa) and he knows that many Christian conservatives, particularly those who have an affinity with Huckabee’s highly paraded evangelical Christianity, consider Romney’s faith a decidedly non-Christian cult.

Huckabee has been asked about this view that Mormonism is a cult. He dodges and dances. “If I’m invited to be the president of a theological school, that’ll be a perfectly appropriate question,” he says, “but to be the president of the United States, I don’t know that that’s going to be the most important issue that I’ll be facing when I’m sworn in.”

Hmmm. So it is an issue, Huckabee avers. But not a very important one.

And he’s not going to pronounce upon it. Nice straddle, leaving the question unanswered and still open — the kind of maneuver one comes to expect from slick former governors of Arkansas lusting for the presidency.

Three points, nothing but net.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

(hat tip: reader Alfred)

Technorati tags: Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Mormonism, religious tests, article 6, 2008 election, bigotry, Iowa