Your Congressman Voted to Torture Our Captives from Iraq

After the McCain Anti-Torture Bill passed the Senate 90 to 9, on December 14th 2005 there was a non-binding resolution in the House which passed 308-122. Murtha proposed it, but did Sam Johnson, McCain's former roommate at the Hanoi Hilton, support it? No. You'd think that the simple argument that torture then gives the enemy the justification to torture would sway some. You'd think that Karl Rove having said that Abu Ghraib alone set us back 20 years with the Muslim world would sway some. You'd think that if you'd ever been tortured yourself that you would NEVER, EVER then want to go do something like that to anyone else. Once again, you'd be wrong. Here's a very detailed analysis of the vote. 23 members of the conservative Republican Study Committee voted against torture. Only one Democrat voted for it. The only Texas Republicans who voted against were McCaul and Paul. I know Houston doesn't have zoning, and is sort of a libertarian paradise to some folks. Maybe there's something in the water there. It seems like every time we just about finally get over the image of a bunch of kids in a classroom on TV being filmed as clapping when Kennedy was shot, we get a truck-dragging or we get to constitute over 15% of the vote for torture when Texas is barely 7% of the total in Congress. (sigh)

Of course, sometimes WE don't HAVE to torture - we pay SOMEONE ELSE TO DO IT!! Long before 9/11, there was (and sadly still is) the School for the Americas. Sam Johnson once again voted against the wind and lost on July 29, 1999, though on Sept. 17th, 1998 he and the crew were more successful in having your tax dollars used to train folks at Ft. Benning GA to train Latin American nations to torture their own folks. But I thought the 1980s had brought a wave of democracies to Latin America according to Ronald Reagan!