The point that I made invoked in my questions was the administration decided on its own what Congress meant.  They should have come to Congress, and they had the perfect political environment to do it.  If they had come to Congress in 2001 or 2002 and had said, “we’re not sure what you meant by your language in the torture statute, so we’re going to ask you to pass a clear statute, we’re going to ask you to pass a statute that that meets our interpretation: a subjective test based on the physical or mental condition of the person interrogated,” that would have passed the 107th Congress.  It would have passed the 108th Congress, I submit it would have passed the 109th Congress.  And their failure to do so shows, in my opinion, an arrogance toward the legislative branch of government.

The whole point of this process is to provide transparency.  It didn’t exist before.  The very fact that these individuals are here answering questions about their policy would not have happened if Dennis Hastert was still Speaker of the House, and Jim Sensenbrenner or Lamar Smith were Chair of Judiciary.  So the very fact that we’re here and able to ask these questions and put people on the record and allow the American people to see the exchange, that’s the victory.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 3:09 pm and is filed under Politics .