(Updated) Why Are Right-of-Center Bloggers So Silent On Torture?

As you know if you are a reader of this or any number of other blogs, The New York Times broke a biggie yesterday in reporting that the Pentagon knowingly employed torture techniques that the Communist Chinese used on U.S. airmen during the Korean War to extract false confessions from them.

But if your diet is heavy with right-of-center blogs you probably wouldn't have read a peep about this latest revelation regarding one of the darkest chapters in the history of a country that will be celebrating its 232nd birthday tomorrow. That is the embrace of torture at the highest levels of the Bush administration and its subsequent efforts to cover up something it knew to be wrong and then to justify it through legal mumbo jumbo.

When I asked Ed Morrissey why no one at Hot Air had seen fit to mention this story amidst the high-fiving over Rush Limbaugh's $400 million payday and his own stop-the-presses story saying that the good burghers of Denver were snubbing the National Anthem in the run up to the Democratic National Convention, he replied that I was impugning his manhood, although shortly thereafter he did put up a post acknowledging the story while parsing it to a farethewell.

I found Ed's "manhood" response to be perplexing coming from someone who did some pretty damned smart writing when he was still on the bridge of the late lamented Captain's Quarters, but then the entire subject of torture seems to flummox he and many other right-leaning pundits whose views on other topics of the day are unambiguous.

Ed did not address the question of torture head on in his post on the Times story, and apparently the closest that he came to doing so was in a CQ post last December on whether waterboarding was an appropriate tool for the American intelligence kitbag. He seemed to think it was, but he was more concerned that Congress (you know, those damned Demoquacks) would screw things up.

Ed apparently has not fallen for the typical knee-jerk response that torture has thwarted acts of terrorism and saved thousands of American lives. At least I don't think he has, which is fortunate because that view is unsupportable.

It is instructive that the right-wing trolls who jump in my spit whenever I blog about the Iraq war, patriotism, public service and fluoridating public water systems, let alone that guy with the foreign-sounding middle name, are struck deaf and dumb when the subject is torture.

Mind you, I don't think that Ed or Michelle or Rush will be using the Bill of Rights to wipe mustard off their self-satisfied kissers at Independence Day picnics after they shoot a few illegal alien silhouettes down at the gun club.

But you have to wonder if they believe that the images of Jesus being tortured on the stained glass windows at their houses of worship are merely really old versions of Tickle Me Elmo since there are not even wee expressions of concern from them over their government adopting the most insidious of interrogation techniques to ostensibly protect a country whose Constitution prohibits them.

For a crowd that spends so much time questioning the patriotic bona fides of folks on the other side of the political spectrum, I suggest that it is time for them to look in the mirror and question their own patriotism if they continue to support, even tacitly through their silence, the Bush torture regime.

Illustration by Matt Mahurin for The Washington Independent