Eight Senators Cast Votes for Torture

The New York Times reports today that the Senate Intelligence Committee, in a meeting behind closed doors nine days ago, held a vote on the authorization of torture by the United States Government. The vote was held on a measure that would have shut down the CIA’s program of using secret interrogation centers with “alternative methods of interrogation” which have included waterboarding and other techniques involving the intentional use of pain.

I’m not being expansive when I say that the vote to shut down this CIA program was a vote on whether to shut down U.S. government torture centers. Let’s look at the law. The Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel’s definitive December 30, 2004 memo written to explicitly restate the definition of torture, reads (regarding 18 USC 2340-2340A):

1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;

(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from–

(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;

(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;

(C) the threat of imminent death;

The intentional infliction of pain is one aspect of the CIA program that qualifies its work as torture. Waterboarding, a practice designed to make an individual feel as though they are drowning to death, is another. This is torture as Bush’s own Department of Justice’s memo notes in its citation of U.S. legal code.

The following are the Senators on the Intelligence Committee who voted to prohibit the use of torture by agents of the U.S. Government:

Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California
Democratic Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana
Democratic Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin
Democratic Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland
Democratic Senator John D. Rockefeller of West Virginia
Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island
Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon

The following are the Senators on the Intelligence Committee who voted against the prohibition of torture by agents of the U.S. Government:

Republican Senator Christopher Bond of Missouri
Republican Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina
Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia
Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida
Republican Senator John Warner of Virginia
Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska
Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah
Republican Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine

As you can see by the tally, the committee failed to pass the prohibition of torture. Another clear pattern is that every Senator who voted against torture was a Democrat, and every Republican Senator on the committee voted for torture. This is why I will never believe that, as Ralph Nader and his allies famously claimed in 2000, there “isn’t a dime’s worth of difference” between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party on issues that matter, like whether our nation will remain a nation of torturers. There clearly is a wide difference here. Even the so-called “moderate” Republicans like Chuck Hagel and Olympia Snowe are only moderate within a Republican frame of reference: they just keep on casting pro-torture votes.

However, even though there is more than a dime’s worth of difference between the Democrats and the Republicans in the aggregate, it would be a mistake to equate Democrat with good and Republican with evil as some partisans would have us do. There’s a Democratic Senator in the bunch who voted to support U.S. government torture. Florida Senator Bill Nelson’s vote for torture is not an aberration, but part of a pattern, as his Progressive Action Score of 25% (based on twelve pieces of legislation) demonstrates. This score sets my expectations for Senator Nelson’s behavior in the future. The Democratic Party supported Bill Nelson in his bid for re-election despite Nelson’s lack of support for a progressive agenda, and the Party will continue to support him in the future. That’s the game of team politics, I suppose, but you and I don’t have to play along. Certainly the Republican Party is not worthy of our support. But let’s not support Bill Nelson or Democrats like him until his behavior merits it.