Sen. Graham Denounces Republicans Who Support "Torture"
President Obama's advisers are reportedly "nearing a recommendation that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, be prosecuted in a military tribunal." The Justice Department previously planned on bringing charges against KSM in federal court, a course of action supported by a wide range of conservative and legal experts, but congressional Republicans and their right-wing allies have waged a massive campaign to prevent the trial.
This morning, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) appeared on Fox News to discuss the latest development. An outspoken critic of civilian terror trials, Graham also supports closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, and the Washington Post suggested that the White House was revising its plans to secure Graham's help in closing the facility. During the interview, Graham denied that any deal was in place. However, he also took the unusual step of explicitly condemning Republicans who support "torture":
GRAHAM: To the left who believes that we should use the law enforcement model, that undermines intelligence. That's dangerous. To people on the right who espouse torture and doing away with the Geneva Conventions, that hurts the war effort. There's a better way.
Watch:
Graham's overall stance is far from ideal from a progressive standpoint. He wants to create a new legal framework to deal with foreign terrorists, which is reasonable enough considering most Guantanamo detainees obviously are neither common criminals nor prisoners of war in the traditional sense. But his claim that having civilian terror trials "undermines intelligence" is unsubstantiated. To the contrary, the U.S. has had remarkable success bringing terrorists to justice in federal courts.
Still, it's rare for any Republican to publicly criticize the Cheney school of counterterrorism, which is now the undisputed policy of the conservative movement. And mentions of the word "torture" are even more uncommon, so Graham deserves credit for that much.
