Vote For Torture: Vote Romney

Charlie Savage, one of the must-follow reporters in the business has a short piece in the NY Times this morning clarifying Candidate Romney’s position on torture:  use it.

In one of his first acts, President Obama issued an executive order restricting interrogators to a list of nonabusive tactics approved in theArmy Field Manual. Even as he embraced a hawkish approach to other counterterrorism issues — like drone strikes, military commissions, indefinite detention and the Patriot Act — Mr. Obama has stuck to that strict no-torture policy.

By contrast, Mr. Romney’s advisers have privately urged him to “rescind and replace President Obama’s executive order” and permit secret “enhanced interrogation techniques against high-value detainees that are safe, legal and effective in generating intelligence to save American lives,” according to an internal Romney campaign memorandum.

Enhanced interrogation!  If that isn’t the finest piece of doublespeak ever invented I have one better.  It could be called designer questioning. 

Obama has shamed many of us with his use of indefinite detention, and particularly, as we’ve learned recently, with the notorious “double tap” drone strikes (like terrorists who set off one bomb, wait until rescuers arrive and set off another) but on the question of torture a bright line lies between the candidates.