Northman's Fury

While everybody is all distracted over the latest electioneering, this far more important story seems to have fallen through the cracks.

So ABC News had an exclusive interview and got a pretty important scoop last night. You may have heard about it: George Bush, a man who took an oath to support and defend the Constitution, admitted (with zero shame) that he approved of the meetings at which his top advisors discussed and approved the excruciating details of torture.

. . .

And thus far at least, no one seems to give a damn. As of 9AM, the NYT published no news of Bush's admission. The WaPo placed a story on A3 (stating that they had already reported this, even though they hadn't reported this). ABC, the outlet that got the damn scoop, places the story fourth on its list of stories, behind Obama and Indiana and Hillary telling Bill to "butt out," with the main picture on the front page cycling through such critical stories as a dog who invited himself to his owner's funeral. Oh--and do you think maybe there's a connection between the stories of teens beating each other and the President, approving of torture?

Via the above, Digby weighs in:

There was a time when the Village clucked and screeched about "defiling the white house" with an extra marital affair or hosting fund raising coffees. I would say this leaves a far greater stain on that institution than any sexual act could ever do. They did this in your name, Americans.

The vice president, national security advisor and members of the president's cabinet sat around the white house "choreographing" the torture and the president approved it. I have to say that even in my most vivid imaginings about this torture scheme it didn't occur to me that the highest levels of the cabinet were personally involved (except Cheney and Rumsfeld, of course) much less that we would reach a point where the president of the United States would shrug his shoulders and say he approved. I assumed they were all vaguely knowledgeable, some more than others, but that they would have done everything in their power to keep their own fingerprints off of it. But no. It sounds as though they were eagerly involved, they all signed off unanimously and thought nothing of it.

Yes, yes. Once upon a time, stuff like the President of the United States approving torture would have been important. Right now, however, it far more critical to the nation that it be determined whether or not Barack Obama is a snob for proclaiming that people may not be happy about the way multimillionaires like the Clintons, Bushes and McCains of the world have been running things.

Now, if it turns out that such overwhelming focus on the uber-critical parsings of Obama's words means that the authorization of torture at the very highest levels of the Bush administration happens to get memory-holed . . . Well, that's just the price you have to pay in order to ensure you don't elect a president who doesn't always put a shiny, happy face on people's troubles. Just think how much worse things would be then.

Cross-posted to In The House and Senate