Inconsistent

by digby

The Republicans are finally seeking to lay blame for the torture regime where it belongs — with the Democrats:

If Democrats insist on probing the Bush administration’s program of detainee torture, they’d better be careful, a senior Senate Republican said Tuesday, because they might find blood on their own hands as well.

“To sit quietly and to let this happen and then to come back later and say people ought to be prosecuted criminally, not just here in the United States but perhaps internationally, to me is inconsistent, to say the least,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).

Weren’t the meetings super-duper classified Top Secret? Is he suggesting that the should have publicly revealed classified briefings? Well .. uh…

“If people are going to start looking for responsibility and accountability, I think you’d also have to look at the members of Congress who were in those classified settings who approved those same interrogation techniques,” Cornyn told reporters.

[…]

Cornyn said he wasn’t necessarily suggesting that Democrats should have spoken out publicly, because the briefings were classified, but that they should have been more forceful in private meetings with the president.

“There is a certain responsibility to speak up if you object,” he said.

Oh. I guess they should have said, “I strenuously object.”)

I actually think these Democrats should be asked about this and it’s not a problem for me if they are held accountable. Jay Rockefeller handwriting a CYA memo and putting it in his safe never struck me as particularly exculpatory. If they knew, and did nothing, they are responsible too, at the very least politically. Bring it.