Cox Consulting Group

I've just gotta get this off my chest. I've just gotta write my feelings about the current torture debate and another formerly high profile issue, and the hypocrisy I see between the administration's stand on the two.

Like so many others, I've been watching the development of the “torture” debate. I have my own feelings about what represents torture and when it's appropriate, but the position of the administration on torture versus its stand on late term abortion strikes me as so contradictory – so hypocritical.

On the one hand our leaders are telling us we must be true to our moral values and not use torture as a means of gaining intelligence and information that may be critical to our national security. And we are told there can be no exceptions to this policy. We are told there are better ways – or different ways to get that information – although what those ways may be remains a mystery. We are told that the use of torture cheapens our moral values and exposes us to disapproval throughout the rest of the world.

The administration has gone so far as to release highly classified documents that detail the debate and the techniques defined by the previous administration. They have released information that effectively “outs” some CIA operatives involved in the alleged torture – who were simply obeying orders. Wasn't the Valerie Plame affair about outing an agent? No outrage this time, since it is the current administration that did the outing – on TV. But I digress – an issue for another time.

And while this debate goes on an abortion doctor from Kansas, who donated to the campaign coffers of our new Secretary of Health and Human Services – continues to perform late term abortions for $5000 a life. Our President, by his silence, his legislative history and his selection for Secretary for HHS, condones this infanticide. Where is the concern for the coarsening of our moral values caused by the obscene use of late term abortion?

So let me get this straight. We should all be outraged over the aggressive interrogation techniques used to extract valuable intelligence and information from three enemies of our country – men who had a track record of doing harm to us. Interrogation techniques that were attended to by doctors and lawyers to see that the guidelines set after 9/11 were followed and the lives of the three were not threatened. Techniques that left the the three with no scars, impairments or long term effects.

But at the same time that we should be outraged and swear never to use these non fatal practices ever again, we should stand by and know that, for $5000, a viable fetus – a living child – can be destroyed by an abortion clinic doctor and his staff. And if the baby survives the barbarous methods of late term abortion used to extract it from its host – I can't bring myself to call the person who is having this procedure a mother - that sturdy little life is left to die. No lawyers or doctors or thoroughly vetted procedures attend to this little piece of life. And we shouldn't be affected by this practice – a practice being performed – not in some backward part of the world – but throughout this nation – this nation of laws and of deep concern for its moral values and the potential coarsening of those values?

Mr President – you've got your stands on these two issues backwards.