The Consistency of Santorum

Sometimes, my former senator surprises even me. He's done so a couple of times, recently. For one thing, he criticized former colleague Sen. John McCain in a way I really find distasteful:

"Not only did the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed not provide us with key leads on bin Laden's courier, Abu Ahmed, it actually produced false and misleading information," McCain said.


In an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday, Santorum said McCain was wrong.


"Everything I've read shows that we would not have gotten this information as to who this man was if it had not been gotten information from people who were subject to enhanced interrogation," Santorum said. "And so this idea that we didn't ask that question while Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was being waterboarded, he (McCain) doesn't understand how enhanced interrogation works.

"I mean, you break somebody, and after they're broken, they become cooperative. And that's when we got this information. And one thing led to another, and led to another, and that's how we ended up with bin Laden," said Santorum.

I've criticized the senator from Arizona myself quite a few times. I've indicated he doesn't understand the economy, that he's too prone to seek military over diplomatic solutions, and I've even criticized him over what I saw as giving the Bush Administration license to overreach regarding treatment of detainees. But I don't think I would ever say that McCain didn't have a unique and intimate understanding of torture--having experienced it.  But also McCain's own discription of the intelligence time-line, I think, has held up:

“With so much misinformation being fed into such an essential public debate as this one, I asked the Director of Central Intelligence, Leon Panetta, for the facts. And I received the following information:

“The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. We did not first learn from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed the real name of bin Laden’s courier, or his alias, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti — the man who ultimately enabled us to find bin Laden. The first mention of the name Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, as well as a description of him as an important member of Al-Qaeda, came from a detainee held in another country. The United States did not conduct this detainee’s interrogation, nor did we render him to that country for the purpose of interrogation. We did not learn Abu Ahmed’s real name or alias as a result of waterboarding or any ‘enhanced interrogation technique’ used on a detainee in U.S. custody. None of the three detainees who were waterboarded provided Abu Ahmed’s real name, his whereabouts, or an accurate description of his role in Al-Qaeda...."

Rick Santorum's error is this "one thing led to another, and led to another" simplification of how intelligence-gathering works. Actual professionals, like the FBI agent who goes by the handle Matthew Alexander, have pointed out that the so-called "enhanced techniques" probably slowed the process down due to misinformation.

It is Santorum who is on thin ice, here.  Not just factually, but morally. His endorsement of a process of breaking down another human being's free will suggests a grave fault.  Who is he to decide who should be made into a compliant thing, a piece of meat, no better able to guard himself or make moral judgements than a dumb animal is to guard itself against any reflex?  The ready endorsement of the process puts me off because it suggests such an embrace of authoritarianism.

And yet this is consistent with so much of Santorum's body of political opinions. He is something like an Unfrozen Caveman Republican Senator from just before the 2006 election. Of course he defends the Bush Administration (he never left). He also allows the following glimmer into his understanding of budgets in this quote from 2003:

"I came to the House as a real deficit hawk, but I am no longer a deficit hawk. I'll tell you why. I had to spend the surpluses. Deficits make it easier to say no."

Is he gonna say different, now?  In the brave, new, Ryan and Tea Party environment--where's our boy?

Well, he seems to support the Ryan budget, which will invite deficits for the forseeable future, what with the tax cuts and all.

I do not view Santorum as serious person. I think much of what he says lately is about being taken seriously as a 2012 candidate:  but he is consistently unserious in policy (example), whilst deadly serious about social issues. I think he should find a nice-paying job in the private sector. I do not like him near my politics.