Why impeachment is off the table

If you've done any looking at today's news, you'll know that the big story today is the fact that Nancy Pelosi, Jay Rockefeller and other leading Democrats were briefed on waterboarding and other torture techniques way back in 2002 and either actively supported or passively acquiesced in them. As Lambert notes, it's no wonder that impeachment is off the table. They should all be impeached.

Here's part of Glenn Greenwald's rant on the subject:

But it is simply undeniable that the Democratic leadership has continuously enabled and, more often, supported the defining Bush policies.

I wish none of this were true. I wish we had a genuine, vibrant opposition party. It would be indescribably beneficial if the rare, isolated and usually marginalized voices within the Democratic Party (and the even rarer and more marginalized voices in the GOP) were predominant. But they just aren't. That's just a fact that can't be ignored. The Democratic Party in Congress is largely controlled and led by those who have enabled and affirmatively supported the worst aspects of the Bush foreign policy and the most severe abuses of our country's political values.

And efforts to apologize for what these Congressional Democrats have done by claiming that they "were virtually helpless to respond," or suggesting that knowingly inconsequential expressions of private protest are somehow noble, are counter-productive. Why excuse or apologize for the profound failure of those who seek leadership positions on the Intelligence Committee -- who, after all, are being briefed precisely because they are expected to act when they learn of illegal behavior -- when they abdicate their responsibilities? That only encourages such malfeasance to continue.

Powerful Committee members have all sorts of options for stopping such lawbreaking. They chose not to avail those options, either out of fear, indifference and -- apparently in many cases -- because they supported the lawbreaking. The solution is to work to replace those who have done that with those who won't. Torture methods aren't any less reprehensible when endorsed by Democrats.

Sometimes, I come close to losing all hope for this country.