Vetoes of Evil

April 10, 1996: Bill Clinton vetoes the partial-birth abortion ban.

March 8, 2008: George Bush vetoes a ban on waterboarding torture.

This should be the final nail in the coffin of the idea, peddled largely by his Catholic supporters, that Bush is more pro-life, or more in line with Catholic teaching, than his predecessor or his political opponents. For this veto amounts to an embrace of a hideous act, an intrinsically evil act, on the basest of consequentualist reasoning. And remember: Clinton’s veto, disgusting as it was, probably did nothing to affect abortion one way or the other. Bush, on the other hand, is the author and architect of the US’s dalliance with torture techniques once associated with regimes like the Khmer Rouge. For Catholics in particular, it is telling that this veto comes days before Holy Week, before we commemorate the torture and death of Jesus the Christ.

Update: Obama comments:

“We need a Commander in Chief who has never wavered on whether or not it is acceptable for America to torture, because it is never acceptable. While I have consistently opposed torture, in the course of this primary campaign Hillary Clinton has flip-flopped from her past position of tolerating torture. When I am president, the American people and the world will be able to trust that I will outlaw torture, because unlike Senator Clinton I have never made an exception for torture and I never will.”