I'm interested in knowing what the arguments are against this position. I haven't identified the specific member of Congress who said this because the mere mention of his name tends to prevent a consideration of the substance of the remarks, but those who want to know...

Haha! I'm flattered for the attention. I didn't mention Paul's name either, for the same reason, until the last line of my comment.

Since no one has yet taken you up on your request to know "what the arguments are against this position", allow me to play devil's advocate against Paul, and against myself (since I agree with Paul: the Democrats are acting like a bunch of spineless hypocrites with more interest in party loyalty than national policy).

I suspect that a Democrat partisan would argue, as they have before, that Obama's management of the war will be so superior to Bush's that objectionable war spending (i.e. that which occurred before 2008) has now been replaced with acceptable war spending. One might respond that this is yet another repetition of the vacuous "It's OK when Obama does it" argument, but this is not necessarily true, since Obama could, at some point, institute meaningful policy changes that affect the prosecution of the wars. In other words, he really might do a better job fighting the wars than Bush did, and if so, it would make sense to fund that expense. Call this argument "It's OK if Obama does it better."

This argument works in principle, but fails morally and practically. It fails morally because it ignores one key premise: The wars were launched under immoral circumstances and constitute substantial war crimes, so any continuation of the wars that does not accept that fact is also immoral.

It fails practically because, to the best of my knowledge, Obama's prosecution of the wars has not differed substantially from Bush's, circa 2007-2008. Where's the change? If anything, we are expanding our failed policies in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, I've seen no meaningful deviation in tone or behavior in Iraq, beyond embracing "withdrawal timelines" that are based on easily moved benchmarks and have numerous escape clauses ("if conditions on the ground permit"). In other words, Obama has offered no changes on the war effort except for cosmetic window dressings that have no bearing on reality. This is quickly becoming Obama's hallmark.

It's possible that my knowledge of Obama's war policy changes is deficient, in which case my practical rebuttal to my hypothetical argument could fail. The moral one, I think, would still be ironclad.

Some of Greenwald's comments in today's post seemed familiar. I wonder if he was subtly cribbing from this statement before the House.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this conference report on the War Supplemental Appropriations. I wonder what happened to all of my colleagues who said they were opposed to the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I wonder what happened to my colleagues who voted with me as I opposed every war supplemental request under the previous administration. It seems, with very few exceptions, they have changed their position on the war now that the White House has changed hands. I find this troubling. As I have said while opposing previous war funding requests, a vote to fund the war is a vote in favor of the war. Congress exercises its constitutional prerogatives through the power of the purse.

...

Mr. Speaker, I continue to believe that the best way to support our troops is to bring them home from Iraq and Afghanistan. If one looks at the original authorization for the use of force in Afghanistan, it is clear that the ongoing and expanding nation-building mission there has nothing to do with our goal of capturing and bringing to justice those who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. Our continued presence in Iraq and Afghanistan does not make us safer at home, but in fact it undermines our national security. I urge my colleagues to defeat this reckless conference report.

(emphasis added)

So here's a question: Who better reflects the values of Glenn Greenwald, if not readers on this site, Obama or Paul?

Ventura said he himself was waterboarded in sere training

He also says waterboarding is torture

He and you also say waterboarding is illegal

So the people who waterboarded Ventura should be prosecuted ?

See the flawed logic there

Sex is legal. Rape is illegal.

Consent is the magic ingredient that makes the world go round.

It's what separates "kidnapping" from "giving your buddy a ride to your house."

Doesn't seem complicated to me. Is there something I'm missing here?

Within hours of Obama's newest action to keep the world from discovering the extent and severity of US torture (blocking the release of additional torture photos, as Retired Military Patriot noted above), David Ignatius writes a textbook mainstream post on the subject (link in sig below).

Some highlights:

He labels calls for torture prosecutions a "spasm of backward-looking recrimination".

He says this newest move to protect American torturers is "upsetting his allies on the left but making some new friends among conservatives in the military."

He grants anonymity to a military mucky-muck in order to get this shocking and controversial tidbit about the military's response to Obama's photo block: "Folks are listening."

I think you could use Glenn's past few weeks of posts to develop an algorithm that could auto-write Ignatius' column passably well.

Let's see:

1. Dismiss all calls for investigations and prosecutions because they are "backward looking, not forward looking".

2. Label all people making such calls "leftists".

3. Grant members of the government anonymity so they can make non-threatening statements about how great points 1 and 2 are.

4. Return to line 1.

"The fact is the GOP have gone into such a self-destructive tailspin that they are transcending any possible parody."

Harman's a Democrat. Democrats are hard to parody, too, you know.