The Sacrificial Presidency of George W. Bush

May 05, 2011
By Paul Kengor

"Yeah, we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," former President George W. Bush told an audience in Grand Rapids, Michigan in June 2010. "I'd do it again to save lives."

When Bush said this a year ago, the howls from the left weren't as loud as usual. And why would they be? The "angry left," as Bush called it -- and felt it more acutely than anyone bestriding the planet -- didn't care much anymore. Waterb oarding had been a tool for the left's purposes: to demonize and defeat Bush. It had usefulness just as Iraq once had. It had gotten the Democrats not only a gigantic Congressional majority but also the presidency, ensuring $800-billion "stimulus" packages, ObamaCare, nationalization of GM, and decades more of Roe v. Wade. In the ultimate progressive coronation, waterboarding, like Iraq, like Gitmo, like Abu Ghraib, like so much more, enabled the election of the most anti-war, anti-Bush, and generally most left-wing of all Democratic presidential candidates, Barack Obama.

And so, when Bush made no apologies for waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed last June, the normal hysteria was a mere din. the rest