Iglesias and Gitmo

An interesting exchange at GQ:

GQ: But you've spent time in Gitmo as a JAG. You had a personal connection to the place. The administration's tacit approval of torture had to have been of interest to you.

DI: Well, I don't like it. This country doesn't stand for that. By condoning torture or near torture, we're as bad as the people we're fighting. Sure, we're not cutting their heads off and filming it, but this country stands for decency. It makes me think of what Bobby Kennedy argued during the Cuban Missile Crisis when the military wanted to do a preemptive strike on Cuba. He goes, "You mean, you want us to do a Pearl Harbor, except we're the Japanese. We don't do that. Americans don't do that."

GQ: Does America feel less like America to you now than it did even just a few years back?

DI: For the time being. I don't think that's necessarily something that's going to be permanently in place.

GQ: You think it's something that's going to change on Jan. 21, 2009?

DI: Yes. And I don't care who's in power. I think you're going to see a radically different face to American foreign policy.

GQ: And clearly you think that's a healthy thing.

DI: Yeah. And one other thing I'll say is that this scandal has really grown beyond just us. This has turned out to be a struggle between the executive and legislative branches of our federal government. Our founding fathers when they put our government together assumed checks and balances, assumed compromise. When one partyand it doesn't matter which partyhas that kind of unitary power like my party did, bad things happen.

Iglesias is a Republican. I wonder if his conscience on the matter of torture was another reason to get rid of him.