Sen. Graham: What makes us different

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was in Raleigh the other day to speak at N.C. State University’s Millennium Seminars series. He gave a fascinating account of how the Senate campaign to insist on a new interrogation bill that Graham, a Republican who succeeded the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, believed necessary to safeguard certain rights even of those we believe are out to kill us all. Graham is no limp-wristed appeaser – he’s a conservative politician who served in the Air Force and S.C. Air National Guard, was called up for the Gulf War and is now a Reserve Judge for the Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals.
But, he said, he opposed the Bush administration’s military tribunal and interrogation plan “Because it’s about us, not about them... It’s to show the rest of the world the difference between us and the rest of the world... The high ground here is the moral high ground.”
The interrogation bill means the Bush administration can’t use secret evidence unavailable to defendants to convict them. And the excesses of interrogation at Abu Ghraib was “a huge setback in the war on terror” because it put America on the same plane as our enemies. “If we change who America is in trying to win this war,” he said, “we will lose. But we are not going to lose becasue the stakes are too high.... “
“We’re about to show the world in a couple of months how we’re different.... You will be part of a country that has chosen to give rights and privileges to a group of people who would give you none. That makes us stronger, not weaker.”
He also had one pithy comment about the tenor of the current election campaign: “By the end of the election, you vote for the person who sucks the least.”
Audio files of the senator’s remarks should be available soon at the Mellennium Seminar website, N.C. State says. Here’s an audio link to the start of his speech.