Andrew McCarthy takes down the anti-Gonzalez blubbers who testified at yesterday’s confirmation hearing and concludes:

By the end of the session, under questioning by Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the two law-school deans had even [backpedaled] on the Geneva Conventions, conceding that stateless al Qaeda terrorists did not qualify for honorable prisoner-of-war status � just as Gonzales had maintained, under no small amount of hectoring.

A number of us have tried to grapple with the hard stuff about the war against terrorists � the intersection between abiding respect for human dignity and the imperative of pressing for intelligence that might save human life. We don’t pretend that this is easy, that it’s black-and-white, or that expressly licensing coercive interrogation � even a minimal form of torture � in the most dire situations would not potentially open the door to human-rights abuses that should be universally condemned. It would. That’s why it needs to be thought through with sensitivity.

But the critics should do us all a favor: If you’re going to talk the talk of righteous indignation, be ready to walk the walk. Be ready to tell Americans exactly what protections you want to give to the terrorists. Be ready to tell Americans that you would prohibit coercive interrogation even if it were the only way of saving a hundred thousand of them.

We’re waiting…

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