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If ever there was a time to step up and draw the line, it is now. Rarely in politics are issues as simple as black or white, right or wrong, but the decision to engage in or defend the use of torture is undoubtedly one of those issues. The usually conservative editorial board of The Washington Post understands it:

The bad news is that Mr. Bush, as he made clear yesterday, intends to continue using the CIA to secretly detain and abuse certain terrorist suspects. He will do so by issuing his own interpretation of the Geneva Conventions in an executive order and by relying on questionable Justice Department opinions that authorize such practices as exposing prisoners to hypothermia and prolonged sleep deprivation. Under the compromise agreed to yesterday, Congress would recognize his authority to take these steps and prevent prisoners from appealing them to U.S. courts. The bill would also immunize CIA personnel from prosecution for all but the most serious abuses and protect those who in the past violated U.S. law against war crimes.

In short, it's hard to credit the statement by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) yesterday that "there's no doubt that the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved." In effect, the agreement means that U.S. violations of international human rights law can continue as long as Mr. Bush is president, with Congress's tacit assent. If they do, America's standing in the world will continue to suffer, as will the fight against terrorism[...]

But the senators who have fought to rein in the administration's excesses -- led by Sens. McCain, Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and John W. Warner (R-Va.) -- failed to break Mr. Bush's commitment to "alternative" methods that virtually every senior officer of the U.S. military regards as unreliable, counterproductive and dangerous for Americans who may be captured by hostile governments.

Mr. Bush wanted Congress to formally approve these practices and to declare them consistent with the Geneva Conventions. It will not. But it will not stop him either, if the legislation is passed in the form agreed on yesterday. Mr. Bush will go down in history for his embrace of torture and bear responsibility for the enormous damage that has caused.

The editorial board of the NY Times, a group that did more than its share to help this administration get its war, understands it:

The deal does next to nothing to stop the president from reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions. While the White House agreed to a list of “grave breaches” of the conventions that could be prosecuted as war crimes, it stipulated that the president could decide on his own what actions might be a lesser breach of the Geneva Conventions and what interrogation techniques he considered permissible. It’s not clear how much the public will ultimately learn about those decisions. They will be contained in an executive order that is supposed to be made public, but Mr. Hadley reiterated that specific interrogation techniques will remain secret.

Even before the compromises began to emerge, the overall bill prepared by the three senators had fatal flaws. It allows the president to declare any foreigner, anywhere, an “illegal enemy combatant” using a dangerously broad definition, and detain him without any trial. It not only fails to deal with the fact that many of the Guantánamo detainees are not terrorists and will never be charged, but it also chokes off any judicial review.

The Democrats have largely stood silent and allowed the trio of Republicans to do the lifting. It’s time for them to either try to fix this bill or delay it until after the election. The American people expect their leaders to clean up this mess without endangering U.S. troops, eviscerating American standards of justice, or further harming the nation’s severely damaged reputation.

Numerous former Secretaries of State and Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (here, here, and here, for example) have also expressed their opposition.

Nevertheless, McCain, Warner, Graham and Collins have caved. The president has the "compromise" he wanted:

Dan Bartlett, counselor to the president, said: "We proposed a more direct approach to bringing clarification. This one is more of the scenic route, but it gets us there."

If this is not stopped, our nation will have gone on record for all of history to see as a nation that sanctions the use of torture by the state. All the creative euphemisms in the world will not change the reality of our actions. Future generations will not be fooled by our feeble attempts to confound and confuse. The truth about tyranny always finds its way to the light.

The Republican Party has decided to drive this nation off a moral cliff. That is both inexcusable and unforgivable. But worse, while all of this was happening, the Democratic Party sat by as it were deaf, dumb, and mute. On one of the most important moral issues of our time, they said.... nothing. Not a word.

Charles Pierce has this right... almost:

The national Democratic Party is no longer worth the cement needed to sink it to the bottom of the sea. For an entire week, it allowed a debate on changing the soul of the country to be conducted intramurally between the Torture Porn and Useful Idiot wings of the Republican Party, the latter best exemplified by John McCain, who keeps fashioning his apparently fathomless ambition into a pair of clown shoes with which he can do the monkey dance across the national stage. They're laughing at him, too.

The New York Times has the right of it here, limning the pathetic gullibility at the heart of the "compromise." There is nothing in this bill that President Thumbscrews can't ignore. There is nothing in this bill that reins in his feckless and dangerous reinterpretation of the powers of his office. There is nothing in this bill that requires him to take it -- or its congressional authors -- seriously. Two weeks ago, John Yoo set down in The New York Times the precise philosophical basis on which the administration will sign this bill and then ignore it. The president will decide what a "lesser breach" of the Geneva Conventions is? How can anyone over the age of five give this president that power? And wait until you see the atrocity that I guarantee you is coming down the tracks concerning the fact that the president committed at least 40 impeachable offenses with regard to illegal wiretapping.

And the Democratic Party was nowhere in this debate. It contributed nothing. On the question of whether or not the United States will reconfigure itself as a nation which tortures its purported enemies and then grants itself absolution through adjectives -- "Aggressive interrogation techniques" -- the Democratic Party had…no opinion. On the issue of allowing a demonstrably incompetent president as many of the de facto powers of a despot that you could wedge into a bill without having the Constitution spontaneously combust in the Archives, well, the Democratic Party was more pissed off at Hugo Chavez.

I have at this point only one reason for hope. The Republican Party, led by golden boy John McCain, now has its compromise. It has gone on record advocating the use of state-sanctioned torture. It has accepted in both premise and fact the idea the President's power to interpret and enforce the law as he sees fit, shredding the separation of powers that defines our system of government.

If someone were to step up, to stand tall, to speak clearly and call this what it is... I refuse to believe that Americans would not rally to their cause. I refuse to believe that we as a nation are not better than this. I refuse to believe that we as a nation are this immoral. We are better than this. We are more decent than this. This is not who we are.

Stand up, stand tall, be clear. And then use this to bury this incarnation of the Republican Party for a generation. Now is the time. Who will lead? Who will draw the line?

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan speaks:

So we "formally" leave Geneva alone, but grant the executive branch complete discretion in determining what "cruel" means; and the language of the bill certainly can be construed to allow waterboarding, hypothermia, sleep deprivation, stress positions, and long-time standing. It even allows for a person to be beaten, cut, or near-drowned.

It's important to note that McCain does not believe that this is the case. He believes that the definition of "cruel" here would bar such "alternative methods". But we know from bitter experience that in any ambiguity, this administration has opted for the more draconian interpretation. So therefore all of these techniques, described in detail in Solzheniytsen's "Gulag Archipelago," potentially remain available to this president under this proposal. Barring further clarifications confirming McCain's belief that this bill bars these "alternative methods", I see no legal barrier in this bill to Bush's continuing to authorize them in the future. Worse, the proposal will have declared these practices not to be "cruel". Worse still, its Orwellian abuse of language contains echoes of totalitarian discourse.

Sullivan is right. One of the hallmarks of the totalitarian state is the deliberate misuse of language. Democracies, of course, obscure language in their own unique ways, but in totalitarian states it becomes part of the process of governing itself. I pray that is not what we are witnessing here, but I have little reason for hope.

More from Andrew:

I should add that it is essential to the integrity of language and law that the word torture not be defined out of existence. Waterboarding, hypothermia, long-time-standing, and various forms of stress positions are torture, have always been torture and always will be torture. What we must do is what Orwell demanded: speak plain English before it evaporates from our discourse, refuse to acquiesce to the corruption of language and decency. In that respect, the press must continue to ask both McCain and all administration representatives whether passing this bill means that waterboarding, hypothermia, sleep deprivation, long-time-standing or stress positions are now illegal and unavailable to the CIA. They must not be allowed to get away with the answer that they will not mention specific techniques. The specifics are everything. And we must not be snowed by abuse of English into saying something is true when it isn't. Until they are completely forthcoming on these critical details, this bill should not be passed. Moreover, something this complex and this grave should not be rushed into law with round-the-clock haste. We need this to be debated and deliberated slowly. Which means leaving it to the next session of Congress.

This bill cannot and must not move forward until this part has been made clear. We need this admisnitration on record decalring what it will and will not do in our name. Everything they do, for better or for worse, they do for us. Their actions are as much our responsibility as they are theirs.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

UPDATE II: Justin Rood makes a great catch. As part of this deal, anyone who has either engaged in or ordered torture over the past 9 years will be granted full legal immunity. Because, you know, as the president himself has said... "we don't torture." Except, apparently, when we do.