In congress last week, the House passed a bill to ban the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques. The bill passed along party lines, 222-199, and even if it gets through the Senate, it’s destined to end up in the President’s wastebasket. So far, this Congress has wasted much of its time passing bills that they know the president won’t sign and which lack enough bipartisan support to override his veto.

Of course there have been other successes. Congress has expedited legislation that renamed post offices and courthouses. Out of 134 bills signed by the president this year, 63 of them named buildings for noted Americans and bestowed honors on others. This has been called by some, a “do nothing” Congress, after a Congress so-named by Harry Truman in 1948.

When the Democrats took control of this Congress, they claimed a mandate from the people to end the war in Iraq. With a 31 seat majority in the House and a 1 seat majority in the Senate, their victory can hardly be called a mandate. So far, their efforts to end the war by hamstringing the president have come to naught.

If the Democrats in Congress want to end the war, they can do so by cutting off funds for it. But then they have to bear the blame for losing it. What they’ve been trying to do is bring about an end of the war and blame the loss on the president. In so doing, they are attempting to put the country in danger by preventing our intelligence agencies from using methods that have been effective in learning the plans of the terrorists, like this silly bill they passed last week.

The waterboarding technique is one proven interrogative method that has, in the past, had terrorist captives squawking like a parrot on a perch within minutes. The Democrats say it’s torture because it “gives the sensation” of drowning. It leaves no marks nor causes any actual pain. It simply scares the stuffing out of the terrorists. I’m all for that. Given its effectiveness, any sane person might wonder why the Democrats in Congress are so determined to take it away from our intelligence agencies. Are they “sending messages” to the world that we are the kind of people who always take the “moral high ground?” Are we so strong that we are compelled by some misplaced sense of “fair play” that we must give our enemies a head start? The real message being sent is that we have become so soft and squeamish that we lack the fortitude to do what must be done for our own protection and ultimately our own survival as a nation.

So why are they wasting everyone’s time and money? The only reason I can see for passing a useless bill like this is that it would deprive the Bush administration of an effective tool against those who have already demonstrated their ability and willingness to attack and murder us and who have promised a relentless war to either drag us into their brutal seventh century religion or kill the rest of us. It’s one thing to be against the war, but to actively work against the interests of this county for political gain is partisan politics at its basest.