If I Shoot You In the Face Because I am Afraid of You, That's OK

That would seem to be the rationale offered by Sen. Lindsey Graham:

The reason I don’t want to go back any more than we have already done is because I know what happened. Out of fear, we overreacted. … They took a view of the law that I think was aggressive, and I would not have approached it that way. Right after 9/11, we all thought we were going to be hit again. So as we go back and try to hold people criminally liable. I think we’re doing a lot of damage to the country, because their mistakes were not criminal mistakes. They were mistakes made out of fear.

I have heard of the "Toyota Defense" ("he asked for it, he got it"), the Five Point Defense ("I. Did. Not. Do. It.") and the "Sum-Udder-Dood Defense" ("Some udder dude did it, it weren't me"), but this is the first time that I have heard of the Coward's Defense ("I was scared").

That's really what it comes down to, now: The GOP loyalists are saying that it was OK to command (not just "authorize") the use of torture because Dick Cheney was operating in "shitting his pants out of fear" mode. Not because they thought torture was the right thing to do, but because Widdle Dickie Cheney waz scared. The GOP loyalists are conceding that the 9/11 attacks frightened the pants off of George Bush and Dick Cheney, two men who made it their business never to put their own pink bodies (or their money) on the line.

How much more pathetic are the GOP loyalists going to get in their defense of the Bush Administration?

I think we will see as the specter of their being held to account grows.

Stay tuned.