The news today that leading Democrats, including Jane Harman and Nancy Pelosi, were informed about the torture of military prisoners and allegedly didn't just acquiesce but actually approved it is not something that particularly surprises. The descent into war crimes under this administration provoked very little public Democratic anger or resistance for the years in which it was used most promiscuously. The presidential campaign of John Kerry offered only token opposition. The subject never came up in a single presidential debate in 2004. And the way in which the torture issue has subsequently been raised by Democrats bespeaks opportunism as much as principled outrage and opposition.

Pelosi's response to the accusation is the weakest. Harman's the strongest - she claims she sent a classified letter in opposition in February 2003; Bob Graham says he was not briefed on the matter and mercifully now says that there is no doubt that waterboarding is torture. Rockefeller hasn't commented. At best, it seems to me, Democratic resistance to these war crimes was anodyne.

But this, of course, does not mean that the methods were or are defensible, legal or useful. Whatever else can be said about this debate, it is not inherently partisan.