Huckabee opposes torture

It's great that Mike Huckabee opposes torture and acknowledges that waterboarding is, indeed, torture.

After the Iowa poll showed that Republican voters like him but found him much less "presidential" and "electable" than Romney, Huckabee sought to build his foreign policy credentials, meeting with a group of retired generals who are in Des Moines to urge the 2008 candidates to commit to opposing torture. After the meeting, Huckabee joined Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in declaring his opposition to the interrogation procedure known as "waterboarding," and said he would support closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a contrast with the other leading Republicans.

But why did he need to be convinced? You would think that a man who is intimately familiar with the life and teachings of Christ would have figured out a long time ago that torture is an inexcusable assault on the God-given dignity of human beings; and that it does as much, if not more, to degrade the torturer as it does the victim.

I don't find it particularly encouraging that Huckabee needed John McCain and a group of retired generals to help him understand that. We already have a supposedly Christian president with a broken moral compass who needs to be cajoled into doing the right thing. Do we need another?