ZOMBIE CONTENTIONS

“A nation of cowards.” That’s how Attorney General Eric Holder characterized the United States, soon after his confirmation, referring to our reticence in matters of race. On Monday, when Holder announced his intention to launch an investigation of interrogation techniques used by CIA operatives under the Bush administration, he allowed as how we are “a nation of laws.”

If the AG is scratching his head to come up with a third parallel descriptor, he might try this one: We are “a nation of liars.” The charge certainly applies to him, as it does to any hypocrite who supports with a straight face this woefully miguided witch hunt, especially right now, when the country is still at war.

And that includes the president. In a no-holds-barred piece on the subject in today’s Dallas Morning News, Mark Davis offers up a scorecard on what is likely to raise this administration’s hackles and what is not. Here are Davis’s results:

Release of one of the world’s most notorious terrorists by Scottish authorities — not much indignation.

Techniques used by the previous administration to get answers from terrorists to keep Americans safe — massive indignation.

You gotta love it. What brings the blood most of people to a rapid boil — at least those of us with a soul — elicits little more than a sigh from the president. If you want to see feigned rage, on the other hand, just mention the actions of those Americans who would protect us from future acts of depraved indifference.

What is really behind this new-found self-righteous indignation is a desperate need on the part of the White House to change the subject while the president enjoys a much-deserved month of leisure. The debate on health care has turned toxic, so a diversion is in order. And what better way to create that diversion — and give the rabid left something they have been bellowing about for 8 years — than by presenting on a platter the head of Dick Cheney. A perfect two-fer.

For right now, the plan sounds airtight. Indeed, it may hold water for a while. But the next time something American blows up at the hands of terrorist lunatics, so do Obama’s and Holder’s careers. Both can pretend all they want to equate an interrogator holding a lit cigar near a detainee’s flesh with the vile act that brought the detainee into custody in the first place — perhaps reducing a planeload of American civilians into an unrecognizable tangle of charred flesh. But when all is said and done, no one with a conscience believes in that calculus. Not even Holder or Obama.