Torturing for Political Excuses

Wow. I thought the 8 years of Republican "leadership" had already hit so many bottoms of decency but now I learn that we didn't just torture to try to find Osama or stop the next terrorist act, it was to force some of Saddam's henchmen to make a statement of collusion that would falsely link Iraq with Al Qaeda (and, of course, justify the U.S. invasion and help Bush say "SEE!").

This new information comes from Ali Soufan, an ex-FBI agent, who helped attain info from Abu Zubaydah by outwitting him.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff at State, wrote that the “harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002 ... was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and Al Qaeda.” -- In The Washington Note, a political and foreign policy blog (reported in the NYTimes, Dowd).

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times reports that Soufan told Congress, "Torture is designed to force the subject to submit 'through humiliation and cruelty' and 'see the interrogator as the master who controls his pain.'"

Dowd continues, "It’s a good description of the bullying approach Cheney and Rummy applied to the globe, and the Arab world. But as Soufan noted, when you try to force compliance rather than elicit cooperation, it’s prone to backfire."

That sums up the entire difference between the Bush Republicans and liberal Democrats. The first are bullies who shove, lie, manipulate and humiliate in order to get their way. They can't see how sharing, talking, listening, and cooperating would help their cause. Anyone who listens and respects another's perspective is considered a sissy, a coward, and whatever other derogatory word that means you are not a man. Women, they think even less of you! On guard!

When will this middle-school nightmare end? You'd think that an election would settle it, but sore-losers don't go away quietly.

Political Prophecy

I love prophecy...thinking about what's coming, what's next. Here's an interesting scenario from Paul Krugman's blog, the writer is David Clow of Los Angeles:

"Yes, of course Bush wants to rewrite history, and he’s laying the groundwork for it now. His model is much older, though, than Vietnam. He’s taking his cues from the unrepentant ones who mythologized the defeated Confederacy into a romantic Lost Cause, with brave cavaliers at the forefront and the gutless elite stabbing from behind. He’ll give speeches on what might have been, a united democratic Iraq, and infer that the shattering of that nation was the fault of the press and the left. He’ll rally his faithful to the mirage. His minions in the rightist media will lionize him. And we’ll have 25 more years of dissention and disunity both in Iraq and here at home."

"Rallying his faithful to the mirage." Why, that's behind us, no? Present, too? Hard to dismiss that it'll be part of the future.

I've always said that one of the things that separates Republicans from Democrats is that Republicans are "team-minded" and will hurl mud "just because you're on the other team". Democrats are independent, which is why they never muster much of a group response to mudslinging, and why the big ones are so damn capable. They can't rely on "loyalty at all costs" and spend a lot of energy trying to come up with tedious, working solutions.

My prophecy: this next election will see a new surge in unbelievably racist, left-hating, misogynist ranting from not only the right-wing pundits, but also average Americans who feel like all the protests, complaints, revelations of criminality was just mud-throwing of the other team. Already, I'm getting Hillary-Hate from Republican family-friends who see nothing wrong with insinuating how her death (drowning, in this particular email) would help them feel serene. I'm not joking.

Compare, for instance, how Hillary was treated as First Lady, and how Laura Bush has been treated.

The Elephant Mafia?

Now that some Republicans are coming out and saying something akin to "Today's Republican party is not the Republican party that I joined," I guess we should applaud if it weren't so damn sad.

I find everything George Bush has done to be exactly what he said he'd do. He promised smaller government. What would be more effective to decrease the size and the power of a central government than to bankrupt it? Why not make sure your friends take a HUGE cut on the way out, say, by launching an illegitimate war and outsourcing everything from k-duty and laundry to computer maintenance? In Florida, his brother Jeb promised to empty the state buildings in Tallahassee. So the people elected him, and he just fired state workers. Kids were lost in the foster care system because no one came to work. State biologists were given the boot. Some jobs were outsourced to private companies who now charge the state twice the cost and some were just canned--he attempted to get rid of the state library-- but citizens, mostly Democrats, stopped him.

Today, Jane Smiley writes about public confessions of Republican surprise. She, too, wonders how could you think that it wasn't all coming to this? She describes the current administration as a bully gang. "Everything, every value, that the Republicans have held up for my lifetime as desirable has been pointing us in this direction...when you reject common humanity, value profits above people, practice sectarian religion, feel contempt for the choices of others, exalt wealth, conflate consumersim with citizenship, join exclusive clubs, daily practice unkindness rather than kindness, and develop theories, such as those of free market capitalism, that allow you to congratulate yourself morally for selfishness and short-sightedness, then being a gang member is in your future."

Where's Bobby Kennedy when he's needed?