Let me see if I've got this straight: Nancy Pelosi should resign because she knew about the program that Dick Cheney should get a Medal of Freedom for. Because, um, she should have told everyone about the double-secret classified program that wasn't illegal at all and in fact saved American lives because it was so classified and wonderful and not at all illegal. Do I have the gist of it?
If I do, shoot me now because that would mean I'm starting to understand how Republicans think.
Looks like the modern Republican party has finally gone and done it: they've crossed the bullshit event horizon and entered into a region of nonsense and mendacity packed together so tightly that even coherence cannot escape.
I wouldn't even care about this so much (well, OK, yes I would) if the cable newsreaders hadn't predictably and eagerly followed them across the bullshit event horizon and made Pelosi the story, even though she had nothing to do with formulating or implementing the torture policy. Granted, she was in a role to advise the administration and we all know how well Bush and Cheney took advice. Especially from Democrats. In the unlikely event that anyone cable news personalities are reading this, I have to ask you: you do realize that you are pursuing a story that doesn't make a lick of sense, right? You're spending hours of airtime trying to get to the heart of a matter that is completely illogical. Good luck with that. Even Colin Powell (allegedly) got to the point where he said, "I'm not reading this, it's bullshit." But I guess we can't expect you all to be Colin Powell.
You want to know what the story is? Try this: the United States is now a country that abducts people off the street based on hearsay evidence and tortures them, in some cases to death. This is an incontrovertible fact. We started this policy of imprisoning and torturing people based on hearsay evidence in a country known for generational family and tribal bloodfueds - damn, you just know we were getting good intel from those locals. Many of those we imprisoned and tortured could be charitably described as "minors" but let's call them what they were: children. That's your fucking story, but I can see how that's not as interesting as the deliberations of the House Intelligence Committee.
Cheney's jumping in front of every damn camera he can find to demand the release of documents he claims prove that torture worked and lives were saved. We're talking about two documents here, by the way - two documents, two interrogations out of the hundreds if not thousands we've conducted. And the CIA is not refusing to release them on the basis of national security concerns but rather because the documents are relevant in two FOIA lawsuits the CIA is fighting. One of the parties suing for the release of the documents is Amnesty International. Somehow, I don't think these documents say what Cheney wants us to believe they say.
As vocal as Cheney has been about the release of the documents, he's been completely silent about the release of the torture photos. Why? Because they're fucking horrible. What we did was fucking horrible. We can pretend we give a damn about parlimentary procedure all we want but the story here is that we did awful things to people, many of whom were simply in a shitty place at the shittiest possible time. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
I just came over from Space.com where I was reading about neutron stars, I think you are onto something, a behavioral black hole where you try to control everything with the massive gravity of Do As I Say Not As I Do (because it seems to work well enough for that God person everyones always talking about).
Posted by: MM | May 19, 2009 at 10:06 AM