It profits a man nothing to sell his soul for the entire world...

...but for Wales?

I'm having a hard time saying anything coherent at the moment because my mind keeps circling the sewer drain of torture that is the national honor of my country, the country I served for 22 years as a soldier, the country I pledged to defend from all enemies foreign and domestic.

Because the domestic enemies who committed these crimes shat on that honor, and all for nothing.

Why do I say that? Given that the "defenders" of these crimes are raging and swearing that the crimes were done to protect me, that the crimes DID protect me in that they obtained intelligence that defeated nefarious plots and evil plans.

To which I say: bullshit.

Let's stop a minute and think about this.

Let's say that all this went down like the torturers and their buddies say it did. Let's say that the heroic CIA torturers knew that Evil Abu Badguy knew where the nuke was hidden. Knew it. Let's say that was you, or me, and we knew that the goddamn dune coon was holding information that could save lives if we just electrified his nuts long enough.

Would you be crankin' that generator?

I would.

Yes, I would. I know because I had to think about the possibility that I might end up with enemy prisoners of war that I knew had intel that could save my troops if I could get it quickly enough, and what would I do then?

Here's the thing, though. I'd be a criminal, a war criminal. My guys would be alive, so to me it'd be worth it. But I couldn't - and, I hope - wouldn't try to deny what I'd done.

I hope I'd have the guts to hunt up the nearest provost marshal and turn myself in.

So ISTM that the thing that sets off my bullshit detector is that the torturers and their masters went to such lengths to hide and destroy the evidence of what they did. If this really was "worth it", if I'm the torturer and my torturing really had produced some sort of valuable intelligence?

I'd have kept those cameras rolling.

Rolling through every horrific thing I did, every vile atrocity I worked on some helpless sonofabitch, every sob, every scream. Rolling as the broken bastard choked out the address of the hidden nuke, the name of the contact, the details of the murderous plan.

I'd present myself and that tape before a judge, or a jury, and say, look, here is what I did to save you. Here is how I did save you.

And then I'd throw myself on the mercy of the court.

Because I would be guilty. I'd just know that no judge, no jury, in America would convict me and if they did no President would be able to refrain from pardoning me. Because my guilt was their guilt, too; they lived because I did horrors in their name.

And yet...there is none of this.

So I know there was no hidden nuke. No contact, no plan, no secret. Just what torture does best at producing; what the torturer wants to hear.

These people tortured because they wanted confessions, for the same reasons that the Inquisition and the NKVD tortured. They wanted confessions. They wanted what they needed for their auto-de-fe, for their show-trial, they wanted to hear that we needed to fight them there so we didn't have to fight them here, that the smoking gun was going to be a mushroom cloud, that they hated our freedoms, that they were coming to kill us.

They wanted to make us afraid, and they did.

So these fucking bastards sold our honor, my honor, for nothing. Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. For worthless fucking bullshit to support their goddamn lies. For a mess of goddamn pottage.

And I think I'm as furious about the worthlessness of the reasons as for the infamy of the torture itself.

Learning from Others' Mistakes

I think we're beginning to see the shape of Bush's Legacy.And it's not pretty:

"With Russian tanks only 30 miles from Tbilisi on August 12, Mr Sarkozy told Mr Putin that the world would not accept the overthrow of Georgia’s Government. According to Mr Levitte, the Russian seemed unconcerned by international reaction. “I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls,” Mr Putin declared.

Mr Sarkozy thought he had misheard. “Hang him?” — he asked. “Why not?” Mr Putin replied. “The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein.”

Mr Sarkozy, using the familiar tu, tried to reason with him: “Yes but do you want to end up like Bush?”

Mr Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: “Ah — you have scored a point there.”

Ouch. Ya think they'll engrave that over the entrance to the Bush Library?

Ye venal slaves

I had to take a full day to settle down enough to post this. I was that furious.

About what, you ask?

This.

If you didn't see or hear anything about the "testimony" the puling scrivener Yoo, and the autocratic lickspittle Addington, gave before Congress you're not alone. This entire contemptible little episode has been dramatically underreported by every news outlet I can find - I think it was buried somewhere on the bottom of Page 2 of The World's Worst Newspaper. Search their webpage and it's buried even there, beneath Mrs. Flores obit and something about the Klamath River salmon. Honestly.

The infuriating thing is that this is - in a vital, living democracy this SHOULD be -a Big Deal. A HUGE, torches-and-pitchforks, a la laterne, death-to-the-revanchists sort of deal. This wasn't a couple of dog fighting gangstas in some penny-ha'penny municipal court. This was cold, open contempt for the People's House, the Congress of the United States. And, regardless of the knowledge, wisdom or lack of same of the legislators involved the arrogance and aristocratic hauteur shown by the two Administration lackeys is not simply contempt for political rivals but contempt for the People in Congress.

At one point in the proceedings I thought I must have missed something in the transcript. This began when Addington, true to form as the nasty, brutish little Bush button man he is, threatened the legislators with the usual Bush hitmen: "No American should think we're free," he growled, "...the war is over, al-Qaida is not coming and they're not interested in getting us, because that's wrong."

The part I missed, then, was the part where the chairman John Conyers (D-MI) rose from the bench, face pale with wrath and stormed back: "You dare...you DARE mock this House by prating the snivelling fears and traitorous cowardice with which your master has tried to rot and corrupt the very foundation of this republic since the day we were all attacked by enemies that your own incompetence and ignorance raised, your own insensate wrath and incapacity enabled and your greed and lust for power have manipulated ever since as a weapon to beat your political enemies?!? To blabber and threaten with a handful of ragged jihadists in the halls where once better Americans than you faced down the might of Hitler's Germany and stood firm against the power of the Soviets? You dare! You, who have sat here fleering and mocking this committee, you who talks of "war" and "enemies" having never faced a foe in arms while your tortuous policies and malignant secrecies have made this once-proud nation a byword and a hissing among all those decent and honorable? YOU DARE??!! Well I, for one, will listen to this cowardly and jesuitical twittering no further. Sergeant at arms, remove the wit...no, remove the prisoner to the custody of the federal marshal's office, to await our pleasure in the form of a charge of obstruction of justice, perjury, malfeasance of office, conspiracy and violation of the Laws of the very War he is so eager to warn us about."

Yeah. That part. (laughs sadly)

And the saddest of all, this entire moronic kabuki theatre doesn't shock or astound but simply drives home the extent to which our "republic" has already fallen. Posturing, capering, bloviating legislators unable to elicit the slightest useful information from their supposed executors in the Administration but, unable to stop pretending that they have a useful function, like the Roman Senate they exist simply to reap and dispense largesse and applaud Caesar's dictates.

Fatuous. Disgusting. Unamerican, as Publius might say.

Or, perhaps, this IS the New America, the America of the 21st Century, a nation of grubby peculators and single-issue-voters led by small-souled functionaries, liars and rogues. One would, were one not a hardened republican oneself, be tempted to echo Oliver Cromwell in saying:

"It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money; is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? is there one vice you do not possess? ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter'd your conscience for bribes? is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth? ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil'd this sacred place, and turn'd the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd, are yourselves become the greatest grievance. Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which by God's help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do; I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place; go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!"

And take these two sorry, cowardly, arrogant, mewling, puking little autocrats with you.

Right at the moment I am disgusted with my nation.

Bush EPA Lies about Greenhouse Gas Regulation

I wanted to title this something like "Breaking News: Dog Bites Man; also, Sun Rises In East!". It's not like I expect these bastards to EVER tell the truth about "protecting" the environment. But Thursday's EPA decision regarding the state emission standards is vile even by the standards of this administration, which, generally speaking, if asked the time of day would lie out of sheer force of habit.

As if the so-called "Energy Bill" wasn't enough of an insult (Mr. Trend describes that craptastic piece of pork better here) the ultimate "you can tell I'm lying because my lips are moving" quote had to be from Stephan Johnson, the Bushie EPA dogrobber.

According to this human post-it note, the energy bill "achieves the greatest greenhouse reductions in the history of the United States", even though the energy bill never addresses emissions, being all about increased CAFE mileage standards and a whopping piece of gravy for corn/ethanol farmers.

Honestly! It's enough to make you laugh if it wsn't enough to make you weep.