Incendiary Advice

Tonight, the Senate voted overwhelmingly - 90 to 9 - to add an anti-torture policy to our latest defense spending bill. For the first time in five years, President Bush threatened to veto the spending bill if it contained this anti-torture measure.

Let me repeat that.

All the bridges to nowhere in Alaska. . .the $500,000 given to said state for the purpose of painting an airplane to resemble a giant fish . . .the hundreds of billions of spending. . .not one bill has been shot-down by this administration. In five long, arduous years.

But cut the torture? Them's vetoing words, kids.

Can you help me out here? I'm truly at a loss, all snarkasm aside. Each "aha, this has to be the lowest crap they'll pull" moment of jaw-droppingly stupefyingly stunning heinousness gives way to yet another even more slimy, reprehensible act. If you think that's just a way to work in some glorious adjectives, you're wrong.

It's like drunken frat-boy political limbo, and the damned limbo stick's already so low it's in the basement.

Where are we? What the hell country advocates for torture? When there's a clear opportunity to send the international community a message that we simply will not stand for Americans committing acts against the Geneva Convention, our President threatens to pull the plug.

Unfathomable.

And lest you really believe that Americans committing torture is so yesterday's news, effectively ending when that powerful 'evildoer' Lyndie England was sentenced, guess again:

A report released Friday by The Human Rights Watch revealed that soldiers in the Army's elite 82nd Airborne Division systematically tortured Iraqi detainees from 2003 into 2004, hitting them with baseball bats and dousing them with chemicals, the Associated Press reported.

That would be from an article posted on 9/25/05.


Now that the anti-torture measure has thankfully passed in the Senate (no kudos to the dastardly nine listed below), whether Bush will use his first ever veto remains to be seen. How it will be spun, twisted and otherwise mutilated by a compliant press corps into something positive will no doubt tax even the biggest Fox kool-aid drinkers. Okay, except O'Reilly. He's probably got the text written already.


But I really do pray that no amount of spin will make a Bush endorsement of torture palatable to the American public. It just cannot stand.

In the meantime, here are the names of the Notorious Nine Pro-Torture Leaders in the Senate. If you're one of their constituents and feeling ashamed, do drop them a line:

NAYs ---9
Allard (R-CO)
Bond (R-MO)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Stevens (R-AK)



May all nine go down in history as the despicable sadists they are.




(By the way, if you've noticed my conspicuous absence of late, suffice it to say I'm pondering another job. Who needs sleep, really? So way overrated, especially when you can stump for a mayor turned gubernatorial hopeful in all weather, under cover of darkness, with just a flashlight for safety. Exercise, democracy, yet another paycheck and possibly danger or eventual pneumonia: what's not to love?

Rest assured, however. Should the Plame inquiry result in the rumored impending indictments, or the Apocalypse arrive before that, I'll be back to weigh-in.)