Dick Cheney Tortures Still…

Not since Torquemada has a hunchbacked evil bastard caused so many so much pain so consistently. Forget stabbing friends in the back; he’ll just up and shoot them in the face. (There have been plenty of evil bastards, of course; but they all had better posture.) Anyway, today a court in Italy found 23 CIA agents guilty of kidnapping stemming from their practice of Extraordinary Rendition of people the United States were suspicious of. They were sentenced to prison. Not that they will actually go to prison, as they have asylum here in the United States – which is THE place to live these days for those who answered the demands of the Bush Junta. Kidnapping was the least of their crimes. That was just the first step. Next these people who simply vanished from the sovereign countries in which they lived would find themselves in various “sites” around the world, where a whole host of nefarious deeds would be done to them in an effort to extract information from them. Sort of like the infamous scene in Marathon Man, where Dick Cheney is drilling holes in Dustin Hoffman’s teeth. He played a Nazi in that movie – and the parallels between that Dick Cheney and the real one are striking. But I digress. Mark Twain knew a hundred years ago what I know and what any sentient being knows: torture doesn’t work. Unless your goal is to thoroughly break someone’s psyche and ruin them as people, that is; if your goal is to actually get information from someone, it’s not remotely effective. Unless you want a whole bunch of made up bullshit. I know myself. And I know I wouldn’t even have to be tortured to make up all sorts of ill deeds if I thought it would make the pain go away. It’s no wonder that there was such a rash of false warnings about shopping malls being targeted. Either it was based off false information extracted from innocent people or it was ginned up fear from an administration that ran on lies and bullying.

Dick Cheney likes to go on and on about how torturing people is great and a wonderful way to foil plots and catch bad guys. When pressed for any sort of evidence, he instantly retreats to the tired old theory that to divulge such a thing would make us weaker or some nonsense. What I’m sure it does is make our soldiers – not prisoners of war – but targets of revenge. If we can’t honor our own propaganda, how can we expect others to? Exactly.

The most frustrating aspects of the behavior of the Bush administration is that they did all of the things they did even despite the fact that it defied any sort of logic or reason or research or knowledge of human behavior. We make the same mistakes over and over again expecting a different outcome: which is the definition of  - well, so much for that. Each new generation does something that has been done before – and failed before – but like Mickey Rooney – they try again anyway – because they’re better! Or different! And then: whoops! I married my mom again!!!

I can’t help but think that if Al Gore had been just a little less boring, this country wouldn’t be trillions of dollars in the hole funding quagmires oceans away in a desert among groups and fiefdoms and cultures we seem hopeless to understand. We wouldn’t be apologizing for torture while denying we ever did it; and we wouldn’t be closing a prison that isn’t closing anytime soon. Instead, 0ur money would be safely ensconced with treasury secretary Bernie Madoff on Capitol Hill near the Green House.

Where The Innocent Are Tortured and The Guilty Write Memoirs

Welcome to Dick Cheney’s America. Where you’re innocent until brutally beaten into guilt. Where, if you won’t admit the crime you haven’t committed, you will when we Rendition you to a country that will get it out of you one way or another. If, despite all of that, you are still found innocent, there will be no recourse for you. No way to make those that caused you great body and psychic harm pay for their mistake. Because, heck, if every innocent person the United States tortured sued for damages, it would fill up our courts from coast to coast! It would take up lots of paper and time that the government simply can’t afford.

Sorry innocent tortured people. But the closest you can come to justice is shooting out your television screen when you see my (Dick Cheney! I’m selling a book!) ugly twisted soul on television lying up a storm about anything and everything and shitting in everyone’s coffee during my book tour. Or shooting out your television screen whenever you see George Bush is headlining – of all things – a seminar on motivation! (George and I both highly recommend shooting out your televisions. That way you’ll have to buy a new one – which will stimulate the economy!)

(For your daily dose of seriously depressing doom, go here: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2009/11/03/arar)

You don’t think I didn’t have this all figured out, did you? Did you really think I would order all these innocent people tortured if I wasn’t sure there was no way I could ever be punished for it? I may be a lot of things, but one thing I definitely am is one hell of a good war criminal. So good in fact that I’m still a fine and upstanding citizen, immune from prosecution, and allowed to practice my free speech on anyone and everyone. Instead of being locked up for all the bad things I like to do, I go on Meet The Press so I can call the President a fairy. That Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scheme? My idea. I met that guy at a cocktail party and told him I would torture him if he didn’t become a criminal. They say absolute power corrupts absolutely; and, in my case, although I have always been corrupt, it’s so gloriously true! Unless you’re a Canadian. Those fools admit their wrongdoing and make reparations! What a laugh those guys are! If I could I’d extremely rendition that whole country to Syria!

Have you heard about the Arar case? It’s a case study in my lack of any moral bearings whatsoever. And the power I wielded in the White House and the Justice Department – and what I could do with it. Some Canadian software engineer named Arar had the misfortune to go through New York on his way home to Canada from vacation. And that’s when we nabbed him. But he wouldn’t confess to his evil-doing: he kept going on about being innocent and whatnot, so – realizing if we sent him to Syria they would torture him – we put a bag over his head and – next thing he knows – he’s in a Syrian prison along with a whole bunch of questions for them to ask! Where he is repeatedly tortured. He confessed of course. Finally. To something he didn’t do, just so they would stop beating him with cables. On and on and on it went. Various painful forms of torture. Day in and day out – for over a year.  Finally, the Syrians concluded that he was actually innocent. Oh well. Omelettes and broken eggs and all that. Now he’s all pissy about the whole thing. He even sued John Ashcroft – which is fine with me: that guy is a dithering pansy anyway. But, unlike Canada, which actually admitted to their wrongdoing, looked into the matter and published a weighty document detailing how wrong they – and the United States – were, groveled for his forgiveness and gave him 11.5 million Canadian dollars.

As Arar could tell you, the United States doesn’t play like that. Nope. I made sure of that, you see. I’m untouchable, frankly. The way it works is, we just deny it ever happened. After all, the United States doesn’t torture! Ha! Ask me a question and “I don’t recall” the answer. Pretty simple really. You’ve got evidence you say? Well, what is the definition of evidence anyway? You see, when you have a lot of power you can do tricky things like decide what evidence is; and the very meaning of words themselves. If it’s something we don’t want it to be, we’ll just change it. And, if you want to testify in front of a grand jury about all of the punishments the Syrians conducted on you at the request of the United States, well, good luck getting into the country!

Okay, enough about how great my power is. I have a memoir to make up and some paper shredding to do. I also have to celebrate how timid and cowardly this administration is when it comes to my rampant criminality. They protect me at every turn!

Cheers!

Dick

 

The Right – Doubling Down On Denial

In New York right now, the GOP is engaging in some public internecine warfare. The vote comes tomorrow and the GOP is urging its base to choose the more “conservative” of the two. In the automated phone calls that voters are subjected to, the following snippet can be heard:

Blah Blah Blah. Liberals suck – or something like that; and then: “Or do you believe in Republican conservative values, like thrift, personal responsibility, and family? Let’s tell the liberals, enough is enough.” – these calls went out in order to talk Republicans into not voting for the moderate one – i.e. not a dipshit – in favor of the hard-liner – i.e. demagogue fool.

You might not know this, and I didn’t either, but apparently one of the conservative values is Thrift. Who knew the Republicans were so concerned about saving money? They quadrupled the size of government; they spent a trillion dollars in Iraq; and they seem to be made up almost entirely of extremely rich bigots. And it’s been a long long time since an elected Republican showed much concern for thrift. I doubt there are too many Republicans eating Ramen soup to save money. Another conservative value? Personal Responsibility. This doesn’t seem to hold water either. In fact, right now the two individuals personally responsible for the current state of this country are in deeper denial than Pete Rose. Neither Dick Cheney nor George Bush have taken responsibility for a single misstep on anything. Not torture. Not the economy. Or making a huge leap towards socialism by buying into our country’s largest – and most incompetent – banks. Instead of taking responsibility, they choose to “not recall” what they did. Family. The conservatives claim this value to be firmly within their grasp. Yet it’s the Obamas who seem to be actually living this value conservatives hold so dear. We’ve seen a parade of Republicans fall on their family-value faces over the last year: whether it’s a governor hiking the Appalachian Trail in South America or a Senator going out of his way to find employment for his mistress’ boyfriend.

There comes a time when people wake up and realize that actions really do speak louder than words. You can claim something great in your mission statement  (you can bet Bernie Madoff didn’t have Ponzi Scheme anywhere in his mission statement); but if you can’t back it up, it’s time to change your tune. It’s time to rebrand yourself and start anew. For the Republicans, they can go one of two ways. They can either double-down on their current tactics of hypocrisy and latent racism – “Or do you believe in Republican conservative values, like largesse, cronyism and white supremacy?” – or they can come up with an actual viable alternative to what the democrats are doing. This is a two-party system we have. Republicans might want to at least try and make a play for being the second one.

The only way they are going to do that is communicate honestly on a platform that people can actually believe. Personally, I’m not holding my breath.