The Bush-Cheney gang remind me of the years I spent as a peace officer in security with the California State Department of Corrections. A guy was incarcerated for molesting a little girl. Why did you kill her, he was asked. "I had to. She wouldn't stop screaming." And the little dog? "I had to. It wouldn't stop chasing me and barking." See? He had to kill them. It wasn't his fault.

Are the members of the Bush-Cheney gang insane or sociopathic? Does it reall matter which?

Is there a program we don't know about to maintain the silence and the drumbeat against prosecution? Wouldn't it take an investigation to find out? On other things, it's turned out to be more than just selfish corporate interests that supressed the truth. Is it so in this case too?

Here's the thing. I know lots of fair-minded people, liberal people, who are opposed to prosecution on the (wrongheaded) grounds that it would distract the country too much in a time of economic need, or would unduly "dwell on the past." This tells me that it does not take a concerted effort between government and corporate America to suppress the call for prosecutions of Bush administration officials for their various crimes.

That's not to say I think there's no possibility of some degree of collusion in the mold of the Pentagon/media media consultants scandal, but I do think it's less clear-cut here. I think the primary motivation - obviously without being able to know for sure - is the basic self-interest of our major media players and Democratic politicians to avoid their own complicity in these crimes. Because so many acceded or condoned these things when they were happening or first became known, there exists a critical mass of people eager to "turn the page" and paper over what happened with the avoidance of truthful language and use of euphemisms like "harsh interrogation techniques."

Let's hope a larger segment of the population and the intelligentsia have the nerve to speak out forcefully next time. I won't hold my breath. I hate to sound glib, but my fear is that we'll be too busy focusing on some celebrity's breakup or the sex scandal du jour to bother with such trivialities as political and moral self-correction. Even that may be too generous. Perhaps instead we'll again be driven by the same blinding bloodlust and xenophobia that got us into the current mess.

It's possible all this is merely coincidence, but it does sort of make you wonder - knowing all we know now about the neo-cons and their former objectives which have now all been brought to light.

I know nothing of The Jones Report, but he has cross referenced EVERY SINGLE point with legitimate sources from US Dept of Defense web page to MSNBC, etc.

Please read and let me know what you think. You can click into my signature for the link and listen to Wolfowitz giving a speech on June 1, 2001 to a West Point Commencement:

http://www.jonesreport.com/articles/070207_wolfowitz.html

Although it's been fun chatting about our torture practices & hypocrisy all, let's not forget that this is the time when we ceremonially celebrate the completion of another Earth rotation around the Sun.

Here's hoping the next trip will be better.

Bush will be gone Jan 20th. I hope Glenn can move on and find something new to discuss.

We need us some tumbrils.

Hauling the malefactors up to the Capitol steps is necessary, and the more dramatic, the better.

The prattlers on the teevee keep harping on the Paradigm Shift we're undergoing, what with the end of one era, the beginning of another, etc., etc., all very royalist and so on, welcoming in the New King, this Exotic from the Foreign Nation Of Hawaii (I'm sure the Hawaiians will be delighted, about dam time they got their sovereignty back), and all the New Ideas, New Ways, New New Deals we're gonna get.

Something completely different.

Of course, given the Paradigm Shift underway, the idea of reaching back into the past to account for this or that mistake would be... too... rude.

Yet still, tumbrils would add so much...

Why do you hope that?

Bush has destroyed our country and left us with a mess that will likely bankrupt us.

And you want to move on and turn the page ... ?

By far, the greatest rhetorical enemy of any push to induce the Obama administration to take steps toward meaningful prosecutions is the inevitable, and most assuredly constant, depiction in the establishment media of such efforts as the silly political stirrings of "the Left." This lazy heuristic has single-handedly eviscerated innumerable attempts to correct genuine national problems and injustices, and it must be destroyed. It is one of the most effective, and despicable, techniques employed by forces of the status quo to suppress actual democratic action, in blithe disregard of the substantive merits of that action.

This reflex, this deeply damaging sleight-of-hand, must be anticipated and aggressively countered. Combining anticipation and confrontation, one effective technique is for the proponents to acknowledge and refute the inevitable tactic before it is employed, segueing immediately into the necessity of the action, and the profound ignorance and/or depravity of opposing it.

This puts control of the debate in the hands of the proponent, as opposed to his or her having to react to the dismissal of the cause as a flighty and radical attempt to impose a "leftist" agenda.

Here's the thing. I know lots of fair-minded people, liberal people, who are opposed to prosecution on the (wrongheaded) grounds that it would distract the country too much in a time of economic need, or would unduly "dwell on the past." This tells me that it does not take a concerted effort between government and corporate America to suppress the call for prosecutions of Bush administration officials for their various crimes.

I knew a lot of fair-minded people, liberal people, who believed that a trade-off must be immediately considered in the aftermath of September 11th between liberty and security. And many such people who believed that "now is not the time to speak out". I think we all did. That's why we didn't need to know that there was actually more to it than that.

I think the primary motivation - obviously without being able to know for sure - is the basic self-interest of our major media players and Democratic politicians to avoid their own complicity in these crimes. Because so many acceded or condoned these things when they were happening or first became known, there exists a critical mass of people eager to "turn the page" and paper over what happened with the avoidance of truthful language and use of euphemisms like "harsh interrogation techniques."

The belief was, until the military analyst story broke, that the same thing was happening with the run up to the Iraq war: that the media was eager to put the Judy Millers and cheerleading behind them. Still believed it when there was a sudden loss of Iraq on the front page just before Christmas 2007, until it morphed into "we won the surge" just in time for the campaign.

It doesn't have to be. But it sure would be strange if an administration that went to such lengths to protect itself from allegations about manufacturing the casus belli, would go to no lengths to protect itself from allegations of major war crimes.

Maybe it's because I watch a lot of war crime related documentary that I notice it, but the squelching of the anti-torture and rendition flicks and toning down of the documentary language until very late in this administration and nearly after all elections has been quite unnerving. It could be just corporate interest, though.