tortured logic

i know, it's a cliche. but it fits so well, and i don't have all day to come up with another title.

so now rush limbaugh cares about women breaking the glass ceiling. it says something, and not complimentary, that republicans care more about whether nancy pelosi knew anything about torture then the fact that the bush administration approved of and practiced it. if waterboarding and slamming people into walls and cuffing people into painful, harmful positions is okey-dokey, then who cares what she knew and when? it only matters if what the cia did was illegal, unamerican and flat out shitty. and it was.

so what should nancy pelosi have done? let's go through her options, or i should say lack of them. house members are required to take an oath not to release classified information that they gain in the course of their house of representatives duties- we've had it since the 104th congress. and peter hoekstra, a republican representative, actually called for more stringent legal secrecy requirements. and apparently, the same administration torturing people hated leaks of classified information from congress. remember, these assholes never regret committing the crime; they are always incensed by the exposure of their crime. so nancy pelosi can't tell anybody anything.

so could she have stopped it? please, girlfriend. don't waste my time. what authority does nancy pelosi have to stop this? it's already illegal through the convention against torture, which ronald reagan signed and the u.s. senate ratified. so the bush administration is willing to do something that anybody with any passing knowledge of the convention against torture must know is illegal. what law was nancy pelosi going to pass that she could expect the bush administration to care about? so let's say she goes to the bush administration, secretly, and tells them it's illegal. well, that's what yoo's & bybee's memoes were for! i'm sure the bush adminstraton loved shoving those across the table for nancy to read, as a sort of "we checked with lawyers that already agreed with us- and they told us we are right! isn't that great?" i suppose nancy could have gotten her own lawyers to write legal opinions pointing out what the law actually is. but how can she get other lawyers to declare illegal techniques she's not supposed to tell those lawyers about? and that is ostensibly what john yoo and jay bybee are supposed to be able to do. i don't know anyone who could say the bush administration would have acted differently if the house minority leader, who they think is a commie terrorist sympathizer anyway, told them to stop (rememer, she became speaker in 2007, and was still bound to secrecy by her oath). if nancy had stalked into the oval office and denounced these techniques, george would have just chuckled at her and dick cheney would have stuffed her in his man-sized safe. let's face facts: the bush administration didn't care if torture: 1- is illegal or 2-is illegal even when john yoo and jay bybee say it's legal or 3- is illegal even if it's nancy pelosi saying it's illegal. if you think differently, what the fuck closet do you live in?

so let's get this straight- nancy pelosi can't tell anyone about the torture without fear of prosecution. since whistleblower protection isn't what it used to be, this is a serious consideration. and she can't do anything, since the bush administration is blithely pretending this is all legal no matter what she thinks anyway. and she's responsible? are republicans trying to torture us too?

and now for the photos. i love how all of a sudden we give a shit about what the muslims will think of what we've done. i wonder if john yoo and jay bybee, in their infinite wisdom, could have seen this coming. i wonder if maybe it ocurred to them that people's outrage over doing these things might indicate it's torture, and since torture's illegal, they've got to rule it out. and i wonder why we get to (outrage people) torture, but muslims can't touch a hair on our heads? perhaps, in the future, yoo and bybee can worry about what exposure of the government's crimes will bring before the government commits the crime. i don't see how you can blame nancy pelosi when it was dick cheney who couldn't be bothered to do that.