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.

bribery and ass-kissing aren't appeasement if they're done by petraeus

i've said it before (sort of), and i'll say it again: re-boosting our troop levels to 160,000 in 2007 and thinking it would reduce the violence, when we had about 160,000 troops in iraq to begin with and that didn't stop the violence then, is not what reduced violence in iraq. are people aware that we've been literally bribing the sunni insurgents to stop attacks, and sucking up to moqtada al-sadr to keep up his truce? that's why the attacks went down. for fuck's sake, it was the occupation of iraq that sunni and shia insurgents were attacking u.s. troops and each other over. and what's more, there are few mixed areas for sunni and shia to fight each other in anymore. and on top of that, where's the goddamned political progress of teary-eyed, hug inducing reconciliation between sunni and shia? is baghdad suddenly getting along better with the kurds?

republicans are dislocating their shoulders patting themselves on the back for getting violence levels down to what they were in 2005, 2004. excuse me, but those years sucked too. maybe they sucked a little less for those of us whose suffering was from watching it on tv. or maybe they sucked a little less because the shitty deceptions of the bush administration to justify this exercise in shittiness hadn't yet sunk in. i don't know.

however, unless you've been living in a cave, the iraqi government finally did what its people have been demanding and told the u.s that it's time to get its troops out. turns out, those permanent military bases the bush administration wanted ain't gonna happen. turns out, the iraqis don't really like the idea. who'dve thunk it? if these bases were for what i think they were (staging grounds for future wars against middle eastern countries), then i can hardly blame the iraqis for saying "FUCK NO!" and if the bush administration is threatening iraq with the loss of $20 billion dollars in its money for not signing the SOFA, then iraqis should kick someone in the nuts. there's a phrase for that tactic- it's called a protection racket.

and here's the kicker. here's what gets me pissed about iraq. let's say that we actually leave things there right as rain. let's say the sunnis and shias and kurds find some other group they can all hate together so they stop fighting each other. let's say that women can realistically leave their homes for jobs, socializing and educations. let's say the oil is flowing and gas is back down to $2 per gallon. WE STILL HAVE TO GO BACK TO AGHGANISTAN AND DEFEAT THE TALIBAN! remember that war?!?!? no?!?!? here's a hint: it's the one john mccain thinks just needs some tweaking. maybe we could even, dare i suggest it, capture bin laden?

in other words, we've lost more than 4,000 members of the u.s. armed forces, over 150 other armed forces from our "coalition" "partners", and anywhere from 86,000 to 1,000,000 iraqi civilians- but "winning" here means we're right back where we started. in 2003. with no bin laden, more opium, and a taliban/al quaeda force that still hasn't gone away. except that now, iraq's leadership won't be a neutralizing force against iran- because of the shia/shia thing, and because of iran's new relationship with iraq. and remember, iran is still in the axis of evil. (i think- i haven't heard that phrase in a few years. it may have died the quiet death "stay the course" did. finally.) we don't want iraq to suddenly start thinking that maybe they should side with iran over us (even though they're supposedly a sovereign nation). at least, not until iran is a trading partner, and they've given us the good trade agreements first. or at least some oil.