Holy freaking crap. No, really. I come home from a beautiful sunny walk this morning to this headline: Memo: Two al Qaeda leaders waterboarded 266 times.

I don’t care what your excuse is, President Obama – I don’t care what your reasoning is in terms of looking forward instead of looking back. As much as I have disagreed with your policy to not go looking for prosecutions of those committing war crimes during the Bush administration (and as bloody angry as it has made me), that disagreement and disapproval is nothing to the sickness and rage I felt when I read that headline.

Pardon my French, but two-hundred-and-sixty-six fucking times?????

Once is unforgivable. Once is torture. Two-hundred-and-sixty-six fucking times???????

Abomination is not a strong enough word.

I don’t care how evil these guys are. There must be consequences. MUST. And you must pursue them right now – yesterday, if possible.

I applaud you for releasing the information, because the truth needs the light of day and facts are better than dark speculation. Maybe you released the information so that you could do something about it, I’m not sure. I am not surprised that the Cheney-Bush administration did this, but then, neither were you. Neither is anybody with a brain.

But if you do not prosecute those involved, if you do not tell the world (which we are frankly lucky to have be willing to speak with us at all after the last eight years) that we recognize these egregious sins as a nation and we are willing to pay the consequences in the world community, I guarantee that we will pay the consequences in other ways.

I know you feel you need the support of the intelligence community – and you do – but having the intelligence community call your shots is not better than having the defense industry call the prior administration’s.

If you do not do something about this, you make us all less safe. You make your citizens abroad less safe (I’ve never pulled the “I’m a Canadian” trick when travelling, but I may have to next time) and you make your citizens at home less safe. Torturing people by waterboarding them more than 100 times (?!?##@$????) does not act as a deterrent – it acts as an invitation for revenge and a spark for an inferno of anger by people who already see us as unjust, greedy, self-centered, wicked. And we are. But we also have better angels – we can be just, fair, giving, ethical, appropriately introspective. We can admit that terrible things were done in our name, and we can accept the blame for that. And we can stop history from repeating itself.

This door to torture, Mr. Obama, cannot be left open. Cannot.

Do something about this, Mr. President. I’ve seen you speak, and it inspired me to spend precious hours away from my new baby to do what I could to ensure you were elected. I know you can make a strong statement, I know you can fight this fight. I know you can say that this is what was done in our name and it was terrible and it was horrid and it was abominable and it was wrong and it is not what the world should expect from us.

I know you can make a loud and clear nostra maxima culpa for all of us. You may have been reluctant to do it, to open that Pandora’s Box before. Now that you have opened it, do the right thing,

It is time for those who did this in our name to pay the consequences, and for us to accept the discomfort of dealing with our recent past.

It is not a choice. We must.

And that, Mr. President, is this:

Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Classy, I know, but what can I say – it’s from the heart.

Apparently, we don’t even have the secret FISA courts to protect us now.

And let us not forget that the FISA court itself was considered a draconian breach of civil liberties. Even if they did decide that some of Bush’s wiretapping program was illegal.

So the Bush administration’s tack continues – when they get caught explicitly violating the law, they change it.

How, with this supposed Democratic majority, did a law which allows Fredo and company oversight on eavesdropping get passed??? Sure, it’s only supposed to apply to foreign calls “routed through the U.S.” (um… gee, define “routed”… and what do you want to bet that big telecom starts “routing” a whole lot more through the U.S.?), but with no one to check up on them, do you really think these guys are going to play by the rules?

Hell, I’m married to a foreign national. Does that mean that any call he makes is a “foreign call routed through the U.S.”?

Yes, I know, there’s always the “if you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about” argument, but folks, these are people who keep changing the definition of what is wrong.

We’re at high speed, ³/₄ of the way down the slippery slope, friends, and the speed bumps we elected to slow us down decided to grease themselves instead this weekend. Probably because Mr. Bush told them they wouldn’t be going on vacation if they didn’t give him the bill.

The rest of America is used to being forced to sacrifice vacations for their bosses, unfortunately – so why the Hell did these guys decide they didn’t owe us the same thing?

Check here for the roll call vote on the bill in the House. Then call your representative and tear him or her a new one, if he or she deserves it.

Don’t worry… they won’t be listening in because you’re not a foreign national, right?

Wonder what damage you can do in 150 minutes or so?

I just hope more people from within like Mr. Koppel start speaking out, and soon.

(Snagged from Mother Jones…)

*turns on megaphone*

People of the American Empire: Bush’s pardon commutation of Scooter Libby’s sentence has nothing to do with Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton isn’t even the issue here. Bill Clinton has nothing to do with the current situation! Bill Clinton does not sit in the White House (much as he’d probably like to). Bill Clinton does not have the power of the pardon right now. And Bill Clinton’s administration did not out covert CIA agents.

Love Bill Clinton or hate him, I don’t care. He’s not the president. He did a lot of stupid things, but he didn’t do this one.

Whatever Bill Clinton did, and I absolutely agree that his last-minute pardons soured his credibility considerably, that does not change this fact:

George W. Bush, who promised that whoever leaked Ms. Plame’s identity would go to jail, has not only failed to cooperate in prosecuting those who leaked the information, but has made sure that a man who lied to block the investigation of the leak is not punished. George Bush is effectively pardoning a guy who kept the Special Prosecutor from being able to investigate a breach of national security. Don’t tell me there wasn’t a quid pro quo. Don’t tell me there was “no crime”, and thus Libby shouldn’t be prosecuted for obstructing the investigation – if the White House ensures that no one can investigate the crime, it does not mean that no crime occurred just because the White House is assisting in the obstruction of justice. Even if no crime occurred (and you’re a fool if you believe one didn’t, but let’s hold that aside), obstructing an investigation and lying to a grand jury is still a crime!!!

What part of that do you right-wing wingnuts not get?

And if Bill Clinton had done the same in a matter of national security, I’m sure you fine folks would have made sure he was held accountable. As well he should have been, were that the case.

It doesn’t matter how many crooks and clowns he pardoned, because none of that changes what George W. Bush has done.

Do yourselves a favor, guys… try thinking beyond your stupid talking points. Use your brains. Stop smoking crack. It’ll do you good.

And just because Clinton chose to comment doesn’t give you guys a right to continue to misdirect the argument, either. Clinton isn’t even a player here.

Heckuva job, Bushie.

Let’s not even pretend not to be hypocritical and corrupt.

But this, my friends, is really stupid.

This post at Language Log discusses a NYT has an article which presents Iran’s reaction to the “evidence” of Iranian involvement in bringing weapons to Iraq.

You see, some of the material allegedly of Iranian origin apparently has dates in MM/DD/YYYY order on it. And the Iranians (quite rightly, it should be supposed) think that’s a little weird.

Now, for those of you who’ve never paid any attention to anything outside of the U.S., you should note that the U.S. is one of the few places in the world where such a format is used. Iran, however, is, in fact, not one of those places. You know, because the rest of the world isn’t like us just because we think we’re the best place ever.

Most of the rest of the world – this includes Iran – uses DD/MM/YYYY format. And some larger Asian countries use YYYY/MM/DD format. But most places, outside of the U.S., do not use the MM/DD/YYYY format. This is probably one of the first things you learn if you, you know, leave the country.

So basically, um… unless the Iranians are just being really clever in labelling their munitions or documents or whatever this was about, we are, yet again, being assholes. Well, I take that back. We the people are not. Our not-so-democratically-elected government, on the other hand, wins the Golden Rectum Award for this one. C’mon guys… if you’re going to manufacture evidence, at least get the freaking dates right.

And if the rest of our government outside of the administration doesn’t jump all over this to stop involvement in Iran we simply cannot afford, cannot do, cannot live with, we are one seriously damned broken country.

I’m seriously ashamed by this.

Oh, these will be interesting times. And not so much in the sense they’ve been in the last 6 years (and maybe not even in the cursed sense of “interesting times”), I hope.