Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Coverin' ass

Bob Herbert via Live Journal

It seemed that the only people the president wasn't fighting with were the Democrats, who have gone into a coma, and the yahoos who never had much of a problem with such matters as torture and detention without trial.

As Marvin Gaye once sang, "What's going on?"

The people at the top are getting scared, that's what's going on. The fog of secrecy is lifting, and the Bush administration is frightened to death that it will eventually have to pay a heavy price for the human rights abuses it has ordered or condoned in its so-called war on terror.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the Geneva Conventions apply to the prisoners seized by the administration, which means that abusing those prisoners - as so many have said for so long - is unquestionably illegal. And there is also the possibility that the Democrats, if they ever wake up, may take control of at least one house of Congress, giving them the kind of subpoena power and oversight that makes the administration tremble.

The reason President Bush has been trying so frantically to get Congressional passage of his plan to interrogate and try terror suspects is that he needs its contorted interpretations of the law to keep important cases from falling apart, and to cover the collective keisters of higher-ups who may have authorized or condoned war crimes.

The people who would have to worry, if war crimes were found to have been committed, would be those at the top of the command structure who crafted policies that were illegal and ordered them carried out - or who turned a blind eye to atrocities.

Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, Gonzales, and on and on.

Since there's only so much rope, I propose we create a compound in the Mojave Desert for the many who will be awaiting the approaching 'final stretch'. They can be housed in FEMA trailers left over from Katrina. Not fancy, but very expensive digs. If the outgassing from the trailers' construction materials, or the heat, or the cold, or the sanitary facilities, or the food (I suggest leftover C-rations), or the rattlesnakes or boredom don't kill 'em, there'll always be the end of a rope. Eventually. Something for them to live for.

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