Plus ça change

Not to ruin your lovely weekend or anything, but here are some fresh remnants of the depravity of the Bush administration.  Immigrant detainees dying in private jails and officials scrambling to cover up their deaths and mistreatment.
Every time stuff like this surfaces, I wonder how is it that Bush and Cheney and their despicable minions roam the Earth unscathed.
Instead of jail, why don't they just deport the people? Do you know that they have detained legal immigrants because of bureaucratic technicalities that then disappear into a nightmarish rabbit hole from which there is no way out? 
Enjoy the outrage!

Let's get outta there! NOW!

Colonel Reese, an American adviser in Iraq, is saying in no uncertain terms, (blunt is how the Times puts it) that it is time to say Adios amigous! and leave Iraq.
Hey, not a moment too soon! What took you so long?
His memo makes for great reading, even though it has the tone of a superior being who has finally ran out of patience with the pesky, stubborn natives. That is, the tone of a colonialist from the 19th century.
In a nutshell: we can't change their ways and we are not welcome anymore, plus they're bleeding us to death.
He says, let's declare victory and call it a day. I have a problem with the victory part, because it don't look like no victory to me, but just call it what you please, and let's vamoose.
Why do Americans insist that other people are going to abandon their culture and their entrenched ways and embrace, digest, and ape a totally different culture in a matter of months? Is this the height of naiveté or arrogance, or both? We can't even change our own culture HERE.
The US invades and occupies a country under false pretenses. This country is ruled by a truly evil bastard whose only way to keep the ethnic chaos in check is through a reign of utter terror. This is a deeply abused and traumatized country, but Americans think that they will "liberate" it and all of a sudden the grateful Iraqis, who would not know democracy or freedom if it bit them in the ass, have not known it and will not know it for the next thousand years, are going to all start acting like Thomas Jefferson. Instead, they start a massive bloodbath against themselves and the occupying forces.
We cannot invade a country over false pretenses, because of sheer greed and then pretend we were there to save it. And who should be held accountable for this criminal mess? To the gallows!

To clean up the mess we are leaving behind would probably require at least 50 years and too much money to count, neither of which we can afford. As many commenters say, let's bring the troops back and use the gazillions we are wasting over there for better things at home; i.e, single payer healthcare.

I quote Mr. Byron Jones from Pennsylvania:

...we spend trillions of dollars for stupid "regime changes" aka Vietnam, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. without so much as flinching. Saving lives and providing affordable medical care for our own citizens, well, that is something entirely different. Can anyone explain the logic? In other words, you can use my tax dollars to kill someone I don't know, but God forbid that you use my tax dollars to help my neighbor obtain affordable health insurance!

Bring the troops home NOW.

Obama is a Wimp: Cheney to the Gallows

He is not a wimp, as Cheney claims, because he is "soft" on terror. He is a wimp and a hypocrite and a disillusionment to those who voted him into office because he is soft on Cheney (and on real health care reform and on banks and their perks, but let's leave it at that).
Prosecute those responsible for breaking the law during the Bush Administration to the fullest extent of the law. Send these motherfuckers where they belong: behind bars.

McNamara: A timely death

The best this man could do is die right now. Actually, it would have come in handy if he died right when Dick Cheney and his team first foisted the weapons of mass destruction lie upon the American people. His death is hopefully serving to revisit with more urgency why are we still in Iraq and why we are not prosecuting that band of bastards for war crimes, incompetence, torture, lying, etc.
I am very disappointed that Obama refuses to go after them. I don't think the small potatoes who actually did the torturing should be punished first. It's the big fish who need to stand trial.
McNamara's belated contrition sheds interesting light on his successors. We all know we are never going to get that kind of soulsearching from Cheney or Rummy or any of those cowards. Dick Cheney is not going to expiate his guilt by trying to alleviate poverty like McNamara did for years at The World Bank. McNamara was perhaps an evil man, but he had more moral stature than the repugnant Cheney.
The war in Vietnam was ultimately rejected by American public opinion because in those days you could turn your TV on at 6 pm and see daily horrific footage of the savagery and the absurdity of it all right at home. The media was not in total cahoots with the government and there was a sense of deep outrage. That is totally missing today. Every single American citizen should be demanding to end this stupid Iraq war and to bring the troops back home NOW. The parties responsible for lying to the American people and starting a war under false pretext should be tried in a court of law.

Be a patriot: scorn Sarah Palin.

It is the patriotic duty of every American citizen to heap unlimited amounts of scorn and vitriol on the topic of Sarah Palin's resignation and her future political hopes. The mere fact of her political existence is already surreal, pathetic and ridiculous, as is the entire Republican party, which is having a decadence as grotesque and revolting as Nero's Rome. However, it is our duty to remind her in no uncertain terms that she and her party demean and diminish the great civic achievement of our last Presidential election. In this historical moment, the citizens singlehandedly delivered this country from the clutches of indecency, and saved and helped restore the last shred of dignity of our political system.
Nobody knows why she is doing what she is doing. She is either having a meltdown or planning to run for president. Let us pray it's the former and not the latter, because she is unfit for public life. I think we should all be tired of the grotesque humiliations we endured for eight years and should countenance no more from the likes of her.
One thing is clear: She recently signed a lucrative contract to "write" a book.
The sheer absurdity of it all.

Cheney: You are Pissing me OFF

Not content with leaving us to worry in peace about a worldwide pandemic of Swine Flu, the malignant, malevolent, satanic, chill-inducing ex VP (or rather ex P) is intent on discrediting the Obama Administration's efforts to restore dignity to the foreign and domestic policy of the US, and potentially save us from harm's way in an intelligent and diplomatic manner. He continues carping that Obama is making us less safe, although there is absolutely no evidence of that. He continues defending torture even though it has been amply documented that the only thing torture is good for is to manufacture more crazy lunatics hell bent on torturing us back.
If I were Obama, just to shut this fucker's trap, I would allow for impeachment proceedings against him and his underlings. Let him rant all he wants from jail.
Meanwhile, you can meet the obnoxious man who sucks Cheney's dick in this video from The Daily Show. Listening to him, now that is torture.
Here is a certifiable moron attempting to defend waterboarding. He is so unbelievably stupid that he mentions the presence of doctors, to make sure the torturee is still alive, as if this was a sign of benevolence. The presence of doctors in torture chambers is one of the most base examples of human depravity. Doctors are brought in to ensure that the prisoners withstand as much pain and suffering as possible without dying. The moment you torture, there are no humanitarian concerns.
This dickhead should be waterboarded with a pail of shit, in the presence of a doctor. Let's see then if he feels the same way.
Jon Stewart was excellent. But he should have pointed to the fact that coercive interrogation has been found to yield little of value and is a spurious argument in favor of torture. He was up against a frantic bully, who knows his argument doesn't withstand scrutiny, but who kept pointing his finger and hollering through the conversation. What an asshole. And who does he thinks he's fooling by calling his outfit something for the defense of democracy. You can't talk about the defense of democracy and advocate for torture. They are mutually exclusive.
Maybe the torturers who actually physically inflicted pain should not be prosecuted. Although I don't see why not. But their superiors? Those who gave the orders? Most certainly and all the way to the top.