We Shall Defeat Our Enemy By Becoming Him

Here they are, folks -- the American Senatorial Jihadi:

Roll Call for S.3930 -- A bill to authorize trial by military commission for violations of the law of war, and for other purposes. (Seriously -- I am not making up that description. That's the official title.)

Alabama:	Sessions (R-AL), Yea	Shelby (R-AL), Yea
Alaska:	Murkowski (R-AK), Yea	Stevens (R-AK), Yea
Arizona:	Kyl (R-AZ), Yea	McCain (R-AZ), Yea
Arkansas:	Pryor (D-AR), Yea
Colorado:	Allard (R-CO), Yea	Salazar (D-CO), Yea
Connecticut:	Lieberman (D-CT), Yea
Delaware:	Carper (D-DE), Yea
Florida:	Martinez (R-FL), Yea	Nelson (D-FL), Yea
Georgia:	Chambliss (R-GA), Yea	Isakson (R-GA), Yea
Idaho:	Craig (R-ID), Yea	Crapo (R-ID), Yea
Indiana:	Lugar (R-IN), Yea
Iowa:	Grassley (R-IA), Yea
Kansas:	Brownback (R-KS), Yea	Roberts (R-KS), Yea
Kentucky:	Bunning (R-KY), Yea	McConnell (R-KY), Yea
Louisiana:	Landrieu (D-LA), Yea	Vitter (R-LA), Yea
Maine:	Collins (R-ME), Yea
Michigan:	Stabenow (D-MI), Yea
Minnesota:	Coleman (R-MN), Yea
Mississippi:	Cochran (R-MS), Yea	Lott (R-MS), Yea
Missouri:	Bond (R-MO), Yea	Talent (R-MO), Yea
Montana:	Burns (R-MT), Yea
Nebraska:	Hagel (R-NE), Yea	Nelson (D-NE), Yea
Nevada:	Ensign (R-NV), Yea
New Hampshire:	Gregg (R-NH), Yea	Sununu (R-NH), Yea
New Jersey:	Lautenberg (D-NJ), Yea	Menendez (D-NJ), Yea
New Mexico:	Domenici (R-NM), Yea
North Carolina:	Burr (R-NC), Yea	Dole (R-NC), Yea
Ohio:	DeWine (R-OH), Yea	Voinovich (R-OH), Yea
Oklahoma:	Coburn (R-OK), Yea	Inhofe (R-OK), Yea
Oregon:	Smith (R-OR), Yea
Pennsylvania:	Santorum (R-PA), Yea	Specter (R-PA), Yea
South Carolina:	DeMint (R-SC), Yea	Graham (R-SC), Yea
South Dakota:	Johnson (D-SD), Yea	Thune (R-SD), Yea
Tennessee:	Alexander (R-TN), Yea	Frist (R-TN), Yea
Texas:	Cornyn (R-TX), Yea	Hutchison (R-TX), Yea
Utah:	Bennett (R-UT), Yea	Hatch (R-UT), Yea
Virginia:	Allen (R-VA), Yea	Warner (R-VA), Yea
West Virginia:	Rockefeller (D-WV), Yea
Wyoming:	Enzi (R-WY), Yea	Thomas (R-WY), Yea

Okay -- I take that first thing back. With a moment's reflection, I have come to realize it is wrong to label these Senators "jihadis". That's far too charitable. Jihadis are people who truly believe that what they do is righteous, and in the service of God. They think this primarily because their minds are stuck in the middle ages, and have a backward, unenlightened view of the world and their place in it.

Not so with these radical, cynical bastard people in the Senate, who supported this measure that permits the President to (once again) violate the US Constitution by interpreting the Geneva Conventions however he sees fit, abandon a 900-year tradition of 'civilized' peoples not to permit indefinite detention without the accused's ability to challenge the legal basis for his detention, and torture people however he wants for as long as he wants. These Senators have effectively approved the debasement of American moral standards and legal principles to a level lower than that of the jihadis we seek to neutralize. This measure is actually more depraved than the ambitions of jihadis because the only rational purpose of it is a deeply cynical political one. It is designed to help Republicans win elections, not Americans win the 'War on Terror'. It is designed to generate opposition so that the bill's opponents can be painted as terrorist-coddlers. They wasted no time, either. Obviously they just couldn't wait to say shit like "[Democrats] voted today in favor of MORE rights for terrorists" (Speaker Hastert), and "Democrats [have an] irrational opposition to strong national security policies" (Boener).

These ammoral, sick fuck assclowns have been jackhammering away at the bedrock of American principles for over 5 years now, and yesterday they finally broke through to the dark soil beneath. I fear the foundation will be a lot harder to repair than it was to build.

And if Bush and his sycophantic cronies are less moral than terrorists, which I believe has been amply demonstrated, then those Democrats who voted in favor of this bill for fear of political fallout are worse yet. I'm talking about you, Joe Lieberman. And you, Senators Lautenberg, Salazar, Nelsons, Menendez, Rockefeller, Stabinow, Landrieu, Johnson, Carper and Pryor. I would say that you should be ashamed of yourselves, but clearly you have no capacity for shame.

As reprehensible as this political smokescreen is, and as much disgust I feel toward inherently anti-American assault on democracy and decency, I can't help but ponder what this whole revolting episode says about the American people ourselves. The Bush Administration pursues tactics like these because they have proven in the past to work. They know that Americans, on the whole, are so ignorant, racist, xenophobic, and intellectually slothful that they can paint people who oppose shredding the Constitution and opposing torture as being "soft on terror". In short, what they're telling us is that if you don't have the stomach to behave just like a terrorist, then you can't beat the terrorists. The fact that this message can be at all effective is a national disgrace.

Dog Eats Study Group's Homework

If you read this news about the Iraq Study Group last week, you were probably as puzzled as Eduardo as to a.) why the group would bother calling a press conference to announce they had nothing to announce, and b.) why, after six months, the group has no useful information. My first assignment was to figure out if the jackasses in the study group are getting paid to do nothing - because nothing pisses us off more than government waste. Well, right after the government suppressing constitutional rights, killing civilians in foreign countries, toppling legitimate governments, torturing detainees, cynically allying itself with oppressive regimes and ignoring global climate change. But it's right at the top of the remainder of that list.

It turns out that the group is funded with federal dollars, but the amount is tiny - 1.3 million. The members of the group don't get paid, as the funding is to cover travel costs and, presumably, hookers and blow. As the group recently travelled to Iraq for several days, my guess is that the 1.3 million is long gone. Aside from paying for a flight to the world's most dangerous airport, the august members spent three and a half days wandering around Baghdad, bleating like sheep and eating some fucking awesome falafel while being guarded by scores of mercenaries, uh, private contractors. Only one of the study group's ten members actually ventured outside of the Green Zone, Virginia's Charles Robb, and he hardly counts as he was transported around in an armored mecha the entire time.

The easiest and most obvious answer to question 'b' above is that the group isn't very effective at studying. If I were commissioned to deliver a report on, say, the inner working of my city's wastewater treatment plant, I would expect to look around a bit. Check out the slime pit, maybe peek in at the Golgothan that lives there, take some pictures of whatever the hell happens in a treatment plant. If I were to instead go to the plant's front office, pee in the men's bathroom and hightail it out of there, I wouldn't have a lot to write about. Using advanced mathematical algorithms and the latest GIS maps of Iraq, I've determined that the Green Zone in Baghdad represents less than 1% of Iraq's landmass. No wonder the "study group" didn't have a lot of useful information to share with the pesky media.

The answer to question 'a' is a little more convoluted, but it's most easily answered with a name: Lee Hamilton. Lee is co-chair to the study group, paired with James Baker. We all know that James would take up residence in G. W. Bush's lower colon if he could - that man loves those Bushes - and is going to blow sunshine up our collective asses no matter what's happening in Iraq. Hamilton, however, gives the study group its bipartisan shine as he's a Democrat. And oh, what a Democrat he is.

Lee Hamilton was the chairman of the House committee looking into the Iran-contra affair. He was paired with Dick Cheney at the time, and chose to ignore damning evidence against Reagan and Bush the Elder because he thought an impeachment trial would have been 'bad for the country.' Lee also headed the investigation into the 1980 October Surprise; he did such a kickass job that he exonerated Bush before the investigation even began, effectively cutting out the V.P. from the inquiry. Then Lee co-chaired the 9/11 commission (see? bipartisan!), leading the commission to point out all sorts of flaws in the Bush administration's handling of events prior to the attacks, only to whitewash the conclusions and recommendations. Now Lee is co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, working with James Baker on getting to the truth of what's happening in our new terrorist training camp. Guess how this one's going to turn out? Better yet, guess whether it's going to turn out. Based on his record, no doubt ol' Lee is going to conclude (if anything) that the truth would be just too hard to take for the fragile constitutions of the American people, who so rarely furnish their homes with a good fainting couch these days.

The National Intelligence Estimate

We're all aware by now that the classified Nat'l Intel Estimate, compiled in April, was finally leaked to the press. And I'm sure that its contents did not exactly enlighten any of us: that the threat of terrorism has grown greater since 9/11, that the invasion and occupation of Iraq is a contributing factor, and that Bush's administration is a miserable failure. It's the consensus of all 16 US spy agencies. What I think should be emphasized is the 'Estimate' part of the report. I haven't read the report (as no doubt you haven't either), but I'm willing to make an educated guess that there are significant factors that are not included in the report's analysis. Chief among those factors is the general mentality and approach to global affairs of an administration that would make the claim that its President possesses the authority to define all laws as he chooses, regardless whether his interpretations are remotely similar to the spirit of said laws. And on that note, did I miss something, or did the recent 'compromise' on Bush's right to burn the writ of habeas corpus using the geneva conventions as kindling basically amount to Bush getting exactly what he was demanding in the first place? What exactly was the 'compromise'? 'Just not on Sundays'?

Getting back to the NIE... it's not just the mere fact that we're occupying Iraq that has scattered the seeds of terrorism all over the planet, but how we do it. Or rather, how the Bush administration has thus far chosen to pursue it. They have not had a handle on the country since they stepped foot in it, and it only got worse from there. Somehow, the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, keeps his job, even after a 3 1/2 year demonstration of profound incompetence and gross negligence, and shouting at subordinates that the next person to mention post-war planning gets fired. Truth is, the Bush Administration gives many many people many many reasons to feel strong anger toward the United States. And it's not just angry Muslims, either. Pretty much every sane person in the world with at least a cursory knowledge of current events feels some level of contempt for current US political leadership. Oh, I'm sure some would say that's not fair, that there must be plenty of people who don't feel contempt for the Bush Administration, but I submit to you that if you took any random person off the street, gave them a psych eval and a pop quiz on current events, then everyone who passed both would prove to feel, at a minimum, a mild queasiness over the track record of Team Bush. Granted, it's only a hypothesis, but I will believe it to be true until I am definitively, clinically, scientifically proven wrong. So while the National Intelligence Estimate seems to conclude that the Iraq debacle is the reason for the robust crop of terrorfruit this year, I suggest the more likely cause is not the situation itself, but the people who drove us into that situation.

And I just can't bear to conclude without wagging a finger at the Democrats. Even when paired up against a team of malevolent, self-indulgent, incompetent sub- or post-humans (for I cannot discount the possibility that Bush and everyone loyal to him has somehow been infected with a genetic mutagen that can fast-forward the evolutionary clock and create a bizarre chimera that possesses no detectable trace of a human soul), even when pitted against them as an opponent, the Democrats don't look all that appealling. Which is to say, almost not at all appealling, except, perhaps, as the only sad alternative to utter depravity. Where were the Democrats when it was somehow arranged that Republicans would hammer out the details of a torture agreement with other Republicans? Who tapped Pelosi on the shoulder and said, "um, Nance? If we sit out on these talks, won't we have to accept the results of the negotiation without complaint, basically? Ya think?" So in the end, Bush convinced Republicans to let Bush have what Bush wants. It's a startling turn of events, isn't it? Sure didn't see that coming. John McCain seemed so genuinely resolute and indignant. Really shows what the Dems are made of. They are so not a viable opposition that they don't even lead one when it actually occurs. Worthless Democrats. I hate that I'm so often forced to vote for them. If, after November's election, they fail to impeach Bush and Cheney before they leave the White House, I swear I don't know how I'll be able to deflate further my opinion of them.