Hurt Me

Dick Cheney has a problem with torture: Congress won't let him do it anymore. He's fighting to stop it, though. Stop Congress, that is, not torture. Because he needs torture. He hasn't ever been tortured, of course. In order for that to happen, he would have had to, at any point in his life, actually risk it all for his country. As a card-carrying neoconservative, he's ideologically against anyone whose parents make more than $500,000 risking anything for anyone. On the flip side of the ideological coin, he's foursquare in favour of anyone who works for a living (or has parents who work) being killed to support his ideals.

John McCain, that quasi-independent troublemaker who never signed the Junta pledge sheet, showed what kind of unreliable scum he is by first serving his country with distinction - bastard! Just like that Kerry fop, he got his hands dirty doing the work of his nation at a time of war. He wasn't at home cramming for midterms with Cheney and Rummy, and he wasn't out dodging National Guard service with a suspiciously white nose like Georgie.

Second, McCain challenged Dear Leader in the 1999 primaries and beat him in places like New Hampshire. Karl Rove had to go all, umm, Karl Rove on him (sorry, there's no other creature that does anything quite as despicable and low-down as Karl Rove - there's no adequate simile) and intimate that he had a bastard black child (because he and his wife had adopted an Ethiopian baby - bastard!). Why did McCain had to push them, make them go Rove on them? Obviously not a man to be trusted.

Now McCain has lined up 90 Senate votes - 90! - to outlaw cruel and unusual punishment by US government people. They have to go along with some sort of guidebook that those pansies at the Army put out.

"But," pleads Cheney, "can't the CIA torture people? At least let the CIA torture? Please?"

No.

"This is the first time they've said explicitly that the intelligence community should be allowed to treat prisoners inhumanely," said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "In the past, they've only said that the law does not forbid inhumane treatment." Now, he said, the administration is saying more concretely that it cannot be forbidden.

When did Cheney turn into this sort of reptile life form? He generally gets decent marks as Defense Secretary for Bush 41. He was a complete cro-magnon as a Congressman, but there are plenty of those and they're not walking around with thumbscrews.

Dickie's also the creep who, it now appears, told Scooter Libby about Valerie (Plame) Wilson. The investigation has the Junta locked up in a fist of apprehension, as both Darth Rove and Scooter are on the chopping block. There are already signs that Scooter might be jettisoned to protect Rove, Dickie, and Georgie himself. If they can work it, the Junta will play musical chairs and leave Scooter standing at the end - so the Special Investigator can knock him down. I guess they're pretty sure he won't tell tales on his way to the pokey - in anticipation of a 2008 presidential pardon.

According to a couple of former Junta players, Junta foreign policy has been Dickie plaything for quite a while. Brent Scowcroft - Bush 41's NSA - and Col. Larry Wilkerson - Colin Powell's Chief of Staff - are out of the Junta for good. They've been saying bad things about how badly mismanaged our foreign policy has been.

Foreign policy under President Bush is run by a secretive "cabal" headed by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's dream of spreading democracy around the Middle East is misguided and could backfire badly.

What about Powell himself?

Powell himself has largely stayed quiet, although he broke with the White House earlier this month in backing a Senate ban on U.S. torture of military prisoners.

Yet another old fool - sorry, American war veteran - who doesn't want the American government to join the list of the world's torturing nations. Can't they revoke his citizenship for that?

But you have to go to the really insane fringe of public life to get the down-low on what's going on. Let's check the gutter:

William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, said the public criticisms signal a rebirth of the dispute within the Republican Party between "idealists," who favour using U.S. power to remake the world, and "realists," who tend to deal with the world as it is.

"Idealists" are the utter nutbags who cooked up the Iraq war. They are the ones who are working toward a Biblical Rapture by bringing about the "End of Days" with an aggressively hostile and juvenile foreign policy. They are the ones who want John Bolton at the UN destroying that institution from the inside. They want an America that is totally isolated and protected only by force of arms and a missile defense shield that will only ever work to enrich their friends.

"Realists" are the conservatives who just want the money. They want the Iraqi oil and don't care who has to get killed to bring it back. They are the ones who want to walk away from our foreign commitments because they're selfish and greedy, not because they believe in anything.

Idealists hate that because they do believe in something. Dick Cheney, for example, believes in torturing people.