New Rule: If you veto a ban on water-boarding, or speak publicly in favor of water-boarding..

you have to agree to undergo water-boarding. If you are so certain water-boarding is NOT torture, then please, allow a demonstration on YOURSELF so that you can truly subjectively judge how it is or is not torture.

Yesterday, President Bush vetoed a bill which would ban water-boarding as an interrogation tool. The bill would limit the CIA to the 19 interrogation tactics used in the military. Sadly, Congress probably doesn’t have the votes to override the veto.

Here’s one left-wing weak-kneed lily-livered approach to interrogation:

The use of force, mental torture, threats, insults, or exposure to unpleasant and inhumane treatment of any kind is prohibited by law and is neither authorized nor. condoned by the US Government. Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear. However, the use of force is not to be confused with psychological ploys, verbal trickery, or other nonviolent and noncoercive ruses used by the interrogator in questioning hesitant or uncooperative sources.

…………..Consequently, from both legal and moral viewpoints, the restrictions established by international law, agreements, and customs render threats of force, violence, and deprivation useless as interrogation techniques.

In case you didn’t recognize the rhetoric, that passage is from the United States Army Field Manual.

I enjoy the show ’24’ as much as the next guy, but I’d wager to say that the rare occasion for an interrogator to actually save the world or the United States with torture would probably be met with rule-bending, but the truth is, the world is not as simple as ’24’. The ‘code’ of Jack Bauer is the code of comic-book tortured super-hero.

Many of the same people supporting this type of interrogation or people who claim this nation to be Christian or at least founded on Judeo-Christian principles. Please explain to me how water-boarding fits into any form of the Golden Rule, or the admonition to love others as you love yourself?

Christians have argued for hundreds of years about reconciling war and killing others in war with their faith. I don’t see how this argument elevates to water-boarding.

In case anyone from the secret service is reading this blog, I am not suggesting anyone torture the President of the United States. That type of activity is immoral and shouldn’t be practiced on even the most common of criminals, much less on the leader of the country that is supposed to be the democratic beacon on the hill.

Hey, Let’s Blame the Media, or the ass that cried Wolf(owitz)..

I wish I could have blamed the media many years ago when I made a disastrous choice regarding retirement funds accrued from my first ‘real’ job.  I won’t go into the painful details, but the ramifications lingered for years. It was my choice, but I should have realized that the media with all their advertisements and economic fruit hanging from the tree of good and stupid were really to blame.  If I’d only been well-known enough to chastise the digitally stained nee’ ink-stained wretches responsible for my debacle.

I say this after reading that Paul Wolfowitz is blaming the media for his resignation from the World Bank.  I guess it was Forbes Magazine, or maybe was it the Washington Post, that dictated the overly-generous terms of departure from the World Bank for his girlfriend.  Maybe it was WKRN that ensured that exclaimed ‘AHA”, let’s get a job for Shaha.  Maybe the State Department would be a great place for her to gain new employment.

Paul, you make me sick.  You and your neo-con pals helped engineer what is turning into the worst foreign policy fiasco of our generation.  And no, the media didn’t kill one damn American military member or wound the hundreds of thousands of our troops, many of whom lost limbs for your obscenity.  NBC didn’t kill 80,000 Iraqi civilians, and foment the civil war that your folly was supposed to pave over with democracy.

The media didn’t reward your folly with a position at the World Bank, and I don’t think anyone at the New York Times opined that your girlfriend should get the golden parachute from your peers at the Bank.

So…here’s my little guy advice to Paul Wolfowitz.  Shut the f**k up.

Great white father speaks – ‘Sunni and Shiite unite!’

One of the many reasons our incursion into Iraq was wrong: arrogance and lack of understanding of history. Iraq was cobbled together by the English. Iraq is not an ‘organic’ country filled with people steeped in Iraqi pride.

The neo-con dream of parades and millions of people yearning for democracy was just that: a dream. And now we’re getting impatient. Not just those against the war, but the leader of the Department of Defense:

Making his third visit in four months to Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert Gates took a decidedly stronger tone as he warned the troubled nation’s leaders that American patience is wearing thin.

On his unannounced trip, the Pentagon chief said Iraq’s leaders have to move faster to bring together the warring factions.

Does this administration understand irony? Is this like the town in the movie ‘Roxanne’ where the Steve Martin character tells a new-comer to eschew irony, because they just don’t get it here?

The Sunni-Shiite rivalry dates back almost 1400 years, to Islam’s earliest decades. After the prophet Muhammad died, the group that became the Shiites backed his son-in-law, Ali, as his rightful heir. Shiite means partisan, as in partisans of Ali. Ali and his sons died in a series of battles lost to the caliph.

The President refuses to sign a bill that contains a timetable. We, the people, who clearly voted against this war in the 2006 election deserve to know how progress is being made and what plans the President has to keep this war from going on another five years. Are there realistic benchmarks? Does the Iraqi army have more than a handful of battalions who can ‘stand up’? Can we honestly say that the Iraqi army and the Iraqi police force are not riddled with militia whose allegiance is not to Iraq, but to their tribe?

Here’s another word the Bush crowd might not ‘get’: hubris

Pete Rose: Worst person in the World*

I love baseball. No secret. I hate anything that gets in the way and makes the game suspect or unwatchable. Things that get in the way: steroids, HGH, Tim McCarver blathering, and gambling on baseball by people who have a stake in the outcome of the game, i.e. players, managers, front office folks.

It’s that last one that spurs me to write today. Pete Rose, the player, was exciting, inspiring and one of the great hitters of the game. He was also a jerk, a bully and a gambler. He lost his managerial job, and any hopes of getting another job in Major League Baseball when it was discovered that he had gambled on the outcome of games, including games  he managed. For many years, Rose swore he never ever ever ever gambled on baseball. Sadly for him, but no-so-sadly for baseball, justice and the American way, the evidence was overwhelming.

Finally, after it became clear that Rose was becoming an after-thought and a ‘never-ran’ in his hopes of entering the Hall of Fame, Rose issued a meek mea culpa and admitted that he might, just might have gambled on baseball, but not on games he managed. This mea culpa JUST HAPPENED to come out when he was peddling a book.

Everyone but Rose’s immediate family and dog realized that Rose was after publicity. We knew his tears were mock and more appopriate for the crocodiles of this world.

Now, several years later, and several appeals to return to baseball denied, and with his name dropping once again off the radar, GUESS WHAT…Rose is admitting that he bet on EVERY game that he managed, because ‘he believed in his team’ so much.

I call BS. The report issued by the Dowd Investigation stated that Rose gambled on SOME of the games he managed. The truth is, Rose was not a ‘blind’ gambler. He studies his Racing Form and he studies the football injury reports, and he certainly KNEW when his team had a better chance to win. I’m guessing he bet on his team in those games. The absence of a Rose bet in other games tipped people off to perhaps bet against the Reds.

Rose’s admissions have trickled out when he wants something: entry into the Hall of Fame or increased book sales. When the current fervor erodes, look for a slightly more damning self-admission, and also try to figure out what exactly Rose wants THIS time.

* Outside of dictators, death squad members, right-wing talk show hosts that make jokes about killing Mexicans, the people behind the god-awful ‘bbq’ ‘sandwich’ I purchased at the Preds game on Tuesday night and the truly lucifer-ific person who devised how cell phone minutes are computed.

In your eyes, or, Are there adultery offsets?*

I’m reading that Jerry Falwell has invited the Newtster to address the Liberty University (motto: Give me liberty or give me an education!) commencement. Being endorsed by the Southern Baptist politburo will do wonders to absolve Gingrich of his admitted marital infidelities.

Falwell, by way of explaining the choice of the adulterous Gingrich, spins thusly:

‘[I’ve} usually been able to tell when a man who has experienced “moral collapse” was genuinely seeking forgiveness. “My sense tells me that Mr. Gingrich is such a man,” he wrote.

I guess Falwell looked Newt in the eye and saw repentance and the soul of a once-soiled man, seeking redemption. One wonders if the eye-down was akin to President Bush’s assessment of his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

Bush saw the solid state of Putin’s eyes when he first met the leader:

I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight-forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue,” Bush said. “I was able to get a sense of his soul.”.

Of course the subsequent lack of effective elections and the increasing power of the Russian state centered under the ex-KGB leader may give us a small hint as to the efficacy of Peter Gabrieling the soul of a man.

I guess Falwell can forgive the rankest of hypocrisy of a man who condemned Clinton’s dalliances with an intern whilst boinking his own staff member (to whom he was not married at the time). In the world of Jerry Fallwell’s eyes apparently it doesn’t count if the hypocrisy is garnished by political right-eousness.

But, at least one question remains: Are all candidates on their third wife created equal in the eyes of the Falwells of this world?

*yes, it is way past time to retire ‘offset’ jokes, or any post, joke or comment that uses ‘An Inconvenient ____________’ as a point of ‘humorous’ reference.