Somebody Call the Wah!-mbulance
The WATB*-in-Chief finds himself fighting members of his own party rather than the Democrats on "security" issues less than two months before the mid-term elections. President Petulance is so distressed that the Senate will not give him the butt-covering legislation he wants that his now threatening to take his ball and go home. From today's NY Times:
Speaking at a late-morning news conference in the Rose Garden, Mr. Bush said he would have no choice but to end a C.I.A. program for the interrogation of high-level terrorism suspects if Congress passed an alternate set of rules supported by a group of Senate Republicans.
Those alternate rules were adopted Thursday by the Senate Armed Services Committee in defiance of Mr. Bush. Setting out what he suggested could be dire consequences if that bill became law, Mr. Bush said intelligence officers — he referred to them repeatedly as “professionals” — would no longer be willing and able to conduct interrogations out of concern that the vague standard for acceptable techniques could leave them vulnerable to legal action. [Emphasis added]
Well, duh!
The whole point of the legislation being promoted by Senators McCain, Warner, and Graham is to make clear that the interrogation techniques used by the CIA and the military are illegal under the Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, a treaty to which the US is a signatory. Torture is banned. Period. CIA "professionals" should be "vulnerable to legal action" if they use torture to get information. So should their superiors for promoting and allowing such techniques, and that is what I think is really going on here.
I think President WATB* and his minions have finally figured out that they may in fact lose control of at least the House in the November elections. That means the regime will be facing investigations into the malfeasance and incompetence of the past nearly 6 years. What Mr. Bush wants in this bill and in the one hanging fire on the illegal warrantless spying on Americans by the NSA is a means to retroactively make legal what clearly is illegal, as in "If the President does it, it isn't illegal."
And if the WATB*-in Chief carries through on his threat to close down the operations in question, the terrorists haven't won, the American people have. I think the three GOP senators believe that, as do the Democrats standing firm with them.
*WATB is short for Whiney-Ass Titty Baby, a term of art coined at Eschaton to refer to any issuer of immature complaints.
Speaking at a late-morning news conference in the Rose Garden, Mr. Bush said he would have no choice but to end a C.I.A. program for the interrogation of high-level terrorism suspects if Congress passed an alternate set of rules supported by a group of Senate Republicans.
Those alternate rules were adopted Thursday by the Senate Armed Services Committee in defiance of Mr. Bush. Setting out what he suggested could be dire consequences if that bill became law, Mr. Bush said intelligence officers — he referred to them repeatedly as “professionals” — would no longer be willing and able to conduct interrogations out of concern that the vague standard for acceptable techniques could leave them vulnerable to legal action. [Emphasis added]
Well, duh!
The whole point of the legislation being promoted by Senators McCain, Warner, and Graham is to make clear that the interrogation techniques used by the CIA and the military are illegal under the Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, a treaty to which the US is a signatory. Torture is banned. Period. CIA "professionals" should be "vulnerable to legal action" if they use torture to get information. So should their superiors for promoting and allowing such techniques, and that is what I think is really going on here.
I think President WATB* and his minions have finally figured out that they may in fact lose control of at least the House in the November elections. That means the regime will be facing investigations into the malfeasance and incompetence of the past nearly 6 years. What Mr. Bush wants in this bill and in the one hanging fire on the illegal warrantless spying on Americans by the NSA is a means to retroactively make legal what clearly is illegal, as in "If the President does it, it isn't illegal."
And if the WATB*-in Chief carries through on his threat to close down the operations in question, the terrorists haven't won, the American people have. I think the three GOP senators believe that, as do the Democrats standing firm with them.
*WATB is short for Whiney-Ass Titty Baby, a term of art coined at Eschaton to refer to any issuer of immature complaints.
posted by Diane at 5:31 AM
1 Comments:
For more general audiences, Kindergartener-in-Chief might a good substitute for WATB-in-Chief--but your piece says exactly what I've been thinking.
Can't do the torture-lite he wants? Little Kindergartener is going to take his balls and go home.
The press conference on 9/15/06 should go down in history as the day BushBoy stopped being anything remotely resembling Commander-in-Chief.
jawbone
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