Our Repugnant President v The Rule of Law

Remember when the Supreme Court recently bitch-slapped the Bush administration for flouting the Geneva Conventions with its torture of prisoners at Guantanamo and in Afghanistan? Remember how most of us hoped that would force Dumbleyou and his cadre of crooks into behaving in a more decent, civilized way to detainees and prisoners held in American custody? You know, to help distinguish our actions from those of the terrorists we’re supposed to be morally superior to?

[cue laugh track here]

According to this morning’s Washington Post, Team Bush is responding not by bringing its behavior into line with the law, but by altering the laws it has been violating to bring the law into line with the torture and degrading practices they favor:

“The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a war crimes law that would eliminate the risk of prosecution for political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel for humiliating or degrading war prisoners, according to U.S. officials and a copy of the amendments.”

As I’m about to dragged off on a Sleep-Deprivation Vacation by well-meaning, if misguided in-laws, my expression of personal outrage will necessarily be atypically abbreviated.

The America that Bush is crafting is not the America my Dad fought to defend in WWII, it’s not the America I proudly pledged allegiance to all those years in elementary school (“one nation under God” and all), and it damned sure isn’t the America I want my son to grow up in.

Thank God there’s only a couple years left in this bastard’s term. I just hope there’s enough America left to salvage when we run this fucker and his criminal cronies out of town in January ’09, and that his successor, be he or she Democrat, Republican or Independent, has the decency to undo the repulsive, un-American outrages perpetrated against our democracy and national dignity by the thugs currently running the show in DC.

It oughtta be a crime… well, it is, but not for long, apparently.