Republicans Wave Penises, Proclaim Manhood, Blame Democrats For Torture

Are the Republicans smart or what? (The real answer is ‘what’, but bear with The Lion for a bit.)

Various leaders of Senate and House Intelligence (oxymoron alert!) committees were briefed to some extent or other on the techniques the CIA was using a while ago to extract information from people who may or may not have been involved in so-called terrorist activities.

Under secrecy rules those leaders, including the special target of Republican penis-waving, Nancy Pelosi, were forbidden from revealing the content of those briefings, even though the leaders were involved in oversight of intelligence activities.

The current Republican leadership, if it can be called that, now claims that the Democrats should have done something to stop the activities. They’re making a huge deal of it, in essence blaming the Democrats for torture.

There’s a few problems with this.

First off, President Obama, by refusing to pursue investigations and prosecutions of war crimes, to wit, torture, has opened the door to this sort of Republican revision of history. While he’s ‘looking forward’ Republicans are covering up and muddying the waters and burning out shredder motors.

How about this, Obama? I’m gonna head down to D.C. this afternoon, rob a couple of banks, shoot a few people, maybe shove a law book up Mitch McConnell’s butt, and hide out until tomorrow. Then, since you have made ‘looking forward’ an integral part of American law, rather than looking backward at actual crimes and prosecuting them, I’ll come back home and all will be forgiven.

The Republicans want the people to forget that it was Republicans, according to former Vice President and current Senior Penis Waver Dick Cheney, it was Republicans who ran the torture program. Cheney admits he and Bush authorized torture. He’s running around to every television news program that will have him and proclaiming his guilt and dragging former President and Chief Dick Waver George W. Bush down with him. (In some circles it is thought that Cheney is merely trying to solidify an insanity defense – why else publicly admit criminal behavior before any legal action? The Lion believes it more likely that Cheney actually believes he’s a good guy and that waterboarding someone 183 times in a month is good policy, real Americanism, and proves what a man he is. Dick doesn’t see it as having his dick caught in a slamming door.)

The Republican strategy is obvious. Blame the Democrats for not stopping the use of torture, and pretty soon everyone will think the Democrats created and authorized the use of torture.

In one small way they have a point, but it’s one that comes around and bites them in their collective fat ass.

The point they have is that the secretly informed Democratic leaders did nothing to stop the use of torture. The Democrats claim the shield of classified secrecy forced them to keep quiet.

Bogus!

They were informed that war crimes, crimes under American and international law, were being committed by the government of the United States. Secrecy or no, they were obligated, under law and under any normal conception of moral behavior, to inform appropriate authorities. Obviously there were no authorities in the United States government they could inform. The Executive Branch was up to its eyeballs in torture, and the Justice Department under Alfredo Gonzales and Michael Mukasey was nothing more than a willing lackey in a conspiracy to legalize torture.

But they could have brought the information to the United Nations. They could have brought it to the International Criminal Court. They could have gone public. They could have simply leaked the information. The point is there were steps they could have taken. They stayed silent, and thus they are complicit in the crime, and they should have to take their lumps for that. And so should the Republicans who were briefed on the crimes.

But the Democrats did not initiate the crime. Republicans did that. Dick Cheney and George Bush and their sycophants throughout government did that.  If the Republican leadership wants to put the torture beast to rest they should shut up. What they are doing now keeps the beast alive and well-fed, and it is a beast that wears a blood-red Republican coat.

Torture is a crime. Period. There’s no gray area. Aided and abetted by President Obama’s denials of reality and denials of law, complicit officials throughout government are doing the best they can to create caves of fog in which they can hide. That whirring sound all around Washington is the sound of shredders overheating.

The people who authorized torture and the people who committed it and the people who justified it in legal mumbo-jumbo and the people who were complicit by their silence should be investigated and prosecuted, be they Republican or Democrat. Until that is done the stench of war crimes, of crimes against humanity, will foul the corridors of government for generations.

And President Obama should refute his policy of looking forward and ignoring the crimes of torture. He should encourage investigations and let the chips fall where they may. Otherwise the Republican crimes will stain his administration forever, which is assuredly what the Republicans have in mind. We can feel confident that in 2012 and likely 2016 the Republicans will claim that Obama did nothing about war crimes and thus was complicit and lacks decency and morality. The American electorate’s memory and intellect are woefully weak, and by the next couple of elections they can be led to believe Republican revisionism. Obama should slam the door on the Republican penis wavers, he should slam it now, and he should slam it hard.

Technorati Tags: Penis Wavers, Republicans, Torture, Dick Cheney, George Bush, Democrats, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, CIA, International Criminal Court, Department of Justice, Alfredo Gonzales, Michael Mukasey, Mitch McConnell