This Makes Me Ill

They reacted that way in large part because they remained dazed from
being flat-out f-----g lied to by the assholes in charge regarding the justification for this kind of activity.

Does this wholly forgive them? Hell, no. But.

Is it a significant part of the picture? Yes. Just as it was for the war authorization votes, which have long been "rubber stamps" in this country, due to the (then) reasonable expectation that the executive branch was shooting somewhat-straight with the country at large.

What a f----g laugh THAT is, in retrospect.

And Dumbo wonders why he doesn't get a lick of respect from the opposition?

Because (a) he virtually never gives any, himself, and (b) because he blew his credibility out of his ass a long, long time ago.

 

Ragu -- I think it's more likely that this was a CIA/intel leak. Those guys are pretty pissed at being everybody's scapegoat. Not that it doesn't collaterally serve the purposes you mentioned, too.

Sorry, Ben, but the years 2001-2002 (at least) are going to go down as the years in which Congress criminally abandoned its oversight functions, the Democrats criminally abandoned the notion that the primary duty of an opposition party is to oppose, and we all criminally abandoned our obligations as citizens to hold the lot of them to serious account. The dpeth of this neglect is going to haunt us for decades and radically reconfigure what kind of country we are.
Unless, of course, we elect this guy:

http://www.jonathontheimpalerforpresident2008.us/Campaign_Page.html

 

I don't think there's a canyon-like disagreement, here.

But the GOP used its full psychological advantage, in this time period.
It wasn't admirable, it wasn't pretty . . . it was scummy, all around.
But they saw the hammer on the table, and they used it. That "If you're not with us, you're against us" argument is dispicable/authoritarian, but they resorted to it, pigs that they are. And the Dems rolled, because the "soft on terror!" epithet is a tough stain to wash out, with all those swing voters watching. Just look at '02 and '04.

I stand on my notation regarding the general tradition in this country of
not bucking the president at the get-go of major foreign-policy decisions.
It's there. It's been there for a long time. It's undeniable.

But these creeps abused it . . . and there are a lot of things these creeps can't be forgiven, but this abuse is right up there, because it shakes the population's trust in the executive to do the right thing on behalf of the people re foreign policy, and these scum have done everything but.

Sad shit.

 

The "Bushies leaked this to embarrass the Dems" meme that Ragu posited is getting some traction around the intertubes. Let me just say that I don't give a wailing, flying, micturating FUCK who released this. All I care about is whether or not it's true and, if it is, fuck them all.

 

I tend to buy into your theory that now is the time for the Intel. Community to have its reckoning.

Though it really doesn't matter -- it's shameful shit either way.

 

Were this, say, three years ago, I might have felt some level of vindication that democrats acquiesced on the torture issue. I've long since abandoned partisan politics because I've concluded that none of our national leaders has a moral compass and few if any of them have the ability to actually lead. It's deeply troubling that our nation has become so Machiavellian, and that is not, nor has it ever been, isolated to one side of the aisle.

 

Well said.

I've become tired of supporting any of it. I used to be one of these people who went around encouraging others to vote, but now I'm fairly certain that voting matters very little. This country, as we have known it, is dying and I don't think there's much any of us can do about it.

 

Our elected reps are the product of an increasingly unsophisticated populace.

 

Yeah, too bad we can't all be as smart as you and FB.

 

And Gore Vidal would remind us - from the cliffside villa in Rimini - that the trouble isn't just public ignorance or apathy, but rather the rise and triumph of the "professional politician" since the end of the Civil War.