But the really frustrating part of this is the total lack of awareness on the part of the perpetrators of the disconnect between the view they have of themselves as virtuous and their actual actions. To get back to the music – the Lonesome Brothers song “The Bush Doctrine” goes:

My shit don’t stink
At least I don’t think it does
Yours does because
Your shit ain’t mine

It was then pointed out to me that actually, that would have been foolish. Most people knew what he’d done anyway, and would either condemn him for it or shrug, whether he came clean or not. But there was still a sizeable proportion in a combination of denial and doubt and admitting anything he didn’t absolutely have to would have risked too much of that support. Interesting, I thought, when put that way.

Marcy/Ben – the fact is that Clinton began dismantling many of the systems for governmental accountability, Bush has taken this and run with it, and it is in no party’s interest to dismantle it. This way the only issue is whether or not they can beat the other party, no chance of the actual populace having any sort of democratic influence on who or what they choose to slaughter/torture/bug/whatever because that would just be inconvenient.

Crash – I know ‘framing’ is the word of the moment, but it is such a classic case of framing. When asked: ‘There is a bomb set to go off in a kindergarten in a busy city centre. You have one of the bombers in custody. Would you really be against slapping him about a bit to save those poor wickle children?’ it is much harder to say no than when given the more honest question: ‘Should we, as a civillised nation, use torture methods when interrogating prisoners?’

And you make a fine point about the effect on the soldiers themselves. This is why children make such brutal torturers: once their moral restraints are snapped, they just don’t tend to grow back – that’s it. So we now have a generation of young men desperate to demonise Muslims and Iraqis and terrorists and just about anyone as it is the only way they can even begin to justify the horrific things they have done. What a cheerful thought.

That’s how the question goes, isn’t it, when the more liberal (used advisedly) apologists come out to play. A more honest set up is ‘You have someone in custody. You’ve no idea if they’re involved in anything illegal. If you torture them they will tell you exactly what you want to hear, becuase that’s what people do under torture. You won’t save any lives. However, you will give justification to those who hate you and who believe in terror and you will make future terrorist attacks more likely. What do you do?

I think the other thing that needs to be said about this dispicable and incomprehensible justification for torture, (and the horror of it for the tortured needs to be remembered behind this) is the question of what we are turning our soldiers into. It’s easy to say ‘we might in extremis need to use extreme interrogation methods’ but remember what that means. You’re going to give orders to John Doe from Iowa or Lancashire orders to pull somebody’s fingernails off. You’re going to force somebody trying to do the right thing by their family and their country to strip somebody naked, shove them into a dark room and set a pack of dogs on them. I know this kind of pales into insignificence when you think ‘how can we do this to prisoners’ but how can we even do this to our soliders?

It’s beyond belief that we get away with this. Any of it.

i’m almost beyond being disgusted and certainly never surprised when this kind of shit comes out of his mouth. what’s bothering me more now is the lack of action/reaction from our democratic-led congress. two high-ranking members of the judicial committee said they’ll vote to let bush’s attorney general nominee go to the floor for a confirmation vote. i simply can’t believe it. that they have the power to stop it and are letting it go forward is really despicable.

Where o where would we be with out semantics? I for one would be out of a job & certainly wouldn’t be publishing any more books any time soon.

When I was over in Washington recently I happened into a conversation about politics (it’s quite the thing, darling, in them there climes), the Presidential campaigns, Hillary Clinton &, eventually, Mr Hillary Clinton.

The basis of the generally animated debate was the ‘poliicising’ of phrases & words (for an individual’s benefit) as required by whichever particular corner he/she found themselves in during some topic du jour (Iraq, War in General, Healthcare, fucking an intern etc.). I’d give examples but them’s not the point of this.

The point, then: throughout this whole beer-fed frenzy of opinion & pseudo-analysis (of liberties taken, by said Politicians, with easily understandable, common or garden words & phrases, turning them into head-wringing confuse-athons designed to bamboozle the public into questionning their own intelligence & understanding of the most basic of things) the tables we were at (populated by Democrats, Republicans, so-called Independents, Liberals, British & Canadians) only came to unanimous agreement on one thing alone: Bill Clinton’s ingenius grasp & repeated reference to the confusingly not obviously understood phrase “sexual relations” a la Lewinski & his, ahem, daliance.

Now we all know he stuck a cigar up her cooch, frothed manjam on her Sunday best & she blew a tune on his man sax. But, what he most certainly didn’t do was have “sexual relations”. And rightly so, because, even though the whole world thinks he was being naiive/stupid/desperate to refute the “sexual relations” claim, it actually means something entirely less than what we (the general public) think it does: “sexual relations”, i.e. the correct semantic definition of the phrase, means to engage in collaborative sexual organ-based penetrative mischief(ie Mr Pickles say hello to Mrs Toffee Chops, repeatedly, with various degrees of force & angle, until you’re sick).

So, technically, & rather literally so, popping a cuban up her Oval Orifice (sorry, couldn’t resist) & junking on her dry-clean only don’t equate to “sexual relations”. Frustratingly borderline in terms of pedantic, but Mr. C was entirely justified when he was answering that line of question: “Did you have sexual relations with Miss Lewinksi?” “No, I did not have “sexual relations” with that bowl-faced slattern”. etc.

Whoever wrote the original impeachment statement/deposition that included phrase clearly didn’t realise the serious & total fuck up potential of such a tiny misunderstanding of that extraordinarily important phrase. Clearly, someone on Clinton’s staff did. “Bravo that pedanticly jobsworthy son/daughter of a bitch!” the table cheered, & we ordered another round of weak American piss in a child’s glass.

We all agreed that whoever that was deserved a dictionary, pen & board game from Countdown & a lifelong membership of the Call My Bluff club (some Amrican’s do know these TV shows, which led us onto another discussion with far more violent results).

Tra for now.

DC

Ok, he mighthave looked like a dick repeating that over & over & over

Amen to that. Currently saving up for a ticket out of the US.