Cheney’s doomed, quixotic effort to salvage something from the jaws of remorseless historical judgment is actually quite fun. For the first week or two, Movement Kool Aiders we knew reflexively fell into place, saying it takes a tough chicken to tenderize a man. Guffaws were absorbed as positive baleful energy, signs of oppression by the vast MSM conspiracy.
By this weekend even the Dead Enders saw that Dick was on as senseless a kamikaze run as the Yamato steaming to Okinawa with fuel for a one way trip. When the Swine Flu polls higher than your most visible political spokesperson defending torture, some re-think is in order. How fitting the Agency denied Cheney’s request for declassification of post facto CYA memo. In ruins, its reputation destroyed forever, thousands of careers ended in despair and bitterness, the building using the name CIA gets one small revenge. Good on them.
My Right Wing Nut friends are still are hot and bothered by Pelosi and the briefing flap. We could care little either way and that somehow is an even more venal sin in their eyes. Indifference? Pelosi’s various stories strain credulity — although one should never underestimate the mendacity of briefers, especially under the Old Regime. If Pelosi, Rockefeller and other collaborationists pay a price for their compromise with anti-liberal democratic socialist authoritarianism, so be it. Pour encourager les autres.
We are also pleased that the Administration is withholding the military photos. Now is not the time for their release. Our decayed political process no longer has the means or maturity to hold multiple concepts distinct while working towards a constructive political outcome. We are far too decadent now. The torture issue is of paramount importance. Let Eric Holder conduct a factually intensive review. (Congress will sputter and posture regardless but in its current Congress of Peoples’ Deputies decline largely useless). Holder’s work will serve the basis for future war crimes indictments either by a U.S. or extra-territorial entity.
We can turn to military photos in due course. The Army just had a 4 star defenestrated. Some of its major Christmas toys aren’t gonna come. As an institution it’s near the human capital depletion point. Get Cheney et al. in the bag. We should, as the old saying goes, ‘keep our eyes on the prize’.