The Dogs Of War

The problem isn't so much that the preznit's an idiot, so much as, being an idiot, he can only conceive of a world in which everyone else is an idiot, too.

How else to explain his befuddled, befuddling performance on the Today Show the other day?

He says, several times, that he doesn't want to discuss specific (torture) techniques because he doesn't want the enemy to adapt -- this after he said the reason for the CIA black sites and the "alternative set of procedures" was because the prisoners had been trained to resist interrogation techniques!

Maybe the problem is that, being a nation of idiots, we let him get away with it.

What, like his refusal to confirm that we use certain "alternative procedures" is gonna create doubt in the minds of Al Qaeda so that they don't prepare and train for the worst we can dish out? Who is this supposed to convince? Us? The terrorists?

Abdul! The infidel Bush refuses to say whether the Great Satan waterboards our brave martyrs! Call off the resistance training program until we know for sure!

Matt Lauer reached into his rather shallow bag of tricks in a vain attempt to pin the preznit down. I'll give him credit for being on the right path, but really, I've seen better investigative work by the guy from Blue's Clues (who Lauer kind of resembles, come to think of it). For once, someone in the MSM wasn't a total lapdog. Being a puppy nipping at the preznit's heels may not be exactly effective, but at least it represents a step in the right direction.

In the most notorious sequence in Reservoir Dogs, the psychotic Mr. Blond has captured a cop and has him tied up at the gang's hideout.

Cop: I don't know anything, I swear, you can torture me, whatever...
Mr. Blond: Torture you! That's a, that's a good idea.

The Pentagon says torture doesn't work anyway. "No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices," said Lt. Gen. John Kimmons, the Army's chief intelligence officer.

Mr. Blond/Bush doesn't care whether it works or not:

Listen kid, I'm not gonna bullshit you, all right? I don't give a good fuck what you know, or don't know, but I'm gonna torture you anyway, regardless. Not to get information. It's amusing, to me, to torture a cop. You can say anything you want cause I've heard it all before. All you can do is pray for a quick death, which you ain't gonna get.

It's our policy. It amuses us.