If Bush is remembered for anything, it's my hope that he's remembered for torture. If the Republican party under Bush is remembered for anything, I hope it's for being the pro-torture party. There aren't many aspects of the Bush years that disgust me nearly as much as the policy of torturing detainees and none that disgust me more. The whole thing is so obviously evil that it almost seems cartoonish. If I wanted to accuse a president of something unthinkably awful, torture would be on the list, along with keeping child sex slaves and stealing human organs. If I had my choice, Bush would forever be remembered as the ridiculously, cartoonishly evil president. Like Sen. Joe McCarthy before him, Bush would become a living example of just how lousy a person can become in their quest for personal power, how the very worst person can wrap their crimes up in the flag, and how abusive and brutal even a democratic government can be if it abandons the law. Do me a big favor, would you? Spend the rest of your life talking about Bush this way. Evil, corrupt, and criminal. Make sure to include all the neocons and the Democrats and Republicans who've supported him in this.Evil is the word. But another we can throw in is stupid. Bush's Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, demonstrated that stupidity yesterday.
Reuters:
Departing U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said on Wednesday that he saw no reason for prosecutions or for pardons for those who gave legal advice on the Bush administration's terrorism policies.
Some human rights groups have urged President-elect Barack Obama to launch criminal investigations into the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques on al Qaeda terrorism suspects.
They also have questioned whether the Bush administration broke the law with its warrantless domestic spying program adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Whether this is real stupidity or feigned stupidity is an open question. I'll take him at his word and assume he's as stupid as he may or may not be pretending to be. Mukasey is a former federal judge, so you'd think he'd know that torture is a felony. But it'd be a terrible, terrible thing to say he's being dishonest, so we'll assume he's being totally upfront and say he's as stupid as he wants you to believe he is. That's giving him the benefit of the doubt, because we want to be fair...
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