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November 07, 2005

Damn, Go Buy A Newspaper, Sucker!

There’s a management philosophy called the megaphone effect. Briefly, it means you think you’re talking at a normal pitch but your subordinates will hear it at a louder volume, proportionate to the distance between your lofty position and their toady existence.

Giving our nation’s Dummy-In-Chief the benefit of the doubt, I think Mr. Bush needs to appreciate how the megaphone effect works. He doesn’t seem to have caught onto the fact that he’s only hearing what his subordinates think he wants to hear. That’s the only reasonable explanation of his comment made in Panama City and reported by Reuters on November 7th that, and I quote the President, “we do not torture.”

Here’s the lead paragraph of Tabassum Zakaria’s story: The U.S. government is aggressively taking action to protect Americans from terrorism but “we do not torture,” President Bush said on Monday, responding to criticism of reported secret CIA prisons and the handling of terrorism suspects.

Mr. President, dude, please go buy a newspaper. Even your banker Rupert Murdoch ran photos of the torture committed by the United States of America at Abu Ghraib in his ultra-right wing newspapers and on his überNeo Fox “news” network.

Perhaps you didn’t get tickets to the congressional screenings of the photos and home movies made at Abu Ghraib – the stuff that was so shocking and disgusting your minions had them designated “top secret.” Maybe you haven’t read the reports coming out of our concentration camp at Guantánamo. Maybe you believe we’d schlep our prisoners of non-war to remote ex-Soviet prisons in Eastern Europe and then deny the International Red Cross their right to inspect these facilities simply because we thought they’d enjoy a vacation.

If so, Mr. President, dude, if as you say we do not torture, then why is Vice President Dick Cheney spearheading an effort to have the CIA exempt from Republican Senator John McCain’s bill that would ban torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners? I mean, if we don’t actually need this bill, as you profess, then the United States of America could at least use the public relations boost from passing such a bill.

Even if your buds down the hall don’t plan on honoring it.

Posted by Mike Gold at November 7, 2005 04:43 PM

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Comments

The T-shirt my sweetie has been wearing for well over a year says it all:

Picture of The Shrub with a lonnnnng, pointy nose, the words "LIAR, LIAR" printed all over the front, the full words of the nursery rhyme of "Liar, liar, pants on fire," emblazoned below.

And I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.

Everybody's doin' it, doin' it, doin' it...

Posted by: Marilyn Ferdinand at November 7, 2005 05:12 PM

While I don't think George Bush is the sharpest nail in the box, I don't think he's as dumb as a bag full of hammers either. I'm not concerned that he may actually think that "We don't torture" is an accurate statement. I'm concerned that he thinks that "We don't torture -- except when we decide we need to" is morally/ethically equivalent to "We don't torture." I can only hope that the majority of Americans aren't so morally bankrupt that they fail to see the distinction.

Posted by: Rick Oliver at November 8, 2005 07:55 AM

Oh, why think he's doing anything more than lying outright? He knows what's going on.

Posted by: Marilyn Ferdinand at November 8, 2005 02:00 PM

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