Torture comes in many flavors. Like Rummy and Jacko.

[by Ross Levine]

We all know that the Bush administration has flirted with torture.  Well, more than flirted -- they've consummated the relationship in Guantanamo and arguably helped consummate it at Abu Ghraib, Haditha and who knows where else we've yet to learn about.  And it all makes sense now.

The only way to get the truth out of the Bushes is to torture them.

Well, here in America, we don't believe in torture (at least, we didn't use to), so instead of waterboarding or fingernail treatments we have – yes, elections.  The most recent, on November 7, was definitely a torture to this Administration.

And that's why, we can only surmise, they've started to squeal.  All of a sudden the White House is leaking like an ocean liner course-corrected by an iceberg.  A recent document authored by National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley revealed his feeling that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was not quite up to the task of reigning in his country's barbaric little war (see? I agree with our leaders that there's nothing "civil" about it). And a memo by none other than former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld turned up just the other day and began by stating that, "Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough."  The Iraq Study Group is suddenly all over the air waves with the “news” that Iraq is slipping towards chaos and what may be needed is that Bushian non-starter known as diplomacy.  And though not quite a leak (more like a rupture), the President's own nominee for Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, said in his confirmation hearing (if I can extrapolate from his "No, sir" response to Carl Levin) that we're losing in Iraq.

What gives?

Well, just think of last month's election as an act of torture inflicted on the Bush Administration by the American people.  Instead of rallying behind "stay the course," the way they'd previously stood by him for "shock and awe," "mission accomplished," "bring it on," "smoke 'em out," "get 'em over there before they get us here," "with us or against us" and "the main front in the war on terror," the voters across the country did the equivalent of piling Bush, Cheney and the rest of ‘em naked on top of one another in a human pyramid; they said enough is enough.  All of a sudden the Republican plan to stay in power at least until global warming could put an end to life on the planet collapsed in flashes of blue across TV screens from Virginia to Montana.  It was like the shock of a cattle prod applied full-strength to the presidential posterior.

Or, as we like to think of it, the American people finally told their emperor to put his clothes on.

What a difference an up or down vote makes.  The thumbs went way down, and suddenly truth is escaping from the White House like roaches from the light of day.  Frankly, we've never seen anything like it.  From March 19, 2003 to November 7, 2006, this was a war that was making America safer and spreading democracy throughout the greater Middle East – it was a war that was hard work but accomplishing its goal of sparing us another 9/11, a war where the United States was fighting Al Qaeda on its own turf, and though it hadn't been the cakewalk we expected, well – that was OK, as our freedom lay in the balance.

And then we woke up on November 8 and the days subsequent to any number of miracles.  There was Donald Rumsfeld, the former Secretary of Defense, telling us that we're engaged in a war that is even today not yet well understood." (That's like Godzilla pleading ignorance to Tokyo.)  There was President Bush and Dick Cheney in the White House kissing up to Nancy Pelosi.  And there was finally a palpable feeling in the air that something was about to change, and not just the committee heads in Congress.  No, for the first time in nearly four years, we see some hope that maybe the lives of American soldiers are worth more than sending them one by one to their deaths like lemmings without a leader.

And that's what's really going on here.  We have not had a leader in this country for quite some time -- not since the Iraq war took off in earnest.  Up until things went sour over there, George Bush was at least pretending to be a leader, challenging Saddam on national television, sending the might of the U.S. military (equipped with decks of playing cards) to Baghdad, flying aboard that aircraft carrier, declaring victory.  We suppose it was easier to pronounce the word "victory" than "insurgency."  Once the situation did not go as planned, leadership gave way to marketing.  No wonder Bush always said he deferred to his "commanders in the field" -- the commander-in-chief was on hiatus.

Now the dodos have come home to roost.  The good news is that we're getting some truth now; the bad news is that it's bleak as all hell.  It could take as long as 12 years to restore order to Mess-opotamia, leaving us to choose between a long period of “controlled chaos” or a short burst of apocalyptic chaos.  Great options.

We can expect George Bush to write a book someday called If I Did It.   It will be about murdering a foreign country and its people and getting away with it.

But here's a ray of hope. We should all be extremely thankful that Iraq is the SNAFU that it is.  Extremely grateful .  Because had Bush and the neo-cons succeeded in this folly, the United States would have probably invaded six other countries by now.  And just imagine six Iraqs instead of one.

December 6, 2006