Oh, isn't this lovely

Item one in the list of lovely Wednesday morning news that makes you want to relocate to Canada: Sully notes that:

"the Bush administration's term "enhanced interrogation" was coined in 1937 to describe exactly the same techniques authorized by Bush, Cheney, Tenet, and Rumsfeld. The term was coined by the Gestapo."

Sigh.

We have to wake people up to what is being done in their name. There is a better way to get intelligence, and before the goons and thugs of the Bush administration, the U.S. used to practise it. We still can return to honor and excellence in interrogation - instead of shame and failure.

God I hope so. I hope that we can find our way back from this. When the VP tells West Point that the Geneva Conventions are a weakness for us, I wonder.

****

Item two is in the same vein. I still recall being chided for my liberal leanings because conservatives were more moral. Liberals, I was told, were all relativists and had no core morality, so their sense of right and wrong was dependent on the situation. Yeah.

Remember good old Scooter Libby? This morning, I read The Anonymous Liberal where he discusses Fitzgerald's sentencing brief. The prosecutor not only concludes that Valerie Plame was, in fact, a covert agent, but that Libby:

"lied repeatedly and blatantly about matters at the heart of a criminal investigation concerning the disclosure of a covert intelligence officer's identity. He has shown no regret for his actions, which significantly impeded an investigation.

Yet, the Scooter is a hero among right wingers. I read yesterday that even good old Fred Thompson was doing a fundraiser for his legal defense fund. Wow, remember when Conservatives brandished Clinton's lie and boasted of "the rule of law?" I do. I remember it well.

That, evidently is in the past. Newsweek reports that:

"In mid-May, Libby was a featured guest at a New York dinner honoring Norman Podhoretz, one of the neo-Conservative movement's intellectual godfathers. According to reports from the scene, the dinner, organized by Commentary Magazine, opened with cheers and a 'standing ovation' for Libby."

Standing O. For a man convicted of perjury and the underlying offense was outing a CIA agent (ONE OF OURS) for political gain.

Hmm. Torture. An unending war with a President who defies the American people. A rogue Vice President who not only thinks that torture is acceptable and moral, but thinks that he can out a CIA agent--even one working on WMD proliferation. Oh, and a conservative base awash in Bible verses who thinks all of this is moral.

Unbelievable.