The Fish Stinks From The Head Down

[Stephanie]

This whole maladministration is a reflection of George W. Bush's warped psyche.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As a boy, Mr. Bush's ambition was to be another Mickey Mantle.

''All George ever wanted to be was a Major League baseball player,'' recalled a buddy, Terry Throckmorton. ''That's all he ever talked about.''

<snip>

''We were terrible to animals,'' recalled Mr. Throckmorton, laughing. A dip behind the Bush home turned into a small lake after a good rain, and thousands of frogs would come out.

''Everybody would get BB guns and shoot them,'' Mr. Throckmorton said. ''Or we'd put firecrackers in the frogs and throw them and blow them up.''

http://www.makethemaccountable.com/articles/A_Philosophy_With_Roots_in_Conservative_Texas_Soil.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

{T}he single most iconic image to come out of the abuse scandal—that of a hooded man standing naked on a box, arms outspread, with wires dangling from his fingers, toes and penis—may do a lot to undercut the administration’s case that this was the work of a few criminal MPs. That’s because the practice shown in that photo is an arcane torture method known only to veterans of the interrogation trade. “Was that something that dreamed up by herself? Think again,” says Darius Rejali, an expert on the use of torture by democracies. “That’s a standard torture. It’s called ‘the Vietnam.’ But it’s not common knowledge. Ordinary American soldiers did this, but someone taught them.”

....{A} NEWSWEEK investigation shows that, as a means of pre-empting a repeat of 9/11, Bush, along with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft, signed off on a secret system of detention and interrogation that opened the door to such methods. It was an approach that they adopted to sidestep the historical safeguards of the Geneva Conventions, which protect the rights of detainees and prisoners of war. In doing so, they overrode the objections of Secretary of State Colin Powell and America’s top military lawyers—and they left underlings to sweat the details of what actually happened to prisoners in these lawless places. While no one deliberately authorized outright torture, these techniques entailed a systematic softening up of prisoners through isolation, privations, insults, threats and humiliation—methods that the Red Cross concluded were “tantamount to torture.”

<snip>

....The JAGs, including the lawyers in the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Richard Myers, fought their civilian bosses for months—but finally lost. In April 2003, new and tougher interrogation techniques were approved. Covertly, though, the JAGs made a final effort. They went to see Scott Horton, a specialist in international human-rights law and a major player in the New York City Bar Association's human-rights work. The JAGs told Horton they could only talk obliquely about practices that were classified. But they said the U.S. military's 50-year history of observing the demands of the Geneva Conventions was now being overturned. "There is a calculated effort to create an atmosphere of legal ambiguity" about how the conventions should be interpreted and applied, they told Horton. And the prime movers in this effort, they told him, were DOD Under Secretary for Policy Douglas Feith and DOD general counsel William Haynes. There was, they warned, "a real risk of a disaster" for U.S. interests.

The approach at Gitmo soon reflected these changes. Under the leadership of an aggressive, self-assured major general named Geoffrey Miller, a new set of interrogation rules became doctrine. Ultimately what was developed at Gitmo was a "72-point matrix for stress and duress," which laid out types of coercion and the escalating levels at which they could be applied. These included the use of harsh heat or cold; withholding food; hooding for days at a time; naked isolation in cold, dark cells for more than 30 days, and threatening (but not biting) by dogs. It also permitted limited use of "stress positions" designed to subject detainees to rising levels of pain.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4989422/site/newsweek/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The crimes of this maladministration stem from the warped psyche of George Bush Jr. The fish stinks from the head down.

[opihimoimoi]

1. Bush and all those who helped him into office deserve big time SHAME

The guy is unfit, unprepared, unqualified, and after 3 years, still no improvement. Not even OTJ Training helps. Its Hopeless, the Bush is over his head. "Loose Cannon on the Quarter Deck!!!"

[Stephanie]

2. He sets the tone

As ill-prepared and inappropiate as he is, government still takes cues from him, follows his lead. And he is SICK, SICK, SICK.

[opihimoimoi]

3. Call the Surgeons, cut the Cancer outta the Oval Corral before it spreads.

[Stephanie]

4. Come, we save the frogs together

And the rest of humanity, from the Bushes.

[opihimoimoi]

5. The Bushie guys will get the Revenge of the Frogs soon enough.

[rumguy]

6. There is no doubt the boy king is one creepy dude

You can also add to the list the story about him 'branding' his frat brothers with hot wire hangers.

[Stephanie]

7. Once you accept that behavior in one context

It's easy to apply it in another.

This is a corrupt, disgusting, frat-rat administration. It is an amoral culture. Power is all.

[Stephanie]

8. This is George Bush's America

Elect a SOCIOPATH and you get a SOCIOPATHIC GOVERNMENT.

I am horrified and ashamed. I am only grateful that my grandfather can't see this.