Each week seems to bring a new revelation of the depth and scope of the policy of torture our government crafted, implemented, lied about and tried to blame on a group of low ranking soldiers. I am among the many who have been frustrated and disgusted by the Democratic Congress' timid stance on pursuing the many crimes of the Bush administration in court, but there may be a reason for their reluctance. If charges are brought against any of the criminals or their co-conspiritors before January 20th, 2009, Bush will pardon them. The fact that they might not have been convicted yet would not make any difference to him since his perception of the law is based on delusion, not knowledge. And there are enough Republicans in Congress and enough sleazy Republican judges packing the courts to keep that issue from being legally settled. Bush will probably even try to pardon himself, which is not supposed to be possible. But it is also not supposed to be possible that the US would have an official policy of torturing detainees. So it seems to me the maddening, almost disgraceful pace of these investigations and the lack of movement on any of the previous disclosures of criminality, must be calculated to bring this to a conclusion under a new President. The horrible irony of this is that a president McCain would most likely pardon the torturers too. It's a gamble, but may be the only chance to resolve these issues under US law.

And I am astonished and disheartened by the many people in these postings and elsewhere who support torture. Remember, most detainees have not even been charged with a crime. By now some of them may have learned some English, but the language barrier alone in this murky circumstance is an issue I have not heard raised. The worst part of it is that those who support torture, which now includes Senator McCain, feel we should link our own morality with the lowest of the low, terrorists. If the terrorists do it, we can too. In a society standards are not set by the lowest among us, they are usually ideals, sometimes difficult. You can best judge a person by what they do under duress. That applies to nations too. Consider Britain during the Blitz, their "finest hour." Post 9/11 could have been our finest hour but we have crapped in our pants and that curious monkey, George and his band of apes are flinging and eating it.