Thursday, May 14, 2009

Karl Rove: The Latest Torture-Apologist

by Dee Newman

When I was around the age of three, I learned that “two wrongs do not make a right” – that it was useless to try to justify anything I had done by asserting that others had done it, as well.

Obviously, Karl Rove's parents did not teach him that lesson. As the latest torture-apologist for the Bush Administration, Mr. Rove claims that a CIA briefing Nancy Pelosi received way back in 2002, somehow exonerates the Bush Administration’s use of torture.

Accusing Speaker Pelosi of having a selective memory and of being essentially a hypocrite, he warns her that she is “hip-deep in dangerous waters” that are “rapidly rising,” cautioning the Speaker that any investigation or prosecution of the Bush Administration’s use of torture may eventually lead to her and other Democrats.

Mr. Rove wonders and speculates, “If Mrs. Pelosi considers the enhanced interrogation techniques to be torture, didn't she have a responsibility to complain at the time, introduce legislation to end the practices, or attempt to deny funding for the CIA's use of them? If she knew what was going on and did nothing, does that make her an accessory to a crime of torture, as many Democrats are calling enhanced interrogation?”

Remember, these conjectures are coming from the man George W. Bush affectionately called his “turd-blossom.”

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, a “turd-blossom” is a flower that grows from a pile of cow-dung, or in Rove’s case, a person who has the mendacity to try to make excrement smell sweet while fabricating the truth from lies.

Rove, also, asked those of us who believe ”the Justice Department should investigate and prosecute anyone who violated laws against committing torture” if we are “willing to have Mrs. Pelosi thrown into [our] stew of torture conspirators as an accomplice?”

The answer is, of course we are, that is, if she really was briefed on waterboarding and other so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” (a euphemism for torture) and if she really knew what was going on and did nothing as he and other torture-apologists have asserted.

With each passing day it becomes more and more apparent why an independent investigation or a truth commission (as Speaker Prlosi has advocated) is necessary to determine the facts.

As long as torture and other crimes against humanity continue to be so vehemently defended and justified with such lame excuses from the likes of Karl Rove and the former Vice President of the United States of America, we must remain resolute in our efforts to defend and preserve our precious constitutional democracy.

Otherwise, we will be a nation under the rule of the lawless and not the rule of law.

It is long past time for these morally immature former Bush Administration officials to be taught a few lessons they should have learned way back when they were in kindergarten.

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