"Good news from President Bush. At a press conference yesterday, he was upbeat, he was cheerful, he was optimistic. Yeah, that's right. He's drinking again. ... They say he's having a pretty good week and you got to give him credit because, earlier in the week, President Bush quietly sneaked into Iraq. Here's an idea: Why don't we quietly sneak out of Iraq?" --David Letterman

Sent in by Bill S.

Republicans in the Senate have announced they're moving on from gay marriage to a Constitutional amendment to ban flag burning. This way we can join the other three countries in the world that ban flag burning... China, Cuba and Iran. We can stand with our brothers on this issue. -- Jay Leno

In Internet and phone chats with someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl, a Department of Homeland Security press aide talked about underage sex, boasted about his job and called President Bush a "liar," according to transcripts released by prosecutors.

Sometimes, just sometimes, it can be embarrassing to be the president.

Take the other day for example. I was holding a press conference outside in the White House Rose garden with the Washington press corps, whom I really despise. I was taking all those probing questions and tap dancing around the answers the best I could, when this guy stands up and starts to ask me a question. Before he can get a word out of his mouth, I made fun of him for wearing sunglasses or "shades" as I called them. You know, kinda my way of keeping the puppy press on my leash.

Little did I know that this guy is legally blind.

Sweet Jesus, I found this out hours later from one of the members of my staff. The last thing I need is more bad press so I called the scribe and apologized for asking him to take off his shades.

You know, if I had known that he couldn't see from the start, I would have just said to him, "Hey, dude, what is it like having the blind lead the blind?"

Those are the kind of important decisions I must make as president.

Lisa dear

You've got to love bart but someone should tell him that one of the reasons he didn't get an invite to YK is that he's intransigently deluded on the torture issue.

(The startling lack of taste demonstrated by the inviters by not making you, Lisa, one of the guests of honour, shook my faith in Blogtopia.)

But back to bart....I've argued with him many times on many issues but his disturbing technique of cut and pasting parts of readers mail so as to flame them with illogic, emotive analogies and disingenuous arguments is the classic right-wing technique of ridiculing and demeaning other people's point of view.

I know you're implacably opposed to torture Lis, but I wish the web would get together and send bart a message.

Lets get it straight; Burton L. Gerber, a decorated Moscow station chief who retired in 1995 after 39 years with the CIA, surprised some in the audience when he said he opposes torture "because it corrupts the society that tolerates it. "Torture, "even when accepted in the interest of realism and efficacy," represents "a flouting of honor that serves no purpose but to degrade" a nation in its own eyes and the world's. "The reason I believe that torture corrupts the torturers and society," Gerber says, "is that a standard is changed, and that new standard that's acceptable is less than what our nation should stand for. I think the standards in something like this are crucial to the identity of America as a free and just society."

"Torture is wrong...it's just wrong." - John Kerry

The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.” George Orwell.

In Vietnam in the 1960s, under its hellish, Top Secret Phoenix program, the American CIA and U.S. Army helpers abducted, murdered, and unmercifully tortured tens of thousands of victims. Estimates range between 20,857 and 40,994 Vietnamese men, women and children were killed. Many were thrown into inhuman cages, starved into submission and finally bludgeoned or shot to death. Some were drowned, others thrown out of helicopters. Young women and children were not spared. CIA op Kenneth Osborn said Phoenix became a depersonalized murder program.

Most victims, he notes, were innocent, brought in only after a neighbor or family enemy falsely reported them to authorities as a potential threat to security.... "I never knew in the course of all those operations any detainee to live through his interrogation," Bart Osborn, a former CIA agent, told Congress in 1971. "They all died. There was never any reasonable establishment of the fact that any one of those individuals was, in fact, cooperating with the VC, but they all died and the majority were tortured or shot to death". - Third World Traveller

"One of the problems beyond the details of these orders is torture is an extraordinarily dangerous thing. There's an absolute ban on torture for a very good reason. Torture taps into the deepest recesses, unexplored recesses of human consciousness, where creation and destruction coexist, where the infinite human capacity for kindness and infinite human capacity for cruelty coexist, and it has a powerful perverse appeal. And once it starts, both the perpetrators and the powerful who order them, let it spread, and it spreads out of control.

When the Bush administration gave the orders for techniques tantamount to torture at the start of the war on terror, I think it was probably their intention that these be limited to top al-Qaida suspects. But within months, we were torturing hundreds of Afghanis at Bagram near Kabul. A few months later in 2003, through these techniques, we were torturing literally thousands of Iraqis. You can see in those photos, beyond the details of the techniques that we've described, you can see how that once it starts, it becomes this Dantesque hell, this kind of play palace of the darkest recesses of human consciousness. That's why it's necessary to maintain an absolute prohibition on torture. There is no such thing as a little bit of torture." -Professor Alfred McCoy

Bush and Cheney WANT the war to continue and torture is one of the techniques they're using to inflame the passions of the people they're persecuting. Bart should renounce torture.

Oh, and he only wants Hillary because Bill comes with her.

Peace to you, Lisa

Waldo

Australia

Thanks for writing, Waldo. Deep sigh.

Bartcop has effectively tapped into how most American Democrats feel.  His popularity reflects that.

I am saddened that America is so willing to OK torture. But that's the truth.

America is a country that believes in capital punishment, so I guess torture to most Americans is no big deal.

E-mail

Subject: Bartcop and Science

If Bartcop promotes the use of scientific polls then why doesn't he accept the scientific studies that proves torture doesn't work under ANY circumstances?

"Speaking of Congress, the other day -- very quietly -- they voted themselves a $3,300 pay raise. Why not? Job well done. A lot of added expenses this year: legal fees, criminal defense lawyers." --Jay Leno

 “President Bush has apologized today for scolding a member of the White House press corps for wearing sunglasses, 'cause he found out the reporter was legally blind. He yelled at the guy, the guy's legally blind, yeah. Bush also apologized for telling physicist Stephen Hawking to ‘get off your lazy ass.’” -- Conan O’Brien

E-mail

Subject:  The Dems need new faces

The Democratic Party NEEDS to get new faces on television...these old ideas and voices MUST be replaced SOON...or we are doomed...names....just a few who turn me off...Bob Shrum, Al Fromm and Donna Brazille...eek!!
These people are b o r i n g!
your site is great, I too like Bart also Smirking Chimp picks good articles...
Sincerely,
Lynn from  CA

I know how you feel, it seems it's the same old faces delivering the same message that hasn't worked for years.

"U.S. Immigration Service is busy. They deported 2,000 illegal immigrants this week in a program they're calling 'Operation Return To Sender,' or as the program is also known, 'Operation We're Taking Away Your Gardner.'" --Conan O'Brien

A young mahout plays on the trunk of an elephant in the ancient Thai capital Ayutthaya, 80 km (50 miles) north of Bangkok. Photo/Adrees Latif

Peace.