"Yeah, we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. I'd do it again to save lives."
-- George W. Bush, during a speaking engagement in Grand Rapids, Michigan two days ago
I'm not sure what's more offensive: that Bush, like Cheney before him, glibly admits to what's essentially a war crime, or that -- as with all the other times this underachieving buffoon has played dress-up -- he tries to masculinely take possession of an act he'd never really have the balls to do outside of the fantasy world in his own pea brain. He says "I'd do it again" as if he were Jack Bauer, personally holding KSM's head under the water while demanding to know where the bomb is.
Obviously, if anybody deserved to suffer a little, it's Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. I'm by no means defending the guy; you could take his toes off one by one with piano wire and I wouldn't care. But in keeping with the Bush Administration's proud tradition of mind-boggling incompetence, the fact that we tortured the 9/11 mastermind -- and obviously a whole host of other prisoners -- was, at the very least, never kept quiet. Despite Bush's usual misguided and arrogant moral certitude, most people around the world don't look too fondly on states that willfully torture -- and by not only doing it but letting it get out there in the public forum, the lives of innocent Americans were put in danger, since you know damn well our enemies wouldn't take too kindly to our actions and would use our "enhanced interrogation techniques" as their "enhanced recruiting tool."
And yet Bush, now completely comfortable that he can fess up and not have to worry one bit about facing any serious personal repercussions, not only admits he ordered the Code Red, but boasts about it -- once again bringing the subject front-and-center and potentially putting our lives and the lives of our military serving abroad in the crosshairs. And the worst part about all of this is that he's doing it for purely egocentric reasons. It's just another case of Bush still, after all this time, trying to prove he's a tough-guy and not, in reality, daddy's little silver spoon-fed Ivy League pussy.
On the plus side, thanks, George, for once again handily answering this question.
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