Gimme a B....

All right. I’ve just about fucking had it with these people.

Let’s recall, shall we, the lack of even the most cursory repentance from the administration about the torture that took place at Abu Ghraib. It was, they said, merely “a few bad apples,” which is about the most juvenile excuse imaginable for such horrific behavior. Rush Limbaugh managed to infantilize the defense of the perpetrators even further:

This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation, and we're going to ruin people's lives over it, and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You [ever] heard of need to blow some steam off?

Just a few bad apples blowing off some steam. It was impossible to think that the analysis of the dreadful situation could actually get any more preposterous, but along come the fantastical legal stylings of Guy Womack to scrape clean through the bottom of the barrel and into the dirt below:

Forcing naked Iraqi prisoners to pile themselves in human pyramids was not torture, because American cheerleaders do it every year, a court was told today.

[…]

“Don’t cheerleaders all over America form pyramids six to eight times a year. Is that torture?” said Guy Womack, Sergeant Graner’s lawyer, in opening arguments to the ten-member military jury at the reservist’s court martial. (Link)

Mr. Womack, does this look like a scene from Bring It On to you, you miserable scumbag?



(By the way, that’s head cheerleader Charles Graner himself at the back of the pile.)

That picture makes me want to scream. That people (many of whom turned out to be innocent of the charges of which they were accused) were put through this, that it was orchestrated by Americans, and that a large part of America seems to think the whole thing is a fucking joke is just about more than I can bear. And the machiavellian architect of the entire debacle is our next Attorney General. Quite a reward for determining the dubious legal loopholes that allowed this revolting behavior to commence.

Ultimately, though, even the charming Mr. Gonzales has a boss. Every cheerleading team has a head cheerleader.



(An actual photo of George Bush during his cheerleading days.)

Hip hip hooray.