Author's Note: I originally posted this on a small mailing list I run, under my "real-er" name(Forsooth, the Internet has caused me to have so many personalities that I deserve my own zipcode...), but I felt I had to share my own take on the daily revelation-fest that our country in which our country is now engaged. I recognize that in doing so, I may be "outing" this nom de plume to whatever few members of that list might be engaged here. I would ask them to maintain my anonymity.
Otherwise: fuck it.
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There has something that has been lost in the US: ethics. We have become
so bound, hand and foot, by the endless mindless prattle about the great
god of "Morality" that we have discarded ethics. Few today, in the US,
know how to lead an ethical life, in ways small and large. Witness the
latest about Judge Jay Bybee: He is now communicating, through close
friends, that he has regrets about writing the torture finding that lead
to all the torture our country engaged in. That it "got away from him".
Ponder that. "Got away from him".
I have an answer for The Good Judge:
Dear Judge Bybee:
You are either the biggest liar or simplest, dumbest, most guile-less,
credulous and anacephalic motherfucker to ever to hold a law degree from
a major university in The History of Mankind. "Got away from you"??!!
What did you think those rapacious and evil bastards in The Bush
Administration would do with your finding? Use it to kick off
conversation at their next salon at Dick's house?
You are a lawyer. You know that treaties, once ratified, are not lists
of gentle suggestions or respectful and well-couched advisories for what
should happen in a perfect world. They become law of the land. No treaty
ever signed has ever had such far-reaching import, has been such a
fundamental guidepost to what kind of nation and people the United
States is, than The Geneva Accords. You, you knuckle-dragging goon,
issued a finding that shredded that law to its sub-molecular level and
allowed the worst amongst us to engage in behaviors and actions that
would make a excised segment of liver fluke recoil. "Got away from you".
By extrapolation, and in violation of Godwin's Law, I then submit that
The Final Solution just "got away" from poor old Dolfie, you schmuck.
In the world of major, word-parsing assholes, you sir, have jumped to
the head of the class. You have taken that scabrous art form and
redefined it brilliantly. You are its Picasso and you painted "Guernica"
with your brush.
Lawyers have something that the good ones hold very closely to their
hearts, both personally and professionally. Military officers have
something just like it: In the lawyering world, it is called "ethics".
In the world of military officers, it is called "Honor". It is the
bedrock upon which the really good ones build their careers and to them,
it is inviolable. My good friend, The Country Lawyer, a man whose used,
soiled and stained underwear you are not a fit person to carry, would
have flattened the first jerkoff that asked him to write such a finding.
He's an old Hockey goalie. He could do it in a heartbeat, round
horn-rimmed glasses, signature bow-tie and all.
I look at Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, a man who has been crying out in the
wilderness about what really happened, a man who put his personal and
professional reputation on the line. I look at Gen. Karpinski. I look at
the Col. who wrote the first damning reports on Abu Ghraib. I see the
same dedication to ethics. I see the same dedication to honor. Honor
above all.
You sir, and the people whose spittle you so readily licked, have none
of these qualities. Surely, you have a comfortable sinecure on the Ninth
Circuit Court of Appeals for your travails, but that is hardly
recompense. Recompense, sure and awful, is something you truly deserve.
You have stained us all, we Americans. We shall now carry the stain of
your misdeeds to the end of this union, whenever this is. You have
spawned a generation of frothing maniacs who still, in opposition to all
reason, ethics, honor and intellect, accept your finding as some new
form of gospel. In their words and deeds, they wipe their pustulent
asses with The Geneva Accords. At no time, could you summon a moment's
courage to speak out and say "Wait! I wrote that! That was not the
intent of that finding! I didn't mean that! Torture is wrong".
Of course you didn't. For you are a spineless, careerist worm. Whichever
way the wind blows, right, Jay? Right?
After passing, all a person leaves behind is his or her good name and
the remembrance of his or her good works, great and small. Or bad. Oh,
how you will be remembered. How you will be remembered. And the company
you will keep in that rememberance. Such company, indeed.
With all good wishes for a long life of ignominy,
-T.
