Everything I have ever promised you...

...has been a lie.

What’s the latest?

This from the NYT on the subject of my Administration’s claim that torture was no big deal. Just a few bad apples.

September 24, 2005
3 in 82nd Airborne Say Beating Iraqi Prisoners Was Routine
By ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 - Three former members of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division say soldiers in their battalion in Iraq routinely beat and abused prisoners in 2003 and 2004 to help gather intelligence on the insurgency and to amuse themselves.
The new allegations, the first involving members of the elite 82nd Airborne, are contained in a report by Human Rights Watch. The 30-page report does not identify the troops, but one is Capt. Ian Fishback, who has presented some of his allegations in letters this month to top aides of two senior Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, John W. Warner of Virginia, the chairman, and John McCain of Arizona. Captain Fishback approached the Senators' offices only after he tried to report the allegations to his superiors for 17 months, the aides said. The aides also said they found the captain's accusations credible enough to warrant investigation.
...
The abuses reportedly took place between September 2003 and April 2004, before and during the investigations into the notorious misconduct at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. Senior Pentagon officials initially sought to characterize the scandal there as the work of a rogue group of military police soldiers on the prison's night shift. Since then, the Army has opened more than 400 inquiries into detainee abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan, and punished 230 enlisted soldiers and officers.
...
In one incident, the Human Rights Watch report states, an off-duty cook broke a detainee's leg with a metal baseball bat. Detainees were also stacked, fully clothed, in human pyramids and forced to hold five-gallon water jugs with arms outstretched or do jumping jacks until they passed out, the report says. "We would give them blows to the head, chest, legs and stomach, and pull them down, kick dirt on them," one sergeant told Human Rights Watch researchers during one of four interviews in July and August. "This happened every day."
...
"They wanted intel," said the sergeant, an infantry fire-team leader who served as a guard when no military police soldiers were available. "As long as no PUC's came up dead, it happened." He added, "We kept it to broken arms and legs."
...
In a Sept. 16 letter to the senators, Captain Fishback, wrote, "Despite my efforts, I have been unable to get clear, consistent answers from my leadership about what constitutes lawful and humane treatment of detainees. I am certain that this confusion contributed to a wide range of abuses including death threats, beatings, broken bones, murder, exposure to elements, extreme forced physical exertion, hostage-taking, stripping, sleep deprivation and degrading treatment."
...

So my fellow Republicans, I wanted to take a few minutes out of my busy day to thank you for your unwavering support.

Without your pig-ignorance and blind faith in everything that drops out of my mouth, I might not have been able to weaken our nation, gut our treasury and piss away our international credibility in five short years.

From cheering on tax cut for billionaires during a time of record debt, to still believing – even two years after I myself was forced to admit I had lied – that Saddam caused 9/11, to tuning our unpleasant Reality and tuning in Rush every single day so we can tell you which slogans to shout and which groups to hate, you have made it possible for me to inflict more long-lasting damaged on the United States – pound for pound – than any enemy we have ever had.

And don’t just think it’s all domestic stuff either: you have also been immeasurably helpful when it comes to flopping my dick out at the International House of Tyrants as well. When Kim Jong Il throws down some brag about his fanatic, propaganda-fed followers who are so completely truth-starved that they believe that the U.S. started the Korean War, I just whip out the Bush Fadayin: my loyal base. I lay a little of the Southern Baptist Convention upside his dorky head, some Creationism, Terry Schiavo and a few other choice cut of dumbass and my, my, my if that doesn’t shut him the fuck up.

After all, he has to force his slaves to remain ignorant. He has to wall them off from the rest of the world and use bayonets, machine guns and razor wire to keep them from the truth.

What a pussy!

I mean, how much cooler is it that my Loyal Thralls actually choose to be dead-mule stupid. That rather that read a book or change the channel, they exercise their right as free Americans to voluntarily dumb themselves down to the point where I can serve them shit as sheetcake year after year and they just keep gobbling it up, licking their plates clean and lining up for more.

I also am deeply thankful for the limitless depths of your hypocrisy: it is the single feature that elevates you all above ordinary numbnuts and into the rarified heights of Cartoonish Superidiocy.

You are, after all, the same Righteous Mob that hunted Bill Clinton for seven long years -- over what turned out to be nothing -- under the banner of demanding Absolute Truth. That a President, regardless of Party, must be rigorously investigated if there is even the slightest whiff of the possibility of wrongdoing, no matter how small.

You were the one who set that standard: That it doesn’t matter how inconvenient or how debilitating it might be, how nakedly partisan the Prosecutor is, how long a fishing expedition he goes on, how many innocent lives are destroyed, how reckless the process becomes, how many millions it might cost...holding a President to account for his actions – no matter how trivial they may be or how many mitigating circumstances might obtain – is the Most Important Thing Ever.

It must be pursued to the ends of the Earth, regardless of the cost and consequences.

Of course, we down at the ranch all knew you didn’t mean a single fucking word of it. That it was all just another, beautiful Big Republican Lie, which is what made it just so extra special nice.

Which is what signaled to Rove that, at last, the GOP was morally bankrupt enough to elect me as President of the United States.

After all, I’ve lied to the American people since back when I was debating that Gore fella. I lie to you every day. I lie to that same Righteous Mob who got so het up over Clinton. I rub their faces in my lies. I rub it in their hair and right up their noses. Their kids die because of my lies. Their future is mortgaged to Chinese Bankers because of my lies.

And that whole Righteous Mob – every last one of them who screamed for Clinton’s blood – don’t bat a fucking eye. They’ll never investigate me. They’ll never indict me. They’ll never subpoena me. They’ll never even ask me any tough questions. Shit, even when it came to looking into 9/11 – which happened on my watch, and about which Condi had been amply warned – they sucked my dick.

The same people that demanded Clinton be put under oath and videotaped for a blowjob and then leaked it to the press...let me “chat” behind closed doors. The worst attack on our country while I was the Commander-in-Chief and I didn’t even have to swear to tell the truth. I got to sit on Cheney’s lap. Nobody took notes, and nobody said a fucking word about it.

For Clinton, they nursed their wounds like The Fisher King and hunted him like a wild boar.

For me...nothing.

Why?

Because covering up my crimes and helping me destroy America is the job you elected them to do, my pretties.

So I’d like to thank you for staying the course through thick and thin except, of course, that unless you’re wealthy, it’s been pretty much “thin” from Day One.

I’d like to thank you for being such incredibly gullible hicks. Seriously, we have a little bet going back at the Ranch that there is literally nothing I can do that’s so fucking in-sane that you pickle-heads won’t squeal "Oh God Yes!" like piglets on their third consecutive orgasm.

Truth be told (which is kind of a rare thing for me), to test that theory, while I was doing this very speech, I wasn’t wearing any pants. It was a hot day, and I was kinda loaded, so I figured, “What the fuck?” and did the whole thing Full Gannon. And just for kicks, like two minutes before I went out, Condi wrote “JESUS LOVES MY POOP HOLE” on my ass in BIG letters with that “Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS” lipstick she slathers on these days.

Just to see what would happen.

Nobody said a word, and they all cheered like the trained seals they’ve been bred to be.

I never really understood how I kept getting away with the reckless, crazy shit I get away with until Turdblossom explained it to me.

“Dubya,” he said, “Republicans say, ‘What lies?’ for the same reason a Mekong Giant Catfish says, ‘What water?’.”

Turns out that when you swim, breathe, eat, fuck and die in a river of shit...you actually get confused and goggle-eyed when someone points out that you stink like the business end of a rabid dog with the trots.

Then you get angry.

Then you elect someone who’ll tell you Jesus loves your shit-crusted ass and hates everyone else, and despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, you really smell like fresh-baked ginger snap cookies.

So thanks again.

Suckers.