If Barack Obama hoped to convince America that Dick Cheney was wrong about Obama making America less safe by releasing the interrogation memos, the latest Rasmussen poll shows he badly miscalculated.  Despite his own high personal approval ratings and Cheney’s low scores, 58% of respondents believe that Obama endangered national security.  Only 28%, far below the numbers of his own party, believe it helped America enhance its image abroad

Uhhhh, torture, torture, torture. Dude, all this talk about America “torturing” murdering-innocents-evil terrorists is torture to MAH #%@#$@ ears.  Anywhinycitizen, here’s my beef – since when did the US start behaving like Paris Hilton during her stint in the big house when it comes to whether or not the CIA’s interrogation tactics constitute torture???

Whaaaaaa…Whaaaaaaaaaaaa, I can’t take it. The interrogators talked in a loud voice, cranked up music, fed the terrorists TASTELESS-but-nutrient-packed food! GAAAAAAAAAAA! The horror. I mean this is America…Whaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

There, there NYT editorial staff – it’ll be okay. Shhhhhh.

I’ve seen a lot of people in liberalland – aka Facebook – feverishly update their status and posting about locking up the Bush Administration and throwing away the key. (In my best rabies, slobbering fanatic voice “Bush is the Deeeeeeeeeeeeeevil!”) Even though according to the CIA memos the interrogation techniques were like playing patty cake when compared to what other countries do to their POWs *cough*Hanoi Hilton *cough*.

The thing that’s really interesting is about half the people I know who are anti-American “torture” are also the same moral policemen who idly stood by as weaker kids were given swirlies in the boys’ locker room during cross-country practice in high school. So funny to me they’ve suddenly grown a conscience and are adamantly against “torture” they have never seen with their own eyes. But when somebody was enduring an emotionally-damaging water dunking less than 3 feet in front of them they not only did nothing but cheered on in their desperate attempt to experience the false utopia of acceptance. Oh, but silly me – that’s just the Pelosi defense.

Truth be told I’m no expert but have this little trick I can do called reading. Ummm, I already know what you’re thinking – J-E-A-L-O-U-S.

But honestly, it’s like even now when the CIA memos have been released and people can read for themselves how non-torturous these interrogations were, OH! and that they worked – how can you claim that America and the Bush Administration were in violation of human rights when they saved human lives? If that’s your stance, regardless of the evidence that speaks to the contrary, then I’d guess you’re not for the general concept of prisons either. Poor, poor terrorists – they did nothing wrong and we’re just misunderstanding their freedom to express their sinister desires even though they trample on the right to life of their fellow man in the process. Yeah, poor terrorist. Pffffffffff.

To me the Army Manual field techniques vs. the CIA Interrogation techniques are like detectives out in the field interrogating witnesses vs. police interrogating the kidnapping/murder suspect who’s taunting police and not giving up the vital information that could save a life.  Does that make me someone who cheers on those who abuse others? No.

But if you’re a murdering asshole, then, yes, I believe getting dunked by water, stripped of your clothes, or just fed the equivalent of nutritionally-balanced oatmeal for all your 3-squares each day does not constitute my definition of what torture is.  Guys down at the Cook County Prison suffer more on a daily basis. I realize they’re not getting the Camp Cupcake treatment, but they’re also not getting the Daniel Craig torturing in Casino Royale (despite what the NYT would have you believe).  Medical and psychological professionals were present and according to the memos certified that the techniques did not induce permanent physical or mental damage. If after all of that you’re still on the smear bandwagon calling people like me, who support the CIA’s interrogation, cruel, well then I’ll just have to call you namby bambi weakling – caphice! Seriously, I don’t think people on the two sides of the coin are either (cruel, weak) but my patience has worn thin of putting up with moonbats crying wolf.

For a group that is comprised of people who go days without bathing, eat food without flavor in the desperate attempt to keep up with their tofu-only fad diets, listen to loud irritating music multiple days in a row, have a tendency to strip down naked, and are notorious for their “peaceful” antics of yelling like people released from the crazy bin, well, some of these liberals need to take a look in the mirror.

ORANGE ALERT! – these people are in violation of torturing themselves.  Somebody lock ‘em up and throw away the key!

On Sunday, I’m going to watch National Geographic’s Inside Gitmo special. I’ve had in the DVR for a while, but I’ll take some time Sunday to blog about it. From what I gather its a look at to how well the prisoners were treated and how the system can work to both acquit valid suspects but yet restrain the world’s most dangerous. How much you want to bet though that all these people who are screaming smears about torture have never sat down once to actually learn the processes that go on at Gitmo?  Ante up, liberals.  AN. TE. UP.

If people thought that by electing a black president that it would bring more representation of minorities in the White House and govt., well I think they bet on the wrong man to do so. AND clearly weren’t paying attention the last eight years with all of Bush’s appointments. Just got done reading an interesting article over at Black and Right.

Let’s break it down, shall we? Obama has appointed to his cabinet two Asian Americans, two African Americans and four women.  Keep in mind too, how many of these are also tax cheats. 

Within Bush’s first term, he had 24 appointments and named to his Cabinet five women, four African-Americans, three Hispanics and two Asian-Americans.  And Bush’s appointments for minorities are being evaluated as higher levels than Obama’s.

Gee, sure sounds like those Republicans sure are the ones trying to keep minorities down. Ooooooooooooookay!

Not all of the news out there is just about the incoming president. Some people are using this time to reflect on where we’ve been the last eight years and what Pres. Bush did good as well as bad. And SURPRISE, not everyone is throwing stones, snickers, boos and jeers. Remember, we are all human and have imperfections. Presidents make some mistakes that are big, some that are small but none which are intentional. I don’t think any President takes the office with the goal to do harm to this nation, or turn its citizens against each other, or put them in a unfavorable light to the rest of the world. Despite President Bush’s mistakes, there were some successes. To deny this would be a skewed perspective – or what many conservatives call is Bush Derangement Syndrome. While I don’t think most of President Bush’s critics suffer from BDS, I do think that he got the brunt end of the stick more often than he deserved. Perspective is everything sometimes and it will be interesting to see how people judge President Bush in 10, 20, even 50 years. If Iraq & Afghanistan become self-preserving, capitalistic & democratic economies – President Bush should be given the credit he deserves. If they don’t I’m sure many of my friends when we are in our 70s will mock him without hesitation – and they will be justified. But remember it was President Truman who left office with a 20% rating and an environment much like the one we have now. It was President Lincoln who died with half of the country hating him so much so that one of his critics assassinated him for it. Now they are seen as a couple of our greatest presidents. I’m not saying that President Bush will be looked at as a great president, but to say he is one of the worst is to say so with tunnel vision (and ignore the entire Carter administration IMO).

To me, his best moments :

• The creation of Homeland Security
• Cleaning up Carter’s mess by leading the war against terrorism in Iraq & Afghanistan (this doesn’t make me pro-war BTW)
• The Bush tax cuts
• His rejection of the pathetic Kyoto global warming treaty (not because of global warming, but because of it’s exception to China & India)
• His support of Israel’s statehood
• Appointing a diverse cabinet (I’m a fan of Condi Rice!)
• Appointments of Roberts & Alito
• Support of faith-based programs
• Supporting the surge in Iraq even though it was the extremely unpopular thing to do at the time.

Now, I’m not 100% President Bush fan.  I leave out Katrina because I blame the govts. of LA and New Orleans more than the federal govt.(this is just my opinion, you may think I’m wrong – but honestly deal with it, my opinion on this isn’t changing). And everyone, including Mayor Ray Nagin seemed to get their act together the second time around – therefore they should be given credit for that.  His downfalls to me were:

• His communication skills (this is key when you are president and if he had done a better job at this I don’t think people would be harping on him as much as they do)
• Supporting No Child Left Behind (created by Ted Kennedy; just giving credit that this is not “a failed Republican” policy as many people incorrectly attribute it as)
• Supporting the $700++ billion bailout
• His low support/funding for science education programs.

I think how another blogger quoted Teddy Roosevelt is the most appropriate I’ve seen in the past few days to show the gratitude we feel for President Bush’s service:

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

Leaders are put in positions of leadership to make the hard decisions, not win popularity contests. To deny President Bush’s leadership ability because he made decisions you don’t agree with doesn’t make him any less of the leader that he truly was. He recognized time and time again that the decisions made under his administration may not have been the popular ones at the time, but that they were hard decisions to make in order to protect the people of the land he was sworn in to protect as President. To that I say THANK YOU, President Bush. Here are some people that can more eloquently express this point. In fact, I’ve included both liberals and conservatives to illustrate that even those who were strong Bush critics can see there were some good years and decisions made by our outgoing president.

Liberal Reflections:
http://www.clareified.com/2009/01/18/farewell-to-president-george-w-bush/
http://www.slate.com/id/2209133/?from=rss

Conservative links:
http://jameshudnall.com/blog.php/site/comments/farewell-bush/
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/01/20/goodbye-mr-bush/
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1232292908169
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/bruce-anderson/bruce-anderson-history-will-vindicate-george-bush-1419292.html

And to those critics who say Obama’s administration has brought a new era of “change,” and were move to tears by the words in his inauguration speech, I offer this little video demonstrating how little then they paid attention to what President Bush had been saying to the American people the last 7 years.