Hello Pot? It's the Kettle. You're Black!

Great speech last night, huh?

Obviously, Dubya can't find a coherent sentence with both hands and a flashlight. Somehow though, what's still not clear is whether he's really as stupid as he seems, or if he's simply a liar. Either way -manipulated or manipulating- he's a jerk.

For now, let's set aside the debacle of the Iraq occupation, alright? Let's palaver some about the chasm that separates what Dubyaco say they stand for, and what they actually spend their days doing. "Why?" you ask? Mostly because:
a) I'm more pissed than ever at him and his Neocon dickwad cronies and
b) I can't find any more Flash games that challenge you to shoot poop into a moving toilet.

So... there is no question that America, under the leadership of the Bush administration, has developed extensive systems of abuse and continues with outrageous, hypocritic, illegal behavior, all in the name of its brand of freedom.

Amnesty International (you remember them... U2 and Bryan Adams did that tour?) recently criticized the Bush administration's treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, calling the facility "the gulag of our times," a pointedly-blunt reference to political prisoners held by the former Soviet Union.

Dubya and his supporters quickly responded by calling the accusation absurd. Some of them even pronounced it correctly. "I'm aware of the Amnesty International report, and it's absurd - it's an absurd allegation," Dubya stammered.

So, it would seem to even the most casual of observers that the Bush administration objects to Amnesty's use of the word "gulag." Saying it twice convinced me, anyway. People may automatically assume "gulag" refers to work-camps, but a closer look reveals a more broad definition, including:

"A place or situation of great suffering and hardship, likened to the atmosphere
in a prison system or a forced labor camp."

If that isn't a universally accepted description of the conditions for the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, then what is? For the Bush administration to call Amnesty’s assessment of America's pattern of abuse "absurd" is to not understand the definition of the word... which, really, should come as a surprise to no one.

The pattern of abuse is both well-reported and -despite almost constant denials from the White House- undeniable. The only question is why we let it go on... and on... and on?

The Bush administration selected Guantanamo Bay with the intention of preventing the prisoners from having access to U.S. courts. Dubya has refused to designate them "prisoners of war," which would have put them under the legal protection of the Geneva Convention, despite the fact that America is conducting a "global war on terror." There are reports that a number of children under age 16 are among the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, but no independent agency has been permitted access to verify their condition, or to determine where or why they were arrested.

My bet? Dubya's only real objection to the term "gulag" is that he hadn't thought to put these "disappeared" prisoners to work (yet).

Wherever Richard Petty is now, he's righteously-pissed.