Bron-kidis, Lenny Bruce called it, the “un-hip, poor and Jewish” disease. In French it's la bronchite, much more elegant. Bronchitis makes you feel, well, pathetic—not least because of its sounds called rales, those rattles and assorted noises in your chest when you exhale.
I would guess it's like a very mild version of what a person undergoing waterboarding must experience. You can’t get your breath, you cough constantly, and there are those delightful sound effects.
The vile stuff revealed in the torture memos must somehow be expelled, like phlegm from a “productive” cough. And understood. So we’ve got two Senate committees, the Justice Department and others doing their diligence. And then what?
There seem to be two ways to go, beyond the rationalizing and apologistics we hear from the Republicans. Friday’s Washington Post editorial takes the position that prosecution, way down the road in any case, should be out of bounds. It argues that our political system cannot, should not
Paul Krugman says, predictably, that we need prosecutions “for the sake of our future.”
Sorry, but what we really should do for the sake of the country is have investigations both of torture and of the march to war. These investigations should, where appropriate, be followed by prosecutions—not out of vindictiveness, but because this is a nation of laws.
Emotionally I stand with Krugman, but it’s pretty clear that Obama is too smart and too good a politician to put the country through that kind of trauma. And as the Post says, too many stood by and let the torture happen. Seeing Dick Cheney in the dock would do more than provide that sanctioned frisson of revenge some of us crave; it would likely tear the country apart.
Let him go back to Wyoming and cower in a duck blind until the next attack of bronchitis carries him off.
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